Breda O’Brien: Irish people need to talk about death

There are times in everyone’s life of inexplicable tragedy. In the last fortnight, within two days, two families in our immediate circle lost much-loved dads and husbands without having any adequate time to prepare.

Seeing the grief of our children, to whom both of these men were honorary uncles (and in the case of one child, his godfather) it is frightening to think that their sorrow is only the faintest echo of what the children of the bereaved families are feeling. And if we miss our friends so much, what must their wives be experiencing?

People are beginning to believe it is morbid and even pathological to dwell on death

This is not a eulogy. I could not emulate or reach the standard of what was said so eloquently about these men by their families and friends.

It is instead a tentative invitation to discuss some questions, such as whether our culture is eroding healthy ways to deal with suffering and death, the kind of rituals that helped both families.

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It is a truism that the Irish do death well, and the beautiful, dignified funerals I have recently attended bear this out, but I don’t think I am alone in noticing that increasingly, people are uncomfortable with aspects of death and less comforted by traditional rituals.

I am not talking about the devastation and grief caused by tragic death, which is a normal and healthy response, but a more fundamental avoidance of the reality of death.

I may be wrong or misunderstanding something, but it seems to me that people are beginning to believe it is morbid and even pathological to dwell on death for one second longer than necessary.

But does this unease around death means that people are even more devastated when forced to confront it?

Contemptuous judgments

Maybe it is because, happily, life expectancy has increased and we are simply not exposed as early as previous generations were to death. Maybe it is because as religious belief declines, it is rational to fear death if it signals not a transition but an end.

There are very few spaces where we can discuss matters of such importance without resorting to contemptuous judgments on others’ motivations. There are fewer still where people can examine fundamental questions. The letters page of this paper might provide a civilised forum for such a discussion.

Previous generations, though just as loving and as full of grief when tragedy struck, had ways of understanding suffering that enabled them to bear it, even when it seemed their hearts and heads would burst with the impossibility of doing so. They could see that suffering, while never easy and rarely desirable, could still bring about growth and healing if accepted.

It seems to me that this unease with death cannot be unconnected to our economic system’s faulty underpinnings, which need the impossible combination of constant growth, endless resources and dissatisfied customers always seeking something new.

It suits capitalism to create a consensus that previous systems of meaning – cultural, political and religious – are inadequate.

Maximise pleasure

Fulfilment must be found by rejecting previous beliefs and by creating a unique, individualised meaningful system. And lo, capitalism happens to promise to sell you something that will help you avoid pain and maximise pleasure, or which will let you distract yourself, not in a temporary, healthy way that aids healing but in a permanent avoidance of painful feelings.

For example, returning from one of the funerals, my husband was struck by how many billboard advertisements offer a life without limits where we control our own destiny. But the harsh reality is that life has hard-edged limits.

Traditional worldviews recognise that life is not fair, that evil exists and bad things happen randomly to good people. They try to show people the path to happiness in a way that does not deny the inescapable reality of suffering.

Are people being seduced away from healthy community-based meanings and rituals?

From capitalism’s viewpoint, these worldviews will not shift products or services, neither anti-ageing merchandise nor self-fulfilment retreats.

Individualised meaning systems that promise you can be whatever you want to be often imply that is your own fault if you do not succeed in creating that ideal life, due to lack of positivity or commitment or attracting the right things.

Being human always involves testing everything for truth and holding fast to what is good. People should not take traditional systems of meaning and wear them like ill-fitting clothes.

But in the name of personal fulfilment, infinite choice and the profit motive, are people being seduced away from healthy community-based meanings and rituals? And why are traditional meaning systems so helpless in the face of such seduction?

Our dear friends Chris and Eddie, who have now departed ar slí na fírinne, would have happily engaged with and, if need be, disagreed with me about such questions. They would also have merrily punctured any perceived pomposity or pretentiousness with laughter.

It is but one of the many, many reasons I will miss them both.