Michael Kelly“Death is part of life, an entry to life eternal”, writes Michael Kelly
Traditionally, Irish people are ‘good’ around death. That’s not to say that Irish people have an abnormal or unhealthy interest in death or dying, but simply that there has traditionally not been the cultural awkwardness around the subject that characterises some other societies.
November, of course, is the traditional month for remembering the dead and many people visit graveyards and cemeteries to give concrete expression to the memory of loved ones who have died. There’s also the tradition of visiting graves on Christmas morning, emphasising that those who have gone before us are very much part of our family at that special time of year.
The old saying has it that “those who die go no further from us than God. And God is very near.”
One of the reasons, I think, that Irish people – despite the grief – are more comfortable about death is that there is often a deep-rooted Catholic consciousness that those who have died are not merely dead, but progress to a new life in Christ. So, death is part of life, an entry to life eternal.
Pope Francis warned this week that Christians face an uphill struggle around the issue of death in a culture that is unwilling to face the reality of the human condition.
“We have a great challenge to face, especially in contemporary culture, which often tends to trivialise death to the point of treating it as an illusion or hiding it from sight,” he said.
“Yet death must be faced and prepared for as a painful and inescapable passage, yet one charged with immense meaning, for it is the ultimate act of love towards those we leave behind and towards God whom we go forth to meet,” the Pontiff wrote in his new apostolic letter Misericordia et misera.
I thought about what the Pope wrote in the context of the 14-year-old British girl who died and has had her body chemically preserved in the hope of scientists in the future finding a cure for her cancer and therefore being able to bring her back to life.
Hearing
One can’t even begin to imagine the pain the death of a child causes to parents and loved ones. Nor the sense of loss a teenager much endure hearing that she is going to die and therefore not get to live her life or fulfil cherished dreams. Yet, death is something that must be faced.
I’d hate to see a day when Irish people start to become uncomfortable around death. It’s not unusual in the US or in Britain to meet people in their 30s who have never seen a dead person. Some have never even been to a funeral.
Yet, at the traditional Irish wake, one will often see children present and praying at the coffins of grandparents or another cherished member of the family. It’s not that there should be a morbid desire to confront very young children with the reality of death, but there’s also no sense in trying to shield people from the fact that to be alive is to encounter death. This is even more so for people of faith, who pray “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection”.