one of the sacred tasks of the elder is to recognise her/his mortality…to face death and look openly at the terror. because we are hard-wired for survival, to look at death is to defy our genes and our conditioning. and yet, there is truly no other task to perform. in his book, my father’s wake: how the irish teach us to live, love and die, war reporter kevin toolis allows us to look clearly at the ritual of the wake, one of the oldest rituals of humankind. the irish wake has it’s own religions flavour, mixed liberally with pagan rites.
movingly, he reveals the inner work of the wake for the mourners and for the community in which they live and die. there is a deep sense of sharing, whether the person who died was known well, only superficially or not at all. in the reading we are invited to be part of the wake, having met toolis’s father through the son’s words and memories. so we too become part of the waking community.he tells us “it felt easier to live with death close than to live with the emptiness of denial.” we are invited to touch the person in the coffin, to feel the cold, “rubber glove” texture.
we are not separated from death. in fact, toolis invites us to attend an irish wake. he assures us we will be welcome, no matter who we are. “sorry for your troubles” will gain us entry and allow us to become part of this on-going thread in irish life and death.toolis has seen death in many war-torn countries and interviewed the survivors of horror…the mothers and fathers, the cousins, the lovers. i believe him when he writes,
“death comes in many guises. whether we rage against the dying of the light, eagerly embrace the darkness, we must all find our own way. we shall all, man, woman, adult or child, answer to the mystery of our lives—our becoming—in our death. the person who we are, the deeds by which we defined ourselves throughout our days, will be the answer to our quest. and we shall encounter death in the lives of those we have loved, those we have hated and those we have casually known. on death’s shore there will be no right or wrong, only a better or worse way to die. and there will be a lesson, to, in how to live, and how to love.”
the sacred task of dying is living fully.