Essay

Listening to the deaths

By Mike Dwane

音声ダウンロード

I’ve been going to a lot of funerals lately. That’s not unusual for a journalist I guess. Whenever someone notable dies, an athlete or a politician say, people want to read about it. Or at least they seem to in Ireland, where death is something of a national obsession.

It could also be the nature of the death that makes it newsworthy. So whenever there is a fatal car crash, a workplace accident or a murder, my editor will send me or one of my colleagues to report on the funeral or what was said at it. That’s if the family of the deceased don’t mind. Generally they don’t, as long as you are respectful and discreet.

It’s the part of the job I hate most because you feel like you are intruding on private grief. But then again, an Irish funeral is a very public affair. The more people that come the better, and details of the service are even advertised in advance.

While I was on call one weekend, my wife asked me what on earth I was listening to on the local radio station.

“I’m listening to the deaths,” I said as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

These are death notices paid for by the family of the departed and are placed in newspapers as well as local radio and online. They say who has died, where they were from, who they worked for, who their surviving relatives are and when and where the funeral and burial will take place. Cremation is not common here.

Death notices are not just for journalists of course. Every Irish person of a certain age will tune in to local radio or scan the newspaper to see who has died in their village or the next and whether they will be expected to make an appearance at the funeral.

The customs around death in Ireland are too many to go into here but the tradition of the wake ― basically a send-off party for the deceased involving lots of whiskey and wailing ― is itself ― dying out. Traces of it remain though, including the open coffin.

Of all the funerals I’ve been to recently, the one that affected me most was that of a 21-year-old who died suddenly. That’s because I knew him personally. In fact I used to babysit him when I was a teenager. His tearful mother invited me to look at his body. “Doesn’t he look beautiful?” she said. I looked into the coffin and agreed that he did. What else could I say?

Many cultures would find this macabre but it reflects a peculiar and open attitude to death that survives in Ireland.

死に耳を傾ける

最近、筆者は葬儀に足を運ぶことが多いという。地方紙の記者という仕事柄、さまざまな人の葬儀の様子を取材させられるのだが、アイルランドの人々は死に対してかなり関心が高いようだ。

The Japan Times ST: December 5, 2014