The undertaking: How death inspired Anne Griffin's latest novel
Author Anne Griffin allows the dead to have a voice in her latest novel 'Listening Still'.
recently featured David and Bríd McGowan, embalmers and funeral directors from Sligo. They spoke eloquently about the spiritualness surrounding their profession — the feeling that sometimes the person who has died is still present in the room, as if they have yet to pass over. In my new novel , I take that one step further, and allow the dead to speak.
In a midland’s funeral home, David and Jeanie Masterson carry out the dead’s final wishes, which turn out not always to be simple expressions of eternal love to those left behind. It is a novel that considers truth and lies, and how life’s obligations can sometimes weigh us down.
A not so unusual plot, perhaps, but one set in the extraordinary world of undertaking.
I’ve always been interested in the mysteries of death from the time I realised one of my classmates lived in the gothic house just inside the gates of our local graveyard. A house that mesmerised me when I passed its door with my family every second Sunday en route to my grandparents’ grave. She’s possibly in there now eating her Sunday dinner, I’d think. And then I’d wonder, does she know how very special she is?
I first started work on in 2016. I’ll admit to being petrified lifting the phone to Gilsenan’s Funeral Home in Mullingar to ask for help. My first novel was still unpublished, there wasn’t even an agent or a book deal, just a manuscript that I was trying to get someone interested in. Yet here I was asking a funeral director to explain his world to this total unknown. He agreed nonetheless.
For one afternoon, I sat with Con Gilsenan who spoke so respectfully about an industry that holds dignity and discretion at its core, a man who stared out the window and straightened his tie when he remembered the recent loss of someone close.
"You have to lead," he said. "No matter how much it is hurting you inside, you have to show a strong outer-face. People are depending on you."
A few months later, I met the aforementioned David McGowan and his colleague Michael Clarke, the then secretary of the Professional Embalmers Association of Ireland. They told me how embalming only really took off in Ireland in the seventies and how they, in a self-regulating industry, have ensured their high standards.
They emphasised the importance of listening and giving space to the relatives to talk about their loss — about allowing the question that always comes, especially in tragic circumstances, of ‘Why?’ These professionals knew that to be discreet yet present was the code by which they lived. They were the go-betweeners, the event managers, the counsellors, the people who ensured the living had done all they could for those they had lost.
I was given a tour of the embalming room where I saw the mechanics, the tools of the trade — the embalming machine, the tables, the protective clothing hanging on hooks, rows of shampoo bottles, soaps and towels. But to understand how an actual embalming was completed, I knew I needed to see one.
Let me be clear, there are no explicit embalming procedures in my book but in writing about those who carry them out, I felt I had to know what it was they did and what it took to do it. YouTube, that’s where I found everything I needed in helping me understand the why and how. Watching it on screen was not only the perfect way to educate myself but made me realise I’d never have been able for the real thing, giving me an even deeper respect for embalmers.
My research also lead me to journal articles, online funeral directing catalogues listing pages of coffins, embalming supplies, trolleys and odour control solutions. I watched , a wonderful animated short film by Wiggly Woo productions. I got to see , the hilarious play written and performed by Niamh Singleton and Keith McGrath. I binged on , the HBO noughties series.
I read Thomas Lynch’s , a quirky and lyrical look at the origins and work of his Michigan undertakers, and Caitlin Doughty’s . In her opening pages, Doughty warns the reader: ‘For those who do not wish to read realistic depictions of dead bodies you have stumbled onto the wrong book’ and she was not lying. Through her compassion and humour she tells us to stop hiding from what is one of life’s definites. By accepting death as a normal part of who we are, she argues, we can live life to our fullest.
In this time of Covid, the esteem with which I hold funeral directors has deepened. They, like so many other frontline workers who risk their lives for others, have not shirked their responsibilities. When the living must mourn alone, it is these women and men who have stepped forward, giving that which has never mattered so much before — the consoling ear, the calming word — sending our loved ones onward with quiet dignity.
My research into this unexpectedly welcoming trade was eye-opening and undoubtedly helped shape — anything I get wrong is down to me and no one else. But it has also produced something totally unforeseen. It has helped me decide what I would like for myself when I die, and further, it gave me the confidence to express that to my family one evening over dinner. It was a warm and funny chat that has meant so very much and one that I would highly recommend.
- Listening Still by Anne Griffin is published in trade paperback by Sceptre, and is available now from all Irish bookshops, €13.99
