Irish Examiner view: A small but perfect motif for our times

Cork City Council recently passed a motion calling for an “eco-graveyard” in the city.

Our culture assures us, with justification, that we do death well. Always a tragedy, the death of a loved one or an admired friend provokes great sorrow but that can be expressed in the most joyous, exuberant ways. Maybe it’s our history, maybe it’s our resilient character but the end of a life can fuse those seemingly incompatible bedfellows, joy, and pain. We may not mark a death, even of a national hero, as passionately as Argentina did when Diego Maradona died in recent days but an Irish death always provokes a mixture of emotions.

A traditional wake, unimaginable in more reserved, staid cultures, was once almost a rite of passage, even if they are more sober affairs today than they were in the old romantic Ireland. If the dead person and their family have endured the slings and arrows of a long, relentless, and isolating illness then it may be easier to celebrate their death — “a relief to them” as it’s so kindly described.

Advances in medicine, changing attitudes around personal control, quality-of-life expectations, and demographic projections, pointing to a huge increase in the proportion of older people in this society, push questions around right-to-die issues to centre stage. It seems reasonable to expect a change in the status quo on this issue, though how long before that liberating option — for those who might choose it — is available is anyone’s guess.

The pandemic has, unfortunately, reminded us all of the harder, lonelier side of death. Hundreds of people have died, isolated from their family in nursing homes. They relied on the kindness, generousity, and company of strangers, supports willingly given. Families were unable to say farewell as they might wish or offer the love and comfort all of us hope for at those most traumatic, final moments. That grim experience has bruised many and must have a distressing impact on health workers too. This is another reason to hope that vaccines are as effective as tests promise.

One of the ways people seek to assuage the pain of a death is a visit to a grave. Maybe, just like an old-school wake, not as common as before, visits to graves are a well-established part of our grieving process. An idea to be examined by Cork City Council may change the nature of those visits and maybe even enhance their value by adding a new dimension to the process. The city council recently passed a motion calling for an “eco-graveyard” in the city. This would allow a person to be buried in a way that does not require chemicals or unnecessary markings. Rather, the person might be honoured by planting trees and flowers, encouraging biodiversity in an otherwise sterile setting hostile to wildlife and natural flora. It would also speak to a core belief of Christianity that death is a beginning to be celebrated rather than an end.

It is not too hard to imagine the scepticism this idea, and the welcome appointment of a trees officer, might generate but it has symbolic significance. In a culture that does death well but is doing so little to avert climate death it would speak loudly, and clearly, to our need to change our destructive ways. It would, in an unconventional sense at least, celebrate death by renewing life. What an important motif for our time.