Anam Cara полностью

In that prayer the whole world of nature and the seasons is linked up beautifully with the presence of the eternal life.

You will never understand death or appreciate its loneliness until it visits. In Connemara the people say, “Ni thuigfidh tú an bás go dtiocfaidh sé ag do dhorás féin”—that is, “You will never understand death until it comes to your own door.” Another phrase they have is, “Is fear direach é an bás, ní chuire-ann sé scéal ar bith roimhe”—that is, “Death is a very direct individual who sends no story before him.” Another phrase is “Ní féidir dul i bhfolach ar an mbás”—that is, “There is no place to hide from death.” This means that when death is searching for you, it will always know where to find you.

WHEN DEATH VISITS…

Death is a lonely visitor. After it visits your home, nothing is ever the same again. There is an empty place at the table; there is an absence in the house. Having someone close to you die is an incredibly strange and desolate experience. Something breaks within you then that will never come together again. Gone is the person whom you loved, whose face and hands and body you knew so well. This body, for the first time, is completely empty. This is very frightening and strange. After the death many questions come into your mind concerning where the person has gone, what they see and feel now. The death of a loved one is bitterly lonely. When you really love someone, you would be willing to die in their place. Yet no one can take another’s place when that time comes. Each one of us has to go alone. It is so strange that when someone dies, they literally disappear. Human experience includes all kinds of continuity and discontinuity, closeness and distance. In death, experience reaches the ultimate frontier. The deceased literally falls out of the visible world of form and presence. At birth you appear out of nowhere, at death you disappear to nowhere. If you have a row with someone you love and she goes away, and if you then desperately need to meet again, regardless of the distance, you can travel to where she is to find her. The terrible moment of loneliness in grief comes when you realize that you will never see the deceased again. The absence of their life, the absence of their voice, face, and presence become something that, as Sylvia Plath says, begins to grow beside you like a tree.

THE CAOINEADH: THE IRISH MOURNING TRADITION

One of the lovely things about the Irish tradition is its great hospitality to death. When someone in the village dies, everyone goes to the funeral. First everyone comes to the house to sympathize. All the neighbors gather around to support the family and to help them. It is a lovely gift. When you are really desperate and lonely, you need neighbors to help you, support you, and bring you through that broken time. In Ireland there was a tradition known as the caoineadh. These were people, women mainly, who came in and keened the deceased. It was a kind of high-pitched wailing cry full of incredible loneliness. The narrative of the caoineadh was actually the history of the person’s life as these women had known him or her. A sad liturgy, beautifully woven of narrative, was gradually put into the place of the person’s new absence from the world. The caoineadh gathered all the key events of the person’s life. It was certainly heartbreakingly lonely, but it made a hospitable, ritual space for the mourning and sadness of the bereaved family. The caoineadh helped people to let the emotion of loneliness and grief flow in a natural way.

We have a tradition in Ireland known as the wake. This ensures that the person who has died is not left on their own the night after death. Neighbors, family members, and friends accompany the body through the early hours of its eternal change. Some drinks and tobacco are usually provided. Again, the conversation of the friends weaves a narrative of remembrance from the different elements of that person’s life.

THE SOUL THAT KISSED THE BODY

It takes a good while to really die. For some people, it can be quick, yet the way the soul leaves the body is different for each individual. For some people, it may take a couple of days before the final withdrawal of soul is completed. There is a lovely anecdote from the Munster region about a man who had died. As the soul left the body, it went to the door of the house to begin its journey back to the eternal place. But the soul looked back at the now-empty body and lingered at the door. Then it went back and kissed the body and talked to it. The soul thanked the body for being such a hospitable place for its life journey and remembered the kindnesses the body had shown it during life.