The tragedy, taboo and finality of death have been illuminated by the Dunne family and their trip to an undertaker, writes ELAINE BYRNE
LILIES SMELL different in a cold room on a warm day. So too does the wax perfume from days of lingering white candles. But it was the funeral sounds that I remember most from when I worked in our family undertaking business.
There was the empty thud of an unpolished white oak coffin being placed on the lattice biers.
Then the hollow echo of the drill that bore the holes for the eight brass-plate handles. Three on each side, a smaller one for the foot and head.
The fragile round-headed gold nails always had to be gently hammered into the breastplate on the coffin lid. And finally, the tap-tap of the tacks that pinned the silky lining, soft bed and small pillow to the interior.
The coffin was dressed and the funeral sounds would now change.
The most difficult thing about raw emotion is the limits of empathy. Undertakers are not allowed to cry.
That was the toughest part, the artificial outer professionalism which masked an inner disbelief because the night before you had probably met the person, who was now a body, in our family pub. His pint of Guinness with the half Jameson and some water no more. Her raised voice directed at the television’s Sunday Game gone.
Their hoarse laughter muted for perpetuity.
Instead now, the interrupted silence of mourners paying their final respects. The whispered tears of “doesn’t he look well?” The shared rosary or prayers which quietly resonate into a hypnotic rhythm. The waiting. The murmur of shifting feet as it becomes time to close the coffin. And then perhaps the delicate tones of internal family diplomacy about who should be present for this bit of the goodbye.
In the last few minutes of these private goodbyes, it is the ashen lilies and candles that we focus on.
We avert our eyes and cross our palms in the background for this part. It feels like an intrusion on naked intimate grief.
Nothing ever had to be said when it was time. Stifled cries buried for days, now abruptly mature. The coffin is then awkwardly carried to the open back door of the hearse over the pebble stones. Some handshakes by straggling mourners and the requisite “commiserations for your loss”.
And always, always at this point in the proceedings, during this tense silence, our peacock would make his grand entrance. In great fanfare, he would fly down from the highest farm shed, where he had observed proceedings. Delighted at the waiting mourners, which he assumed were his audience, he would begin.
Have you ever heard a peacock cry?
The elongated piercing call comes from deep within the rasps of the throat. It is not a beautiful song for a bird.
Attracted to his reflection in the polished hearse, he would violently attack it. Over and over again, flying directly into his image, adding new scratch marks to previous battles.
There was nothing we could do.
Ode to those that dare come between a wild peacock and his black reflection in an occupied hearse. But in truth he served as a distraction and our conversations about how to stop him meant we didn’t talk about the unsaid things.
This was our normality. Stepping in and out of people’s lives. The inconsolable filled with regret for the things that have been said and unsaid.
Death is inevitable but yet unfair.
The Monageer report, published last week, acknowledged the “tremendous foresight” of the New Ross funeral director. In the days leading up to the tragic discovery of Adrian and Ciara Dunne and their two daughters, Leanne and Shania, at their home, the funeral director had contacted Garda A on three occasions and had also rang the Clonroche Curate.
Her actions were promoted by the specific nature of Adrian and Ciara’s instructions to prearrange their family’s funeral.
“Something kept telling me that it was going to happen soon” she told the Monageer inquiry.
It was evident from the conversations with the funeral director that recent family bereavement had cast a long shadow over the lives of the Dunne family.
The report found that while there was not “any single definitive motive” behind their deaths, “important factors” included the death of Adrian’s beloved father a year before and that of his brother through suicide only a month previously.
The Dunne family had largely isolated themselves from their family and friends. Struggling with the day-to-day routine of financial debts and medical obstacles, perhaps recent bereavements now made life seem wholly unbearable.
“Instead we pick heaven . . . please forgive” read the suicide text message that the inquiry believe was sent shortly before Adrian died.
The report concluded that it was “likely that a tragedy would not have been averted”.
We will never know the full circumstances of that weekend but maybe we can take from the report a need to become more comfortable talking about death and accordingly appreciate the intensity and helplessness that grief can bring. Death is our last taboo and most of us are deeply afraid of it because we never discuss it.
Undertakers do not have such comfort.