Deadly Conversations: ‘Do they want a burial? Do they want to be cremated?’

Every Wednesday at 1.30pm in the cafe of the Axis Centre in Ballymun, a group of strangers meet to talk about grief and dying. This is “Deadly Conversations”, a project run by the Irish Hospice Foundation’s arts and creative engagement officer Dominic Campbell, the Axis’s project co-ordinator Sorcha Keane and facilitating artists Abi Ighadaro and Lewis Magee.

“The goal, if we have one,” says Sorcha, “is to carve out a space where people know they are welcome with whatever feelings of grief or loss that they’re experiencing in that moment. That changes every day. Sometimes people might come and sit and say nothing at all, but they’re here. Sometimes they might come and we might be chatting and laughing and joking ... It’s just a place where people can be, and be comfortable and be welcomed ... We have had people sitting at the tables next to us listening in, but they’ve not really been quite ready to participate ... So it’s kind of filtering out into everybody who’s here.”

The first participant to arrive is newcomer Christina. She heard about this because she’s on the Axis’s mailing list and feels a little awkward to be the first here. “I’ll soon be hovering where I’m comfortable, just outside the edge of the group.”

We’re soon joined by Frances, who has only missed one week since it all started in November. “I’m okay with talking,” she says. “I’ve talked all my life.” She laughs. “Shutting up is another matter.”

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She notes that it’s usually women who attend. “Why is it women?” asks Dominic.

“I think women talk easier,” says Frances. “I can talk at this stage of my life; I wasn’t always like this. But I don’t think men know how to say things.” She pauses. “I won’t tell you about my track record with men.”

“That’s ‘grief’ with a capital G,” says Christina. Everyone laughs.

A third woman arrives. She’s in early middle age. She doesn’t speak, except at the outset when she says: “I was at home and thinking will I come down or won’t I come down.” She seems to listen very carefully though.

“You’re an old hand now,” says Sorcha.

Three more women join. They were at a St Brigid’s cross-making class upstairs. One of them, Victoria, a woman in her early 50s, sits at the far end of the table from Frances.

“They separated us, did they?” Victoria says to Frances.

“They’re troublemakers,” explains Sorcha.

Victoria shows a wicker doll she’s made. “Blessed with holy water from the well.”

“If you have a St Brigid’s cross in your house it won’t burn down,” says Frances. She adds: “It might fall down but it won’t burn down.”

They’re also joined by two sisters, Deirdre and Emer, who are both in their 70s. On the table there are various markers and bits of fabric brought by Abi. From time to time people draw pictures or hold the fabric. Everyone here has experienced some form of grief. “Some of it is people who have been recently bereaved,” says Sorcha. “Some of it is people who are anticipating bereavement. Sometimes it’s people who have chronic illness ... Loss can take so many different forms. We respond to whatever they bring with them.”

Deirdre talks about the death of their sister two years before. “I’m really only grieving her now because I moved house near to the convent where she lived,” she says. “I had many a cup of tea up in her bedroom. And now I have to pass that bedroom every day and it’s like I’m suddenly feeling the loss for the very first time.”

“Is that a surprise?” asks Dominic.

“A huge surprise,” she says. “She died during Covid so it was almost like she was still in a nursing home and she wasn’t gone. But now I feel her loss acutely. When I got this house, I thought: ‘Oh Bernie, if you only knew I’m a stone’s throw from you.’ But she’s elsewhere, not there. I go for a walk once a week in their grounds with my little grandson and that makes me feel closer to her.”

Victoria can relate. “When you hear music or see somebody who looked like the person you lost, it suddenly just brings it back. And even if the person died years ago, the grief is there all over again, and you weren’t expecting it ... Places, music, clothes can all bring the grief back.”

“I have one sister living in the UK and for 30 years I went to visit her for a week every year and that was my holiday,” says Frances. “I was there this week three years ago and she was going to come to Dublin for Easter. And then Covid came and it didn’t happen ... Boris got the blame. ‘Boris said I can’t go out because I’m over 70.’ She’s now in a nursing home and she has dementia. So I’ve lost that part of her. And I’ve lost my holiday every year.

“I can go and stay with a niece and a nephew but her and I would have a lovely week together because we liked doing the same things. We liked looking at handsome waiters when we went for a cup of coffee. And that’s gone. So that’s grief. I did go and see her in October. They reckon that she did know me and she said my name but I was devastated over that. I come from a line of women that never knew they were old.”

“I bumped into somebody I haven’t seen in decades,” says Victoria. “And she said: ‘You do realise that we’re old’ ... And I was like, what are you talking about? I still feel 20. I don’t want people telling me I’m old!”

“I’m 74, so I don’t need people to tell me I’m old,” says Deirdre. “Someone said at Christmas, ‘We’re running out of Christmases’, and I was putting away my stuff, thinking, ‘Will this stuff ever come out of the attic again?’ I didn’t feel old at 70, but at 71, I remember looking in the mirror going ‘My god, when did this happen?’ I do see the world differently because I feel my time is shorter. I’m not afraid of death [but] I am a bit preoccupied by it at the moment ... I’m doing this ‘power of attorney’ thing.”

Recently she took home an Irish Hospice Foundation pack called Think Ahead, it is, it says on the pack, “a place to record your preferences and choices for your future care through illness, end of life and after death”. “It’s going to make life easier for the people I leave behind,” says Deirdre. “They won’t be running around in a flap if I die suddenly. They’ll know all my wishes, all of my bank account numbers.”

Emer raises an eyebrow. “All of them?”

Everyone laughs. “She’s never lost it,” says Deirdre. “Emer loves fresh air and she says ‘when you bury me, put windows in my coffin’.”

“I want a duvet and a pillow because I hate the cold,” says Victoria.

“Trying to make decisions when you don’t know what everybody wanted ... it’s horrible,” says Christina. “The fact you’re doing [this] is great ... I can tell you all the things I didn’t know. Do they want a burial? Do they want to be cremated? What do they want written on the grave? ... Several years ago, [my mother-in-law] came in with a leather-bound booklet. I thought it was another photo album, but she’d been to a solicitor and it was her burial plan ... Everything paid for and taken care of, her wishes, everything. She even paid for her own grave to be maintained for 20 years after her death. She’s still alive. And then there’s the other extreme, myself and my brother sitting there going ‘Now what? What do we do?’ It was fine, but it would be good to know what somebody would have liked.” She laughs. “They’d probably say: I don’t want to die at all.”

“I just want people to celebrate my life,” says Victoria. “If I had to think about whether to be buried or cremated, that would freak me out. I say to myself: ‘You’re going to be dead. Leave that decision to other people’.”

Deirdre and Emer’s family have two family burial plots. All the siblings sat down one day to discuss burial arrangements so there were no misunderstandings. “We went out to lunch one day and discussed it and wrote it down and we all signed it. And we all have a copy of it with our will.” She looks around the table. “You probably think I’m nuts.”

“No, we don’t,” says Christina.

“I admire that you can make that decision,” says Victoria.

“There’s definitely a vulnerability that comes with old age,” says Deirdre. She turns to her sister: “How do you feel about getting older?”

“Don’t be passing the buck!” says Emer. “Everyone feels vulnerable. I don’t look too far forward. The people who are closest to you [need] some understanding of what you would like or want. I have three sons ... I idolise the ground they walk on. And they’re into sport but particularly GAA. I know what’s going on my grave is everything related to GAA.”

“Do you want a sliotar and a set of hurleys on your grave?” asks Dominic.

“I wouldn’t mind,” says Emer. “You can be quite content in a way, if you think you’ve had a good innings.”

“Frances, this is the longest I’ve seen you quiet,” says Dominic.

“I’m sitting here and I’m thinking: ‘I’m almost 75. And I think I’m a great bit of stuff’,” says Frances. “I wasn’t a great bit of stuff when I was only young. I was an old woman when I was young. I was kind of broken down, struggling with young family and with no real support. I’ve a better life now than I had back then. Thirty years my mother is dead. And I remember at some stage she said: ‘Sure they can’t let you stink Frances, they have to bury you’.”

Everyone laughs. They talk a little about caring for relatives. “Many years ago, I helped to look after my in-laws,” says Frances. “Everything is many years ago now. My mother-in-law had a stroke when she was only 68 ... I was extremely fond of my in-laws and I said I would help to look after them. I had two teenage children at that stage and I had a home of my own to run and I worked ... That caring business nearly killed the whole lot of us. Particularly the girls.”

“We shouldn’t still be talking about this in these times but there are different attitudes towards men and what you’re expected as a woman to do,” says Christina.

“One of the things I wanted my family to know was that I’d be willing, if needs be, to go into a nursing home,” says Deirdre. She has chosen two. Her favourite is run by Quakers.

Frances says her ex-husband is in a nursing home. Her daughter knew she simply couldn’t look after him with her job and her family. “I admired her for saying ‘I can’t do this’ ... My father was in a nursing home for about four years. And then my mother died nine months after he died. But I never had to mind them. My mother minded me until she died over on the street just over there ... She was 78 and that’s not far from where I am now. I want to go on rocking it as best I can. Guilt is heavy ... Don’t be carrying guilt. F**k it out. It’s a waste of time.”

“Put that on a T-shirt,” says Dominic.

They talk a bit more about making plans. “I brought [the literature] home under the guise of ‘Oh look, mam, look what I’m filling in’,” says Victoria. “And she said: ‘Yeah, that’s very interesting. Delighted for you’.”

“Why do you think people are resistant?” asks Dominic.

“They don’t want to think about dying,” says Deirdre.

They discuss some things they’d want people to take care of if they died. “Tidy my room!” says Abi.

“The internet browser!” says Victoria.

“My diary!” says Abi.

“Where the money’s hidden!” says Frances.

“I think it’s amazing that we’re here today and this is what we’re talking about,” say Deirdre. I haven’t had this discussion with anybody, really, except my two daughters the odd time ... If more people were doing it, it wouldn’t be so frightening maybe. We’d just take it as a natural part of life.”

“When I’m chatting to people who are Hindu and believe in reincarnation, it’s a totally different conversation,” says Dominic.

“I don’t want to be reincarnated, thanks,” says Victoria. “I don’t want to go on this merry-go-round again. I had enough the first time.”

“I’d love to come back as a ballroom dancer,” says Deirdre. “Go on Strictly.”

“Maybe as a flower or something,” says Victoria. “Nothing conscious. I’m done thinking. My head hurts!”

“We have a little project going on at the moment with a community garden,” says Dominic. “And what they’re trying to do is figure out how to explain the idea of dying to really small kids and what they’re doing is talking about composting and worms.”

Victoria shows us something on her phone. It’s an illustration of a body in a large vase from which a tree will grow. “I’m down for this. It’s called a ‘tree pod coffin’ ... It’s a graveyard of trees ... You’re put in a pod and from it a tree grows.”

Frances is freaked out by this. “I want to get out of here!” she says.

Christina starts laughing. “I don’t know why I’m laughing,” she says.

“I want to talk about knitting socks for cats instead,” says Frances.

Sorcha explains: “A few weeks ago, we ended up talking about knitting and there was a women sitting there knitting socks for a cat.”

Apparently there’s usually a bit more arts and crafts in the session. “Every week is a bit of an experiment,” Dominic explains.

“It’s very serious today,” says Frances. “What’s the topic for next week? Because I’m going to see Blood Brothers with Rebecca Storm at Bord Gáis. We won’t be talking about dying then, we’ll be singing. I went to see Bat Out of Hell down there. I knew every word.”

She looks thoughtful. “A standing ovation. I think that’s what I’ll have at my funeral.”

Victoria laughs. “I thought you were asking for one right now!”

“Like a Bat Out of Hell, I’ll be gone when the morning comes,” sings Frances.

Victoria leads them all in a breathing exercise where they rub a finger along each finger of the other hand while taking deep breaths in and out.

“That’s lovely,” says Christina.

Frances turns to me. “Have you got enough for your article? ... You’re very quiet there.”

I find myself telling them about friends of mine who died young. “Old age is not granted to everybody,” says Frances. “So every day you get is a blessing.”

Deirdre’s eyes light up. “Frances, that’s the most refreshing thing I’ve ever heard.” She writes it down. “I’m going to post it on my fridge. I’m going to carry it with me ... I never focused on that enough. It’s really consoling. I’m focused on the negative aspects.”

“That’s the grief over your sisters,” says Frances. “You’re still in the middle of it.”

Emer, who has been largely silent, says: “Isn’t it amazing how people who never knew each other can say something to help strangers learn? ... It’s very precious to be able to enjoy people’s company on a simple level.”

“You experience strength and hope around this table,” says Frances. “We’re all made up of great stories.”

“To be in a space where you can speak from the heart and listen to others and share experiences, I think it’s a very unusual thing to be able to do,” says Deirdre.

“You have to let me know when this is in the paper so I can buy the Times,” says Frances.

“Just for that one day,” says Christina, and these women, who have never met before, both laugh.

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