-
So the gods sent a message to an old king.
-
"We will disguise you
-
so that you can enter the enemy camp,
-
find your son's killer
-
and then you can try and ransom
your dead son's body back off him."
-
When the king tells his queen,
-
she is terrified.
-
"Don't go!
-
manslaying Achilles will kill you too."
-
But then the old man,
-
King Priam of Troy,
-
says something strange and wonderful
-
but difficult for our generation
to fully comprehend.
-
"I don't care if the Greeks kill me,
-
just as long as I first have
the heart-comforting embrace
-
of my dead son in my arms."
-
"My dead son in my arms."
-
Doesn't the old man know
that the bodies of the dead
-
are worthless?
-
His quest pointless.
-
Who would risk their life for a corpse?
-
The story comes from Book 24
of "The Iliad,"
-
a foundation work of Western civilization
-
written by Homer in 700 BC
-
about a war that took place in 1300 BC.
-
The siege of Troy.
-
A bardic poem that was memorized,
-
recited and performed
for thousands of years.
-
You heard the sound of the Iliad
cascade through your ears
-
and in that retelling you rediscover
the ancient life and death wisdom
-
of our ancestors.
-
How to be brave in sorrow,
-
how to face your own death with courage,
-
how to teach your children how to die,
-
how to be a better mortal,
-
a better human.
-
(In Greek) "Hṑs hoí g’ amphíepon
táphon Héktoros hippodámoio."
-
The very last line in Ancient Greek
of "The Iliad" itself.
-
A wisdom that we have willfully
forgotten and lost
-
in our newish self-centered fear of death.
-
In contrast, we have subcontracted
our mortality out.
-
Modern death absurdly
has become a medical specialism.
-
Palliative care a foreign
country we never visit.
-
Or only at the end of our own lives.
-
The ultimate form of death denial.
-
Just as we have forbidden ourselves
not only the embrace,
-
but the very sight of our own dead.
-
Forbidden.
-
Shall we take a test?
-
Can you take the fingers
of your right hand?
-
Yeah, you, everyone,
-
and count off the number of corpses
that you have seen, touched,
-
kissed and embraced in your entire life?
-
One?
-
Or two?
-
Or none?
-
Will your corpse count make it
to the fingers of your left hand?
-
And how could that be,
-
in a world where everyone is mortal?
-
On our TV screens, we would pixel it out,
-
that final act of Homeric love,
-
the dead Hector in his father's arms,
-
on the grounds of taste
and public decency,
-
and the advertizing revenue.
-
But out existential flight
has not made us stronger, wiser,
-
more death-courageous,
-
just more fearful.
-
We're far too sad,
-
too frightened of our own death.
-
Our conception of death
has narrowed to an I-thing,
-
never an our-thing.
-
The terminally ill are often ashamed
of their sickening and hide from sight.
-
We are embarrassed
about what to say to a colleague
-
who's lost someone they love.
-
Embarrassed by our mortality.
-
Worried that if we say anything,
we will make them more sad.
-
And sad, of course, is bad.
-
The pleasures of sorrow,
-
grieving openly together,
-
are unrecognizable to us.
-
Though they are often cited in "The Iliad"
-
along with motherly advice
to have more sex
-
as a form of grief therapy.
-
Advice, which speaking
from personal experience,
-
can do a grieving soul a world of good.
-
(Laughter)
-
We are more afraid of dying
-
than those warriors on the plains of Troy.
-
More conquered by death.
-
And of course, you always
would be more sad and more afraid
-
if you believe that you will only
ever face death alone
-
and in terror.
-
A once in a death time experience.
-
A me-death, never a we-death.
-
But what about if you train for death
-
the same way that we all
train to drive a car?
-
Taking lessons off an instructor.
-
Going on little laps
around your local neighborhood,
-
sitting a whole series of tests,
-
which even if you failed,
you'd get to resit again.
-
A common social experience,
a rite of passage.
-
It doesn't sound hard, does it?
-
Now if you've never been to a Trojan wake
-
or an Irish version of the same thing,
-
and only seen the movie,
-
you're probably thinking
it's just another Irish piss-up.
-
A few drunks in some dank bar,
-
lamenting their dead uncle Johnny
who they buried that morning.
-
But you would be dead wrong.
-
Wakes are the oldest rites of humanity.
-
When I was seven,
-
my mother took me to meet my first corpse.
-
A wake on the island of our ancestors.
-
An old man with hairy nostrils
lying in a box,
-
who I instinctively knew wasn't sleeping.
-
Even then in her maternal care
-
she was teaching her boy
to overcome the fear of death,
-
just as her community
had overcome their fear together
-
for thousands of years.
-
My family have lived in the same village
-
on an island off the coast
of County Mayo in Ireland
-
for the last 250 years.
-
A real wake has got a real dead body.
-
A dead one of us.
-
Now they don't say much,
-
but you sure can learn a lot
in their company.
-
Every human being
who you have ever touched before,
-
in love or anger,
-
is a warm-blooded mammal.
-
But the dead are so cold
they could be carved from marble.
-
Later in life,
-
when I took my own dead brother Bernard
-
in my arms,
-
and kissed and embraced him,
-
I could not at first believe
-
that this stone-cold mannequin
had ever been human.
-
And here's another existential epiphany.
-
As you are sitting here listening to me,
-
your heart is pumping blood.
-
But when you cut that pump,
-
the pressure disappears,
-
the blood flows to the lower limbs,
-
your cheeks sag,
-
your face turns gray,
-
your bloodless fingers a yellow ivory.
-
And the great animating
kern of personality,
-
like the ignition on your car,
-
is just gone.
-
So what happens then, yeah?
-
What we shouldn't do
-
and what our ancestors didn't do,
-
is then say something stupid.
-
Like, "That's just a shell,
forget about it," you know?
-
The being that you loved in life
-
never existed outside that body
-
and if you loved that person in life,
-
how should you not revere
and respect their body in death?
-
The Romans, the Kelts, the Greeks
revered their dead.
-
Like a newborn child,
the dead were never to be left alone,
-
and always had someone to watch over them
-
until they were laid to rest.
-
Sad was good too.
-
There was no shame in sorrow
at the gates of Troy.
-
Even manslaying Achilles wept
-
until his breastplate was wet with tears,
-
and women cried and grieved
openly at funerals.
-
The bodies of the dead were of worth.
-
Together, our ancestors enacted
a whole raft of rituals
-
to bind up the wound of mortality,
-
comfort the afflicted,
-
bury their dead
-
and get on with the rest of their lives.
-
They gave of themselves freely.
-
And they had a great time too,
-
feasting, drinking,
and having sex at funerals.
-
Death -- and here is a really big idea --
-
was and is an every-other-day
sort of event.
-
Just as it is in Ireland today,
-
where people still go in great numbers
to wakes and funerals,
-
and an ordinary person might see dozens,
-
maybe hundreds of dead bodies
in the course of their lifetime.
-
Now funerals can be sad.
-
But there is nothing abstract
or sentimental about an Irish wake.
-
The old woman in the box,
-
that red-haired child
wrapped up in a shroud
-
is another dead human.
-
Another one of us.
-
Wrapped up, though,
-
in these corpse-[unclear] rituals
-
are a lot of profound protocols.
-
You see, at that wake --
-
You know, this is what death looks like.
-
This is what death is.
-
You can reach into the coffin and touch.
-
And those protocols
allow you to do things.
-
So for instance,
-
there is a licensing of grief.
-
Being angry, tearful, grieving, crying.
-
A recognition of irrevocable change
-
in the very public deadness
of the deceased.
-
A communal acknowledgment
of bereavement and loss.
-
An unflinching mortal solidarity.
-
A we-death, not a me-death.
-
Sharing the company of the dead
at wakes and funerals
-
was our foremothers'
mortality driving lessons.
-
They're "how to live and die" manual,
-
with a list of embedded
instructions, like,
-
how being mortal is the one thing in life
that you will never get to choose.
-
How thinking that you're immortal
is a foolish idea.
-
How the pleasures of sorrow,
-
open public grief
can heal up a wounded soul.
-
And how together we can conquer
our fear of death.
-
Sounds good, eh?
-
(Audience murmurs)
-
But I wonder is anyone thinking
-
it will never work in today's America.
-
I don't know who
my next door neighbors are,
-
families are scattered,
-
there's no communities left
to do these wake things with.
-
But again,
-
you would be dead wrong.
-
We all have the power as individuals
-
to reenact the wisdom of our ancestors.
-
Confronted in our mortality,
-
we often feel powerless,
-
death-struck.
-
But all you need to do
is rediscover yourself.
-
Be a bit more Irish, if you like.
-
(Laughter)
-
Maybe you just never recognized yourself
-
as part of the same mortal community.
-
But it is easy to reconnect
if you want to try.
-
Not because you're being altruistic,
-
but for purely selfish reasons.
-
Free dying lessons.
-
Who else did you expect
would teach you how to die
-
apart from another dying human?
-
All you have to do is overcome your fear,
-
using the tools that you already
have in your hands.
-
Like your phones.
-
So on the day that you hear
that someone has lost someone they love,
-
you don't wait
-
but you reach out then with that phone
-
and call them up and say,
"I'm sorry for your loss."
-
Or go visit the sick and dying
-
and try to be there
for the moment of death,
-
for the witness and the wonder.
-
Nothing else that you will ever do in life
-
will be more profound
or more life-affirming.
-
Or go to more funerals.
-
Even if you think you don't know
the dead person that well.
-
I can assure you,
as long as you are breathing,
-
you know them well enough.
-
Give of yourself freely.
-
Because even by these small steps,
-
you will be recognizing yourself
as part of the great mortal us.
-
Just as human,
-
just as vulnerable
-
as all the lives around you.
-
Death matters because life matters,
-
and the two are indivisible.
-
Don't worry if you feel awkward at first.
-
Practice, practice, practice,
-
until it's just like getting in that car
-
and going and you don't even
think about it.
-
Though your own death
will take you a whole lifetime
-
to get right.
-
So after I gave up
on going to foreign wars,
-
and the maturity of youth,
-
I turned a bardic poet.
-
And I wrote this praise song
in honor of my island mothers,
-
who for thousands of years never faltered
-
to cradle the dead to rest.
-
It's called "If I could sing."
-
If I could sing,
-
I would not sing
of the fallen city of Ilias
-
and glories gone
-
or Hector's blood
dried and stained in sand.
-
No.
-
I would sing of an island,
-
far out to the west,
-
rising sea plucked, spray lashed,
a citadel of stone,
-
walled deep in the blue ocean.
-
Another Troy, an Irish Troy.
-
Closer to the sinking sun.
-
Unconquered.
-
If you could hear this song,
-
you, too, would listen in rapture
-
to the [unclear]
-
keening women, crying out,
-
grieving, heart-struck
-
in eternal chorus at the wake,
-
where the last best hope
of humanity beats on.
-
That mortal being incarnate in flesh
-
shall not live, love or die alone.
-
And if I could sing,
-
if we could sing together,
-
my brothers and sisters,
-
surely then we should never stop
the singing of this song.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)