What the Irish wake teaches us about living and dying

For centuries, the Irish funeral wake has served as a time for people to grieve a life lost and celebrate a life lived, together. In this profound and lyrical talk, poet Kevin Toolis laments the fear and denial of death that characterizes increasingly individualistic societies. He reasons that living life fully means embracing our shared mortality -- and offers simple ways to reconnect with your community, the people you love and even yourself.

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!

Man-slaying 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 our 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 man-slaying 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 encountering 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 mná caointe

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)