Death as a Celebration of Life
In the Cork blog, I relay meeting the two women, the death doolas and the third woman shortly after, who relayed the same message. Death is a celebration of life, to be embraced. And so not surprisingly, I found myself escorted by the spirits of my two deceased siblings to the Irish Wake museum. My sister was a reincarnated Viking, whether factually or expressing her DNA roots, I am clueless, but she started up with singing Valhalla and memories of Viking days as soon as she could talk. And she certainly behaved during her lifetime as one would expect a Viking maiden to. And my brother, well, he seems to have an interest in helping me assimilate death into life as his death was sudden and violent and took me by storm. I felt that I’d integrated it as just something that happens in a violent world, but maybe my coping mechanism was only to explain away the trauma and move on. Hard to know what’s best. But nonetheless, the tour of the Wake museum answered many of the questions I had concerning the ritual itself I’d had since first seeing the sign outside Carrick pointing to a Wake. I had heard of wailing women and long vigils at the side of the corpse, but had no personal experience. The death rituals I had participated in were creepy, antiseptic, involving bodies preserved in smelly embalming fluid and looking like they were out of monster movies. There was no wailing, only whispering. God knows why. Laughing was inappropriate. I like the practical jokes of the Irish. For example, slipping under the bed of the corpse and shaking it to freak out the drunken revealers sitting around. They do sit around as someone must remain with the body for a set period. I’ve forgotten how long now. I’m not great with details.
A few anecdotes stuck with me though. The expression “saved by the bell” refers to someone saved from being buried alive. People weren’t always certain back in the day if a person was dead or just in a deep coma, and stories abounded with people burying alive, which freaked a number of people. Accordingly, a method was devised wherein strings would be tied to the digits of the person who looked dead and a bell attached to these strings. If the alleged corpse twitched, while the person keeping vigil was asleep, then the bell would wake them and their compadre saved from being buried alive. If they weren’t dead drunk of course. I suppose you can only prepare for so many variables.
Who would have guessed that was the origin of one of our favorite colloquialisms, “saved by the bell?” I also liked that people would intentionally stop the clock in the room when someone died. When my brother was killed, my clock and the one in my parent’s home, 45 minutes way by car, both stopped. Mine was electric; theirs was a wind-up. This isn’t a factoid I’m likely to forget and was reawakened when I heard of this tradition.
This building housing the Irish Wake Museum in Waterford, Ireland was once a 15th century almshouse. Many spirits have passed through here! And rumor has it, still do.