Funerals offer chance to reflect on lives well lived

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It’s a strange thing to go to a funeral when you don’t really know the deceased – because, when you take the personal grief and loss out of the equation, it leaves you just to absorb the joy in enjoying someone’s life on their departure.

That’s not to make light of the sadness suffered by close friends and family members; I’ve been that soldier too and I know that there is little or no consolation in the fact that they left a positive impression on so many.

That won’t come until after you’ve had time to mourn.

But when you’re there because you know one of the family and you just want to offer them a little support in their sadness, you discover you’re finding out about the life and legacy of the deceased after the fact.

It’s like reading an obituary of someone you never met, because when a person is painted in such a positive light, you’re only regret is that you didn’t know them.

All funerals are sad, because someone that friends and family held dear is now gone. If you have faith, they’re gone to a better place – and if you don’t, then it’s just the end.

But either way, it means you won’t see that person again – and there are few more heartrending moments in life than lowering a loved one into the cold earth.

And yet when you take that awful heartbreak out of the equation because you didn’t know the person in the first place, it is what funerals are supposed to be – a celebration of life.

You hear family members and friends tell stories – and often funny stories – of the dead person’s life; you realise how loved and highly regarded they were by those who knew them best – and you think, that’s not a bad legacy after all.

They don’t have to be well-known because the best lives are often ordinary lives; someone who just did their job, reared their family, loved their grandchildren, enjoyed a pint or a bet and bothered nobody to any great extent in their corner of the world.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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