The strange profession of those ‘Men in Black’

Country Living with Francis Farragher

As an old piece of black humour about undertakers goes: “it’ll always end in tears,” but over the years I’ve developed a sneaky admiration for the profession, as in contrast to the famous line from Yeats, about ‘casting a cold eye on life and death’, the ‘Men in Black’, tend to give a warmer glance at that taxing time when we shed our mortal coils.

Out the country, undertakers take on a status that leaves them in a strange kind of place, a conduit between this life and the next, the linking carriage on the train of mortality between the doctor and the priest, as family and friends bid farewell to a loved one.

Here and there though, I do have moments of concern as regards the unfailing interest of the two local undertakers in my health, as I’m occasionally beset with a bout of coughing after a slug from my pint. They do probably mean well, but deep down I know that some day, in the great coffin store hidden away from public view, there’s a box left out for me. (Hopefully not in both places!).

Irish writer, John McKenna, sums up rather delightfully the slightly unusual relationship that exists between undertaker and potential clients for the future, in this little verse:

“Each time, I pass the undertaker’s store,

I swear, I see him wink and gently smile.

Behind him, through a widely open door,

A vast array of coffins to beguile,

Like invitations issued year on year,

To parties that are bound to end in tears.”

On the purely business side of things, it’s a competitive market too, especially where two undertakers operate from the one village, with stiff rivalry between the parties as to who gets what. Traditionally, some families will give their custom to the one undertaker and this continues on through the generations.

Anyway, there we were in the local Mannion hostelry in Abbey, on a particularly benign July evening last week, with little else on a rather bland conversation agenda other than the weather and how the turf was ‘coming on’ over the summer, when the excitement levels rose and word broke that the new hearse had arrived outside the front door, and quite an impressive piece of mechanical engineering it was. It gleamed impressively under the glint of the dozing evening sun – a softly purring Merc’, all of 18 feet long with automatic transmission and a glass chamber that any body would be proud to be transported in.

The same night, big John Deeres and Massey Fergusons thudded by on the N63, their day’s work still not complete as fields of late summer grass remained to be felled. Those big machines though drew little attention from the customers who had their made way outside Mannion’s Bar and were – in the words of John McKenna – ‘beguiled’ by the arrival of the impressive bus of the last journeys.

Undertaking is, at the end of the day, a business, but surely it’s not one for the faint hearted and like the way of life of the publican, there’s nearly a necessity to be brought up with it from an early age. Sensitivity and professionalism are probably the two key words of the trade but the close contact of undertakers with families at times of acute grief, has meant that the profession holds a place close to the heart of many families.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.