Stakeholder

On my 40th birthday, a friend gave me a book entitled 101 Things to do before you die. I was not quite sure how to receive the gift. I was convinced that 40 was a starting point and not a stepping-off one. (For the record, five years on I remain so convinced.) I was pleased to discover that among the suggestions were about 30 things I’ve already managed to cram in, such as, go coast to coast across America, gatecrash a party, go to the dogs and live in a place I love. 

Bashfully, I can also admit to having covered some of the less salubrious suggestions in the book such as get a tattoo, get arrested and get barred from a pub.

Writing this piece I may as well strike 

number 99 off too – confess. Interestingly in the foreword to the book it helpfully suggests some of things you might need before cramming in the 101 activities, such as a copy of the Kama Sutra, a world map, a good imagination, a video 

camera and access to a confessional booth (or a national newspaper). More importantly, it suggests you will need some friends and some strangers. 

During the latter part of last week my family had more than enough need of some friends and more than a few strangers. Despite the loss, bereavement, particularly within our 

society plays a hugely important social and spiritual role. At one level it reminds of us of our temporal limitations but at another, it reminds us we are not alone. 

In Patrick Kavanagh’s The Green Fool he wrote that: “Oul’ Quinn was the only one who thought he should never die. He was over 80 years at the time. He said that only wastrels die and people who couldn’t eat fat bacon”. 

While not exactly a truism for vegan loving, pilates practising, vitamin popping, carbon free, humourless health fanatics, Oul’ Quinn obviously valued the benefits of an industrious life with all its fringe benefits. No rindless bacon or quorn sausages for him. 

Despite having empathy for Oul’ Quinn’s outlook on life the reality is that death provides a razor-like dose of reality to our lives. 

The late Andre Frossard, Le Figaro journalist and atheist-turned-Catholic wrote a book entitled God exists, I have met him. In it he wrote that following his very personal conversion, which occurred after visiting a Church looking for a friend, he became overwhelmed by his new blessings and that: “I anticipated that the rest of my life was going to be a sort of unending Christmas. Experienced people to whom I spoke warned me that this privileged state was not going to last forever; that the laws of spiritual growth were the same for everyone, that, after the joy of the green pastures of experienced grace, I should be faced by the rock, the climb. They were right once the Christmas season had passed I had to face the stone and the tar and the things of a world, which was slowly and cunningly returning to its old consistency. I had lived a Good Friday and a Holy Saturday, lived them in a silence only pierced by a cry of anguish.”

After many Christmases and the enjoyment of many green pastures, like many others the happiness of our family circle was pierced by the cry of anguish following the death of a mother, sister, aunt and friend. The response to our anguish was met through the support of both friend and stranger as they attended the peculiarly Irish vigil of ‘the wake’. For three days, people like us, many of whom have experienced bereavement but some who like Froussard were still “overwhelmed by their blessings” queued to shake hands, to console, to laugh, to reminiscence and to show solidarity. 

Thatcher was wrong, there is such a thing as society because amid the gloominess of the economic outlook and indeed our all too obvious grief in a sudden and unexpected death, the 

character of Irish people and their sense of community remains an amazing bulwark and comfort against the backdrop of increasing secularisation, commercialisation and the drive towards individualism. 

Such community acknowledgement within and by Irish society means a life, no matter how humble or ordinary, can be recognised and marked. 

Of the 101 things to do before dying I won’t climb Everest, milk a cow or score a hole in one, but I can cross off number 87 – conquer a fear – because of faith, family and friends.