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BeAtlanta Book Club :: “My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die” by Kevin Toolis

by Adam Keen…
 
Each book recommended in our book club was either read or a long form interview with the author was heard. In this case I heard a 45 minute interview with the author Kevin Toolis on the ‘Tell Me Everything’ with John Fugelsang show on Sirius XM Insight.
 
Buy “My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die” by Kevin Toolis here.
 
Death is a difficult subject for most. I find it so. I’m sure many who read this do as well. That is why this interview about this book touched me enough to post about it. I listened to the interview which also led me to this article in the Guardian providing a more in depth review (I’ve included some quotes from that article below) that I recommend.
 
Kevin Toolis is a long time war and conflict zone correspondent so he is no stranger to death. That perhaps is why he was able to write and talk in such a harrowing and ruminative manner on the subject. The interview about the book with the author Kevin Toolis was a thoughtful and sober conversation about humanity and death. It touched on the history of humanity’s dealing with death and what the author thinks are some areas of improvement based on how we (folks in the U.S. especially) deal with it now – which for most of us can probably be filed under ‘not very well.’ The interview and book, as read in the title, also touches upon Toolis’ own father’s death and how he understood his father’s death through the prism of being Irish. He states that the Irish have a more relative way of dealing with death, a deeper understanding. He talked about how in dying, his father was giving his children one last life lesson – a lesson on how to die with dignity. It was very informative in an endearing way. I recommending seeking out the interview if you have a chance; and then reading the book of course.
 
A few items from the book that the interview touched upon:
 
A couple quotes that stood out from the interview: “The best way to cope with your mortality is to help people cope with theirs.
“The best way to cope with the burden of your mortality is to reach out and help others cope with the burden of theirs.”
 
In the book the author asks you to contemplate for a bit and write down what you think will be the year or age at which you die. The author thinks this is a useful thought exercise to help you think, talk about and cope with your mortality. Do you think it is? I think maybe. Its definitely a hard thought.
 
A quote from the book included in the Guardian article linked above: “Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world,” writes Kevin Toolis in My Father’s Wake. “We don’t want to see the sick, smell the decay of wizened flesh, feel the coldness of the corpse, or hear the cry of keening women. We don’t want to intrude on the dying because we don’t want to look at the mirror of our own death. Why have we lost our way with death?”
 
More from the Guardian article: “That question echoes through what is a long meditation on death, dying and our attitudes to mortality – our own and others’. As its perhaps extravagant title suggests, it is also a celebration of the traditional Irish way of mourning the dead – the three-day wake with open coffin, a constant stream of reverent visitors, and endless cups of tea and triangular sandwiches.”
“Toolis, an Irishman who has lived and worked in London for most of his adult life, contrasts this often transformative ritual with what he sees as the sense of collective denial that marks the Anglo-Saxon way of death. To the outsider, it does indeed often seem that the English regard death as another one of life’s myriad inconveniences, something to be dealt with as efficiently and with as little fuss as possible. Unless, of course it concerns a pet.”
 
Buy “My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die” by Kevin Toolis here.