My Father's Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die

by Kevin Toolis

An intimate, lyrical look at the ancient rite of the Irish wake--and the Irish way of overcoming our fear of death

Death is a whisper for most of us. Instinctively we feel we should dim the lights, pull the curtains, and speak softly. But on a remote island off the coast of Ireland's County Mayo, death has a louder voice.

Each day, along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio runs a daily roll call of the recently departed. The islanders go in great numbers, young and old alike, to be with their dead. They keep vigil with the corpse and the bereaved company through the long hours of the night. They dig the grave with their own hands and carry the coffin on their own shoulders. The islanders cherish the dead--and amid the sorrow, they celebrate life, too.

In My Father's Wake , acclaimed author and award-winning filmmaker Kevin Toolis unforgettably describes his own father's wake and explores the wider history and significance of this ancient and eternal Irish ritual. Perhaps we, too, can all find a better way to deal with our mortality -- by living and loving as the Irish do.

Genres: Nonfiction, Death, Memoir, Ireland, Irish Literature, Grief, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 27, 2018

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I added the audible version to my kindle purchase and soon abandoned the written word as the author's brogue rolled over me. I think this is a book meant to be heard aloud as that best harkened back to the traditions of the older world. A beautiful memoir of death and how we would all do well to return to older times where we acknowledged our dead, sat with them and each other. A meditation of a book.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

He likes HOMER

[Jaimee Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books poses an interesting question: if death happens every day, constantly, all around us, why do we so rarely witness it? Why do we treat the most inescapable thing as something taboo?
These questions drove this personal narrative, and I enjoyed the style in which it was done. That being said, I think a distilled very of this - perhaps a personal essay - would have packed a stronger punch. Though its nearly 300 pages move quickly, I felt that the author had exhausted the main point of his work long before the book ended.
Overall I did enjoy it though, and feel that a topic like this would turn off so many people — and that’s exactly why everyone should pick it up.

[John Mulholland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't give out many 5 star ratings. This is an excellent book on death. It is also well written. At 75 years of age I remember when all my grandparents,aunts and uncles died they were waked at home. Everyone came,there was food,visitations,remembrances atc. atc....I have to agree with Mr Toolis that we live in a society of Funeral home domination and the worst part of this is the expense.

Thanks to Mr. Toolis for writing this fine book!

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kevin Toolis has experienced a lot of deaths. As a child, he caught TB and was put in an adult ward of men with various lung diseases- cancer, TB, black lung, a veritable buffet of death. He grew up in rural Ireland, where traditional death customs linger on. His brother died as a very young man- after receiving a bone marrow transplant from the author. As a journalist, he witnessed death in war zones. He has been virtually steeped in death. But it wasn’t until he went home for his father’s death that it all came together for him.

As his father lay dying, the whole extended family, friends, and neighbors started showing up, to stay through his death, wake, and funeral. They spoke with Sonny before he died, they washed and dressed his body after, and they kissed him in his coffin. Endless tea and sandwiches were consumed. Everyone, from old folks to young children, participated. Death, in this village, was an everyday occurrence, not something to be hidden away. Deaths occurred at home, not in a hospital. The body was not whisked away to a mortuary. This, he says, is the way it should be. We all die; why should it be hidden away? Why can’t we once again normalize it, like weddings and birthdays and all those other landmarks of life?

Alternating the course of his father’s death, wake, and funeral with essays on death in other circumstances, it’s not a feel good book. It’s a thoughtful look at a sad subject- there are sections that brought tears to my eyes. But it’s a book on a subject that our society needs to think about these days. Four stars.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Toolis is a journalist and filmmaker from Dookinella, on an island off the coast of County Mayo. His father Sonny’s pancreatic cancer prompted him to return to the ancestral village and reflect on his own encounters with death. As a young man he had tuberculosis and stayed on a male chest ward with longtime smokers; despite a bone marrow donation, his older brother Bernard died from leukemia.

As a reporter during the Troubles and in Malawi and Gaza, Toolis often witnessed death, but at home in rural Ireland he saw a model for how it should be: accepted, and faced with the support of a whole community. People made a point of coming to see Sonny as he was dying. Keeping the body in the home and holding a wake are precious opportunities to be with the dead. Death is what’s coming for us all, so why not make its acquaintance? Toolis argues.

I’ve read so much around the topic that books like this don’t stand out anymore, and while I preferred the general talk of death to the family memoir bits, it also made very familiar points. At any rate, his description of his mother’s death is just how I want to go: “She quietly died of a heart attack with a cup of tea and a biscuit on a sunny May morning.”

[Meghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wholeheartedly agree with the premise of this book regarding societal treatment of death. However, the writing style did not work for me. Toolis is a good writer, don't get me wrong. It is just that I dislike lyrical, purple prose regarding scenic views and there is a significant amount of that here. I also thought the portions of the book covering his experiences as a journalist to be less interesting than sections focused on the Irish approach to death. I do think there are a great deal of people who would love this book and it takes a valuable look at an important topic. It was just done in a style that didn't work for me personally.

[Elizabeth7781 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate to give up on a book but my free time is limited. I cannot invest any further in this. I bought the audiobook so I could enjoy the author’s Irish accent. But his descriptions go on and on, and he reads so slowly that it was an exercise in patience for me to finish even the first CD. Disappointed not to have learned a single lesson I am certain Mr Toolis intended to impart. Will give this audiobook free to a friend who wants to give a listen. Just let me know.

[Luke Reynolds]

Feel guilty for dropping this, especially because it was my first title for a book club I'm in, but I'm not engaged with this at all. Toolis's writing is callous and unfocused.

[Rebecca McPhedran · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book about overcoming the fear of death. Kevin Toolis uses the wake of his father Sonny to examine the rite of passage that is death. The book is beautiful, and haunting and so personal. The Irish embrace death, and don't hide it away. Growing up on his island, there was a local radio station that broadcast the wakes of the most recently departed.

There is an important, and well respected custom of death within Ireland. "Sorry for your trouble" is uttered as a stand in for our Americanized "I'm sorry for your loss." Women keen and cry for the first night after the death, and then the men take over and sit with the body almost 48 hours after the death. They are keeping the body company while it is thought to depart this earthly plane.

The most important lesson Toolis wants readers to take away is the importance of carrying the weight of death and grief together as a community. To know that we will not live, love and die alone is the most important gift we can give one another.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kevin Toolis writes movingly and in great detail about his father's wake--an old-fashioned Irish wake in which the women prepare the body, the body is observed in the home, and then after two days, they proceed to the cemetery. He is strong in his belief that modern funerary practices separate the living from the dead, and in some ways, we lose the meaning of what it is to be alive. (I agree with him.) He goes astray when he describes his many experiences as a newspaper reporter witnessing suicide bombers in the Middle East, AIDS people dying in Africa, and babies dying of starvation in India. All of this is important--attention must be paid--but it dilutes the impact of the book--His Father's Wake.

[Nikita H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically written, very poetic & a huge part of Irish culture which I've not read like this before. And ironically ... It's not at all morbid, it's beautifully done.

[Elizabeth McInerney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most beautifully written and unflinchingly honest book about death and life that I have read. I highly recommend this for everyone. I only dropped it down to a 4 because the title and cover description are not entirely accurate. While the beginning and end are indeed about the author's father's wake, and while the reflections in the middle may have been influenced by the wake, the entire middle is absolutely about the author. This book should have been divided into 3 parts, so that the reader would understand that the author was going on a personal journey in the middle, and would return to discussing the Irish wake at the end. If it were clearly marked, one could skip the middle and get a complete story without reading about the author's other extensive, and at at times very graphic, experiences with death.

I am of Irish descent with ancestors who hail from the part of Ireland discussed in this book, so that part had personal appeal. But I feel that the Irish focus was overstated on the cover. I am guessing that anything quaint and Irish sells. This is not a quaint story, but it is an important one.

I listened to the audible version, which I highly recommend. It was a joy to spend time with the author's beautiful Irish accent, and to hear how he pronounced the many Irish personal and place names.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this one sitting around for a couple of years and decided that it was finally time to move it from my "to read" pile to my "read" pile. It serves a few different purposes, ranging as it does from Toolis's own encounters with death in his own life, his recounting of his father's death and wake, and a rumination on what he calls the Western Death Machine (making death clinical and impersonal, and putting more stigma on it than naturally exists). Parts of it reminded me of another book I read by Caitlyn Doughty, both in its description of funeral practices in other parts of the world and in its explanation of the flaws in the way the Western world handles death.

It brought tears in parts (which I was expecting) and left me wanting to observe an Irish wake.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A portrait of grief, loss and coping, My Father's Wake is well worth the read. Kevin Toolis takes readers on quite the journey, not only recounting the traditions of death and dying in the Irish culture, but his own personal experiences and life lessons. I appreciated his openness and his easy conversational style. Though many times I had to put the book aside for awhile to let the feelings move through me, I found myself drawn to complete the journey. I think My Father's wake would make a superb book discussion group selection, I certainly wanted to talk about what I'd read.

[Hallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all experience death at some point in our lives, and in this book Toolis wants us to confront that reality head on. This memoir shifts between stories of the author's many experiences with death and a direct confrontation of the reader about the realities of mortality. I didn't agree with all of the arguments, and I wished some of them had been laid out with more detail, but in general I appreciated the way that this book asks us to invite death into our lives before it forces its way in.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some very good points about honoring the dead, mourning together, and not hiding death away. I never questioned embalming or how the dead are taken away from their families right away, but the author pointed out that this has not always been the case and may not be in the families best interest. I always appreciate looking at something from a different perspective, and I agree that death and grieving would be easier if it wasn't often treated as taboo.

[Ed Grimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author elaborates on the importance of community and our essential role to embrace our mortality. As he wrote, to me human is to be mortal, to be mortal is to love, live, and die amidst the lives of everyone around us. To embrace our mortal lives. Because our life is our responsibility, we must bear the burden of mortality, then to strive in grace to carry that weight for ourselves and help others with their burden

[Bruna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dont usually review books, but this one actually changed me. Incredibly painful, yet so honest and real. Had to stop around the middle to digest a few things - letting death into your life is not an easy task, but the writer leads you on a path that makes it lighter and quite natural. Beautiful story about learning to live through death.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary book which has totally changed the way I think about the whole process. Kevin Toolis has a way with words which evokes all kinds of emotions. For most of the book he comes across as a bitter, angry man but he appears to resolve his issues and find peace at the end. May we all do the same.

[Callum O’Riordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading about death and mortality and learning that it's not something to hide from, but to be accepted and faced head-on. I learned something about myself from this book. It's scary and uncomfortable at times, but in the best way.

[Mikayla Imrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In society, there is a lot of work to be done to normalise dying and how it is best acknowledged. Attending my Irish grandmother’s wake as an Australian I experienced a true celebration of life and closure of her death through the wake. Toolis perfectly captures my feelings on this historic tradition and its many benefits in accepting death.

[Sam Antharose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice and depressing! Doesn’t pick up at all. But I also don’t like audio books and I think that negatively impacted my experience.

[Isobel Diskin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crying in Pret A Manger

[Judith Hannan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The topic of dying is coming out of the closet. Beginning with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ On Death and Dying, which cracked the door ajar, and followed by Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die, which let in more light, the door now seems to be flung wide open, at least in the literary world. The leader of the pack, for now, seems to be Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande. But there are others of similar ilk. Ann Newman’s The Good Death, Death’s Summer Coat by Brandy Schillace, and Kerry Egan’s On Living. The thesis of these and many other titles is that how and where we die has been too long out of our control, and that there is a more humane and even beautiful way to die.

It was under the influence of these books that I experienced the death of my father in hospice care. In an essay I wrote for Narratively*, I discovered a flaw in the premise of the good death. As wonderful as hospice care was, my hospice mask kept slipping, and I could see the violence behind the act of death.

So I have welcomed Kevin Toolis’ recent book, My Father’s Wake: How The Irish Teach us to Live, Love, and Die. This is not a book for the squeamish, although Toolis would argue that this is precisely who the book is for. Consider that the first two pages depict his father so close to death that his body was a “starved skeletal husk,” his seized mouth a “scabby parched red hole.” His “ribcage heaved,” his lungs gasped. “The death rattle had commenced.”

The setting is a small village on Achille Island off the Western coast of Ireland. Toolis’ father is far from alone. He is surrounded not only by family but local villagers who have come to keep the dying man company. They will all return upon his death for two days of waking (including nighttime). Children will play nearby the body exposed in his casket. People will touch the body. Kiss it. It has been washed and dressed by family. Three hundred mourners will come to the funeral, that is, the entire village will be present.

In the second chapter, Toolis will ask you to write down your estimated death date, assuming all the other tragedies (which he names at length throughout the book) don’t get you first. “Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world.” He calls death in the West the Western Death Machine.

This book is as much a memoir of a childhood spent between the village of Dookinella and council housing in London, as it is about death and dying. It is about family ties, traditions, and rituals. Because it takes place in Ireland, there are, of course, the requisite scenes of farming, deserted ruins and monasteries, and the gift of gab. Within this story, though, is the author’s search for some understanding of what death is, which leads to his career as a journalist covering almost every horrific act of terrorism, starvation, and poverty he can so that he can keep questioning death, as if death were a person who could give him an answer. Ultimately, it is the ancient ritual of the wake that calms Toolis’ unrest. The wake, he says, is the best armor for girding oneself for your own death. “To breathe is to die. Death was alive in all of us but was no stranger here. It was Sonny’s last lesson not just to his children but to all who cam to his wake, a reminder; this is how we die.”

I found Toolis’ eyes wide open approach to all forms of death, which, earlier on in his life, included the much more constrained and lonely death of his brother from cancer, far more helpful in allaying my own discomfort and fear of dying. In a scene that reminded me of all the people that surrounded me the day of my daughter’s surgery to remove a tumor caused by a cancer from which she survived, Toolis describes the visitors to the house as his father was dying. There was no obligation for the father to talk, and when he did there was no need to talk about dying if he didn’t want to. The saying goes that everyone dies alone. After reading My Father’s Wake I would say that you can only be dead alone. During the dying part, you can have a hand to hold.

Toolis’ writing is lyrical. The aim is not to prettify death, it is to underscore its ordinariness.
“Death is most often seen as tragic happenstance,” he says, “a usurping by a surprise enemy, a conspiracy against our limitless possibility; a singular meteor falling from heavens, not a common rain shower.”

The lessons Toolis learns are universal. I think back to my father, all the Jewish death rites that I passed up, so similar to the Irish. They felt unnatural to me, morbid even. Toolis’ book came a few years late for me. This time. There will be a next death and there will be my own, and I will be more certain of the map I choose to follow.

*http://narrative.ly/my-fathers-dying-...

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Toolis is a remarkable storyteller and this book expertly weaves the death of his Father Sonny throughout the book, from the first page to the last his death is present. It is through his death that you will learn and understand the Irish wake. A ritual that stretches back through time uniting family, friends, and community together in a way no event can. From the keening women, the washing of the body, the kissing and being with the dead mortal. Is so normal and natural to them, a way of life, it's in their DNA. It is so different from that here in the West, where it has become so clinical and the caring for the dead loved one's body after has been taken out of our hands. This is a reminder of what we are in danger of losing if we do not learn to understand and be with death and the dying. It is normal and natural. Kevin suggests you practice by going to as many Irish Wakes as you can. The book is beautifully written, there is a rhythm, a rising and falling of events between the chapters. Sometimes you feel the breakers crashing in from the Atlantic ocean as they pound the shores of Dookinella and then in others, you are "becalmed" as the waves roll gently in towards the shore. It is a wake-up call to the West but it is also a perfectly human story of love and lives.

[Ann Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As the saying goes, I wanted to love this book. The title and description are not accurate. I was hoping for more historical memoir about the old traditions of Irish living, dying and wakes.

The first chapter was interesting, about the author’s return to his family home on an island off the coast of Mayo because his father was dying. Much about the traditions. But the rest of the book was about the author’s brush with serious illness and the loss of his brother. So more about modern life and little reflection on what was lost in the previous process of illness and dying.

I didn’t finish, just didn’t interest me. I kept skipping ahead, got up to chapter 13 but no return to old Ireland. I imagine it does at some point, but the entire middle is not what I expected nor wanted. I gave it 2 stars because the writing is good but just inaccurate info on what this book is about.

I’m returning to audible.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Masterfully written. Toolis' style melds well with his topic. I only wished he spent even more time about Irish culture and traditions and less time on his career experiences and exceptional deaths.

[Fionnuala · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love a good book about death, and I enjoyed this well enough. However, I'm not the target audience here. I think that's probably clear the second I say I love a good book about death. This book is clearly for those people who are very uncomfortable about death, and who find themselves struggling to even acknowledge the reality of it, let alone talk about it. Toolis' criticisms of the Western attitude towards death are completely accurate, and it's something I've often wondered about myself. It's a vastly unhealthy denial that overall I think makes Western grief trickier and more traumatic; death is an almost shameful thing, hidden away and those touched by it seen almost as cursed -- like death is contagious. I fully support books like this, that try to demystify death and bring it back into the open. It's healthy to think about death, to talk about it, to prepare for it. It's good to plan how to die, and to put things in place so our loved ones have as little stress as possible and don't have to worry about what we'd like, how we wish to be sent off, etc.

Yet these things I already know, so the crux of Toolis' book kind of flew past me and seemed a little over-dramatic. I get the point he's trying to make, but it's clear he's deliberately trying to encourage this discomfort in his readers and I simply do not have it, so from that outside perspective it was a little bit awkward -- I was very much the choir member watching the preacher. I'm not going to hold it against him, though, because I am probably the last person he had in mind when he was writing this book: I myself am Irish, I'm a journalist who, like Toolis, has worked in war zones. I have been fascinated by death since I was a young child and I've spent a not insignificant portion of my life longing for its sweet embrace. My wife has an often life-threatening health condition and is almost inevitably facing serious potentially widow-making treatment for it. Death and I are buddies. We hang out a lot. I'm chill with it.

Yet I didn't come out of this book with nothing, and that's partly why I enjoyed it so much. Not only was it so fun seeing a glimpse of my own culture written for outsiders, but I also found it very validating and empowering. (On the subject of outsiders, I still remember explaining to some people the concept of having your granny's dead body just chilling there while everyone milled around chatting. They were horrified, but genuinely I regard the hours I spent alone with my nan's body to be some of the most fulfilling of my life. I couldn't imagine trying to grieve without that closure.) This book underscored my attitudes towards death and made me realise that I need to be as openly casual about it as I feel. I also feel more valid in my memento mori-style attitude towards motivation: on a daily basis, often multiple times a day, I remember that one day I am going to die and then it's all going to be over. Finished. Done. Perhaps some people find that scary or morbid or depressing, but for me it's the ultimate deadline, and as we all know, deadlines get things done. (Why do you think it's called a deadline?) I think it's healthy to remember this, and to live our lives in a way that we stand a chance at having a good death, free of surprise or shock or outrage or regret. Denial won't help us here, and I think some people need a helping hand with this fact. Books like this one are an excellent start.

[Cherie Paust · Rating 5 out of 5]

My partly Irish grandmother used to tell me, “You have to take time to bury the dead.” Celebrations of life like we have now were not part of her vernacular of mourning. Instead, first of kin wore their loss heavily. Thick eulogies sent them home to black wreaths that marked their door for an appropriate amount of time so callers knew of their sorrow and need for space.

When I picked up Kevin Toolis’ “My Father’s Wake,” with its cover caption “How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love and Die,” I anticipated insight into generations-old traditions around death and dying, and to arrive at the end of the book prepared to live a life worthy of an Irish Wake. I was not disappointed.

Kevin Toolis immediately brings you into his family’s preparation for the death of his father, and holds you at that vigil through the death of his brother, Bernard, which he describes as the moment he grew from a boy to a man. The experience of watching his father say goodbye to Bernard’s body with kisses and loving words was interrupted too quickly by the hospital, undertaker and others wanting to get on with the business of burying him. Why the hurry? Why are we peeling fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers and children from the dead bodies of their loved ones before they are done saying goodbye?

That question was under consideration throughout the book as the author continued to make the point, through his personal experience with death and dying as a loved one and as a reporter interviewing families whose sons were killed at war. As the “Western Death Machine” of modern-day mourning is continually brought in, I looked for an answer to why we have dampened the intimate process of saying goodbye. Unhurried traditions and rituals that once brought peace and closure to our ancestors has been replaced by a system that hardly allows us time to absorb what has happened let alone consider our own mortality.

Before the impact of death was diminished as businesslike and commonplace, Kevin Toolis returns the reader to the bedside of his dying father. Insight into the way his family said goodbye, and the way memories and people helped fill his skeletal figure, reminded the reader that there is nothing ordinary about death. There is also no denying it.

There are lessons to be learned from the people who go before us, not only on how to live, but also on how to die. Kevin Toolis encourages us to make time to say goodbye, and in the process, make note on the best way out. Because someday, our acceptance of our own death will help the people we leave behind.

I happened to read “My Father’s Wake” before a visit to Ireland, so held it with me throughout my trip. Kevin Toolis’ description of the beauty of his family’s home in Dookinella left me wondering how I could get there, and about the stories of the strangers in other parts of Ireland with whom I interacted. The “Reframing the Border” exhibit at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin was made more meaningful in the context of this book.

My Father’s Wake is a book I’ll read again…and again. It is beautifully written and provoking.