The Wake

I'd never been to a proper wake before, but I went to my brother's a couple of weeks ago. And it was a fine affair, strangely beautiful; very alcoholic, of course, but also very cathartic.

We shouldn't have been having it just yet, of course. I'd always feared he'd check out a bit early: he didn't live healthily, didn't deal with stress well; and longevity doesn't seem to feature in my family's genes (bad history of heart attacks on my father's side, strokes on my mother's). But I thought he'd make it out of his forties. I proved wrong on that: Fate is a bastard.

I admit to a little trepidation beforehand. I was looking forward to it as a good chance to unwind after the emotional overload of the funeral, and the two weeks preceding it; but also I was fearful that it might prove to be a dangerous, self-destructive session - I was worried that I just wouldn't be able to keep up with the bro's old drinking cronies. They're a pretty hardcore bunch; and I really haven't done that drinking heavily for 6 or 8 hours on end thing for quite some time. I am become 'a lightweight'!

And I was concerned too that I might feel left out, out of place. They'd all known him for donkey's years, probably knew him far better than I did; they scarcely knew me at all. My brother had lived in the same small town - or at least in the vicinity - for his whole life, had been hanging out in the same bars with the same circles of people for decades. His oldest friend there (a friend of my late father's also) had been drinking with him, I learned, for over 30 years.

I needn't have worried. Though I've only been back a handful of times in the last half dozen years, I found I did know most of them by sight at least, was on nodding terms with several, knew a few of them slightly better than that. And they seemed to find me a welcome reminder of their missing friend, a useful catalyst for letting their grief out. During the course of the evening I went around most of his closest friends, having a drink and a chat with them one by one, listening to their memories of him, and sharing a little blub.

Yes, there were a lot of tears that night. The rest of the family had all gone home early in the evening (things got under way straight after the funeral at 4pm; in fact, several people who had not been able to travel to the crematorium 20 miles distant had been hard at it since noon); and the other ladies present, for various reasons (I would like to think it was tact), had all slipped away by 9pm or so, making it possible for all those hard-bitten macho men to let their defences down now and again.... and cry like babies for a few moments. The brother's oldest friend was the last to crack; but by 11.30pm - in the 'lock-in' zone - very, very pissed, he began weeping freely and muttering over and over again, with mantra-like simplicity, "I bloody loved that man, you know. I really loved him."

The music helped too. I learned that my brother, relatively late in life, had, like me, unearthed his inner 'Plastic Paddy' and developed a fondness for Celtic folk music. A rather decent local band came along to sing a selection of the old Irish classics, and we all joined in a circle to sing along with a couple of his particular favourites, 'Will ye go, laddie, go' and 'The Fields of Athenry'. There's a deep strain of melancholy in Irish music, even in the prettier, more upbeat songs - ideal for breaking down the emotional dams we build around our hearts.

This all took place in The Nag's Head - a pub I commemorated in one of my earliest posts on here. It seems that the event marked the end of an era. The landlady who had played host to my brother over the past 5 or 6 years, and who catered this farewell party for him so generously, was about to quit. Already the hardcore drinking fraternity had been dividing their loyalties, spending much of their time at other pubs in town. And a good few of my brother's oldest mates now seem to have moved a little way out of town, and to have - belatedly - embraced some seriousness and domesticity in their lives, cut back on the almost nightly drinking that used to prevail a few years ago. I went back to the place a couple of times a week or two later, and it was nearly deserted, the staff different, the atmosphere quite changed. I wonder if I'll ever go back there again.