Celtic Lamentations

Introduction

Celtic Lamentations; Healing for Twelve Months and a Day 

"Aine Minogue.... a balm for our times." BOSTON GLOBE 

As an artist, Aine Minogue has long explored Ireland's themes and mysteries, sharing its very essence in her vocal and instrumental melodies. Experience the power of these songs to let go of that which we've lost-- and to move toward the joys that lie ahead.

This collection offers a "companion in music"--eleven songs that carry the power of Celtic music to help us return to everyday life. Meant to be heard often, this inspired sequence includes Celtic keening--an improvisational ode to the women of yore who carried the grief for their entire communities, "Deus Meus"__ a fusion of Latin and Gaelic healing music, a moving interpretation of the classic "Carolan's Farewell to Music," the uplifting "Awakening," and other original compositions. 

Celtic Album of the Year 2005 (NAR) 

One of the Boston Globe's Top Ten Folk Albums for 2005. 

Liner Notes

Caoineadh na Dtrí Muire 4:38

This song is presented as a conversation between Mary and Jesus, primarily in question form. Jesus comforts Mary by saying that "we must all carry our own cross." The key idea is that children must meet their own destiny, and parents cannot protect or isolate them from their path.

After hearing many wonderful versions of this song, I chose a version by my dear friend Cathie Ryan, as performed on her album The Music of What Happens. 

Oran Mhor Mhic Leoid (The Great Song of Mac Leod) 3:53

This is a song I learned from the wonderful Scottish harp player Ingrid Henderson at the University of Limerick. This song was written during a particularly tough time in the history of the Mac Leod family of Scotland. It speaks to the idea of holding on in the midst of difficulties. 

Griogal Cridh 4:24

This Scottish lament, sung in Scots Gaelic, is a variation of the Romeo and Juliet theme. It is from the Blair Atholl region and dates from about 1571. The narrator is a young woman whose beloved, the chieftain of the MacGregor clan, has been brutally murdered by her own clan. It is sung as a lullaby, very much like those often sung by a mother to her child in Gaelic - deceptively calming. She's letting the child know (even though the child is too young to understand) of her grief and the fact that the child's father has been killed by his own mother's clan. In a larger view, the song is about the ways in which parents pass along their own losses to their children, in matters both large and small. 

Song of the Banshee 7:59

In Ireland the mythological figure of the Banshee was a harbinger of death. She often came close to the house of the dying person and sang an eerie melody. It is said that the dying person rarely heard the melody, though it served as a signal to others that death was near and a new phase of mourning was about to begin. The Banshee legend, first recorded in the 8th century, harkens back to a time when mourning was communal and grief a public affair. The Banshee has only recently disappeared from rural Irish life, as television and transportation changed the texture of the countryside and death increasingly became a more private affair, with hospitals and strangers substituted for the community of family and neighbors. 

Deus Meus 4:02

Created by anonymous authors in an Irish monastic setting, somewhere between the 8th and 12th centuries, this song is unusual in the way it mixes Gaelic and Latin. Traditionally, vernacular and church music were separate, but this song combines strands of both musical traditions. It is a song of praise, beseeching the light and love of God, but it is also a song full of tension, between the praise of God and the rage and grief of mourners. The way in which this song reflects the chasm between our highest possibilities and the losses we endure brings to mind a quote from Kahlil Gibran: 
".. you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy." 

Carolan's Farewell to Music 5:08

This is the last tune composed by Carolan, the famous 18th century blind harper considered Ireland's national composer. He wrote this piece knowing that he was going to die, and this song contains both a sense of mourning and deep passion. Emotionally, the tune seems to go through the five stages of mourning within itself. 

Carolan lived an extraordinary life, in spite or perhaps even because of the challenges caused by his blindness. Though he was not a great harper, he achieved great fame through the beauty of his compositions. His was a life of challenges and losses, channeled into creating beautiful music. 

"I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference." 
- Robert Frost 

Awakening 6:13

This song is loosely based on the Irish melody "Jail of Clonmel." It is meant to express the most powerful aspects of being alive, in spite of the losses and challenges we face. This embrace of the full range of life's gifts is expressed beautifully in the poem "When Death Comes," by Mary Oliver:

I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

A Íosa, B'ím Chroíse 5:24

This is an old Irish hymn, one of the few that have come down to us. 

Do Not Stand 4:43

These lyrics are based on a poem by Mary Fry, written in 1932. It speaks to the mourner's need to know that the loved one has moved on to a better place, and to the idea of the divine reflected in nature. In its repetitions and nature imagery, it calls to mind medieval Irish poetry written in monastic communities:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and sigh
I am not here.
Do not cry.

I am a thousand winds
that swiftly blow.
I am the diamond glint
on newly fallen snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the soft and gentle autumn rain.

When you wake from sleep
in the early morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft, starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and sigh
I am not here.
Do not cry.

Song of Keening 5:33

In old Ireland, the practice of keening provided a physical and emotional release for those who grieved. Sometimes, keening was a direct emotional response to loss, practiced by both men and women, though particularly by women who had lost young children - a common occurrence in the past, when child mortality rates were significantly higher. However, often a professional keener was hired by a family as a way of honoring the dead. These professional mourners were always women, and their keening was more stylized, taking the form of an improvisation based on particular structures and handed-down phrases. Though practiced in diverse cultures from Ireland to Greece, keening was generally frowned upon by church authorities, and treated with disdain by those who embraced the trappings of modernity. The practice now has virtually died out. This piece is improvised in the old style, using old structures and vocables. 

Kilcash 5:17

This is a tune written in memory of the Flight of the Earls, marking the last plantation of Ireland and also the final loss of its aristocracy and culture. Though written in response to a particular historical incident, this song can be seen as a reflection on all monumental and society-altering losses, up to the present day. 

The concept that music is the ultimate mourning tool is central to this song. It teaches us to grieve as a human family, and reminds us that life goes on, no matter how great our loss.

Album Credits

Credits

Eugene Friesen, Cello
Alasdair Halliday, background vocals on "Awakening" Baird Hersey, throat singing on "Awakening
Joanie Madden, Irish whistles, alto flute
Áine Minogue, Irish Harp and vocals
Scott Petito, acoustic guitar, bass, upright bass, keyboards, soundscapes and programming
Randy Roos, soundscapes on "A Íosa, B'ím Chroíse"
Leslie Ritter, background vocals
Mark Wessel, engineer for harp tracking on "A Íosa," "B'ím Chroíse"
Sam Zucchini, percussion

Co-produced by Áine Minogue and Scott Petito
Production Assistant: Beth Reineke
Executive Producer: Steven M. Gates

All music traditional, arranged by Á. Minogue (Little Miller Music (BMI)), except "Do Not Stand," music by Á. Minogue, (Little Miller Music (BMI)); and, "Awakening" Traditional, arr. by Á. Minogue (Little Miller Music (BMI)) and Scott Petito (Spotted Music ASCAP)

Engineered and mixed by Scott Petito at NRS Recording Studio, Catskill, New York

Mastered by Robert Hadley at the Mastering Lab, Los Angeles, CA
Liner Notes: Mitchell Clute

My sincere thanks to to all the wonderful musicians and singers, especially Scott for making this project so easy and enjoyable and for an amazing job. Personal thanks to dear friends for support and encouragement, and to all those who were kind enough to share their personal stories and knowledge with me. Brian Meyers, Steve Gates, Cathie Ryan, Rosie Caine, Karen Daly, Ellen Kushner, Brian O'Donovan, and Alice Abraham (WGBH Radio), Lee Regan, Dr. Barbara Hillers, Dr. Michael Moloney, Arlington Arts Council, Sheldon Mirowitz, Karen Dillon.

And to those who continue to share their personal stories - a fond thank you.

Thanks also to Alice Feinstein, Janette Kotichas, Beverly Yates, and all the wonderful folks at Sounds True.

Bibliography

Bibliography - Grief and Mourning

Much of this bibliography comes from grief.com

General Grief and Bereavement

Beyond Grief: A Guide to Recovering From the Death of a Loved One, by C. Staudacher 1987.

Grief:  Difficult Times-Simple Steps by Emily Lane Waszak/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

Grief:  The Mourning After:  Dealing With Adult Bereavement by Catherine M. Sanders/ Paperback/ Published 1998.

The Grief Recovery Handbook: A Step-by-Step Program for Moving Beyond Loss by J.W. James and F. Cherry 1989.

Grief's Courageous Journey: A Workbook, by S. Caplan and G. Lang 1995.

How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies by T.A. Rando 1988.

How to Survive the Loss of a Love: Fifty-Eight Things to Do When There Is Nothing to Be Done, by M. Colgrove, H.H. Bloomfield, and P. McWilliams 1977.

How We Grieve:  Relearning The World by Thomas Attig/ Paperback/ Published 1996.

Men & Grief by C. Staudacher (1992).

The Nature of Grief:  The Evolution & Psychology of Reactions to Loss by John Archer/ Paperback/ Published 1999.

On Bereavement:  The Culture of Grief (Facing Death) by Tony Walter/ Paperback/ Published 1999.

The Loss of a Child

After the Darkest Hour the Sun Will Shine Again:  A Parent's Guide to Coping With the Loss of a Child by Elizabeth Mehren/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

After the Death of a Child:  Living With Loss Through the Years by Ann K. Finkbeiner/ Paperback/ Published 1998.

The Bereaved Parent by Harriet Sarnoff Schiff/ Paperback/ Published 1978.

Gone But Not Lost:  Grieving the Death of a Child by David W. Wiersbe/ Paperback/ Published 1999.

How to Survive the Loss of a Child:  Filling the Emptiness & Rebuilding Your Life by Catherine M. Sander/ Paperback/ Published 1998.

Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wollerstorff

The Loss of a Parent

How to Survive the Loss of a Parent:  A Guide for Adults by Lois F. Akner and Catherine Whitney/ Paperback/ Published 1994.

Losing a Parent:  Passage to a New Way of Living by Alexandra Kennedy/ Paperback/ Published 1991.

Midlife Orphan:  Facing Life's Changes Now That Your Parents are Gone by Jane Brooks/ Paperback/ Published 1999.

When Parents Die:  A Guide for Adults by Edward Myers/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

When Your Parent Dies:  A Concise & Practical Source of Help & Advise for Adults Grieving the Death of a Parent by Cathleen Curry/ Paperback/ Published 1993.

The Loss of a Pet

Cold Noses at the Pearly Gates by Gary Kurz/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

Coping With Sorrow on the Loss of Your Pet by Moira K. Anderson/ Paperback/ Published 1996.

Goodbye, Friend:  Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet by Gary Kowalski/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

The Loss of a Pet:  New Revised & Expanded Edition by Wallace Sife/ Paperback? Published 1998.

Pet Loss:  A Spiritual Guide by Eleanor L Harris/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

The Loss of a Spouse

Being a Widow by Lynn Caine/ Paperback/ Published 1990.

Getting To The Other Side of Grief:  Overcoming the Loss of a Spouse by Susan J. Zonnebelt et. al./ Paperback/ Published 1999.

I'm Grieving as Fast as I Can:  How Young Widow & Widowers Can Cope & Heal by Linda Feinberg/ Paperback/ Published 1994.

When Your Spouse Dies:  A Concise & Practical Source of Help & Advise by Cathleen Curry/ Paperback/ Published 1990.

Widowed by Joyce Brothers/ Paperback/ Published 1992.

For Children & Teens

Bereaved Children & Teens:  A Support Guide for Parents & Professionals by Earl A. Grollman/ Paperback/ Published 1996

Heaven's Not a Crying Place:  Teaching Your Child About Funerals, Death, and the Life Beyond by Joey O'Conner/ Paperback/ Published 1997

The Kid's Book About Death & Dying by Eric Rofes/ Hardcover/ Published 1985.

35 Ways to Help a Grieving Child by the Dougy Center for Grieving Child/ Paperback/ Published 1999.

When a Friend Dies:  A Book for Teens About Grieving & Healing by Marilyn E. Gootman, et. al./ Paperback/ Published 1996.

Preparing Memorial and Funeral Services

A Labor of Love:  How to Write a Eulogy by Garry M. Schaeffer/ Paperback/ Published 1998.

Final Celebration:  A Guide for Personal & Family Funeral Planning by Kathleen Sublette and Martin Flagg/ Paperback/Published 1992.

In Memorium:  A Practical Guide to Planning a Memorial Service by Amanda Bennett, et. al./ Paperback? Published 1997.

Remembrances & Celebrations:  A Book of Eulogies, Elegies, Letters, and Epitaphs by Jill Werman Harris/ Hardcover/ Published 1999.

Suicide

Healing After the Suicide of a Loved One by Ann Smolin & John Guinan/ Paperback/ Published 1993.

Making Sense of Suicide:  An In-Depth Look at Why People Kill Themselves by David Lester/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

No Time To Say Goodbye by Carla Fine/ Paperback/ Published 1997.

The Power to Prevent Suicide:  A Guide for Teens Helping Teens by Richard E., PhD Nelson et. al/ Paperback/ Published 1994.

Suicide Survivor's Handbook:  A Guide to the Bereaved & Those Who Wish To Help by Trudy Carlson/ Paperback/ Published 1995.

Other Losses

Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and How to Live Through the Ending of Yours, by D.R. Kingma 1987.

The Gift of Grief: Healing the Pain of Everyday Losses, by J.J. Tanner 1976.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by H.S. Kushner 1981.

WEB SITES

http://www.npr.org/programs/death/readings/index.html - NPR essays and info on death

http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm - Jewish grief traditions

MOVIES

“Shadowlands” – starring Anthony Hopkins based on the book

“Blue” Miramax.com (French with Yellow English subtitles starring Juliette Binoche). Written and directed by Polish director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Stunning! Part of a Kieslowski's trilogy of films.(“Red” and “White”)

Lyrics

Please email us if you would like the lyrics for the Gaelic or Latin pieces. aine@minogue.com We have lyrics (usually in Gaelic) for many of the instrumental tracks also and are happy to share them.

Do Not Stand.... 

I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and sigh
I am not here.
Do not cry.

I am a thousand winds
that swiftly blow.
I am the diamond glint
on newly fallen snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the soft and gentle autumn rain.
When you wake from sleep
in the early morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft, starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and sigh
I am not here.
Do not cry.

Professional Reviews

Recognition for Celtic Lamentations

Top 10 for 2005 – Boston Globe (Dec.)
“Celtic Album of the Year 2005” (NAR)
Full page feature article – Boston Globe 12/23/05 (Dec.)
Top 10 on the New Age music radio charts for several months
Top 10 – Echoes – December 2005
Top 10 – Echoes – March 2006
Top 25 “Essential Echoes” Cd’s of 2005
Top 25 “staff choices – essential Echoes of 2005”
Full page feature article – Boston Globe 12/23/05 (Dec.)
New Age nominations – best album, best vocal album, best Celtic Album
Nominations: NAR Lifestyle Award 2006– best Celtic Album, Best Vocal album

"The World" (NPR) with Lisa Mullins (excerpt)

Loss is universal. So is grief. Aine (ON-ya) Minogue has found a way to deal with both. She turns to music and folklore. They're not new tools. Minogue's new album grew from her research into how cultures through the ages have used both folklore and music to help grieve. Aine Minogue's relative died in County Tipparary, Ireland, about five years ago. The funeral lasted 3 days. And the whole community took part. Here in the United States, where Minogue lives, she says funerals are private affairs. They offer fewer tools to deal with grief. The World's Lisa Mullins spoke with Minogue about her album "Celtic Lamentations: Healing for Twelve Months and a Day." Minogue says that ultimately, every loss is an invitation to be fully alive -- and often, tradition paves the way....

New Age Reporter

Reviewer: RJ Lannen

Sweet Celtic Sorrow
Celtic Lamentations, the newest release from Aine Minogue, the truest storyteller ever to journey from Eire’s emerald shore, is without a doubt her best album to date.

Aine Minogue, like much of the world was stunned by the tragedies of September 11, 2002 and searched for a way to express her sorrow and her hope that the world would someday find a way to lighten its hearts and return from its time of mourning. The focus of the album is a journey toward healing. After the tradition of mourning a year and a day, the music if you will is a kind of consolation.

It is obvious that a lot of work and love went into this album. Nothing this beautiful is easy to achieve without sacrifice and tears. Celtic Lamentations is a collection of poems, prayers and hymns that are as soothing as the quiet of snowfall and sadder than a midnight prayer for the dying. The recording’s most notable features are the strong use of Aine’s baby-sweet echoing voice along with multi-layered vocal tracks and lots of instrumentation, including a strong flute score. Joining Aine on the album is legendary reed player Joanie Madden on Irish whistles and flute, Scott Petito on guitar, Eugene Friesen on cello and Leslie Ritter on glorious background vocals.

In the sorrowful tune Song of the Banshee we turn our thoughts to the goddess Brigid and other fairy folk who gave us the art of keening, a mournful expression of grief that serves as a prayer or song to escort those on their way to the Otherworld. It is a very powerful elegy with haunting flute and a bewitching sadness. Minogue sings a breathless lament that will shake you to your very soul. It quickly became a favorite on the album. A companion track, Song of Keening is a chilling testimonial to the power of the bean sidhe, the fairy woman who, through the magic of song, helps ease the pain of losing a loved one.

In Carolan’s Farewell to Music you can hear the sweet spiraling duet of Aine’s crystal harp and Friesen’s weeping cello. Eventually they merge into one melodious blend that glides though your spirit. Carolan is Ireland’s harpist laureate whose legendary compositions are the basis for much of the Irish harp’s legacy.

In the song Awakening Aine Minogue’s melancholy music changes a burgeoning sense of despair into something more bearable. The song contains strong Mid-Eastern rhythms, haunting background vocals and perhaps a new ideology suggesting a journey toward more tolerance, more compassion and a new understanding of other cultures. It is a realistic concept that helps to coalesce the tone for the whole album. It is the best track on the recording.

A Iosa, B’im Chroise, a rare Irish hymn offers Minogue’s luscious harp score in a melody that grants a modicum of peace to the spirit. It is a flowing tune of intrinsic beauty that allows us to take a spiritual breather and perhaps catch up on our dream time once again. It is a tune of hope.

Warm, bright flute song and something akin to ancient chant come together in the prayer Deus Meus. This tune is an uncommon, but satisfying marriage of Gaelic and Latin lyrics. It is a song of praise versus an intonation of loss and the two worlds are at odds with each other. It certainly mirrors the confusion we experience today. Our faith however, remains unshakable.

Aine Minogue has six outstanding solo albums including Between the Worlds and The Twilight Realm, two of my personal favorites and numerous collaborations that have added to the beauty and modern chronicles of Celtic and World music. We owe a debt of thanks to Aine’s incredible effort to help ease our sadness and regain our sense of hope. Celtic Lamentations is the first step on an incredible journey.

Rating: Excellent – 5 starts (maximum no. of stars)

New Age Retailer

Reviewer: Mara Applebaum

Celtic Lamentations is a wise, important contribution to understanding the very natural yet often pathologized experience of grief and loss. Every traditional culture has its own rituals to acknowledge the dead and to help the living grieve their loss. On this album, Aine Minogue offers 11 songs she has selected with great care to accompany people who are walking this painful road.

Minogue's vocal style is very much like Enya's, and her harp adds a sense of light and optimism. The liner notes for Celtic Lamentations are moving and well worth several readings. Minogue draws from a variety of cultures to inform this written exploration of grief and loss, and she includes Elisabeth Kubler Ross' five stages of grief: denial, rage and anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Suggest this CD to customers who are struggling with issues of loss.

The Celebrity Cafe

Reviewer: Margo Strupeck

With a haunting and soothing voice, Aine Minogue’s "Celtic Lamentations" is perfect for that moment when you need to sit back, meditate and be calm. Aine celebrates the mythology and poetry of her Irish heritage through the ghostly chants and songs on this CD. Along with Aine herself, romantic instruments such as the flute and harp are present in each song. "Celtic Lamentations’" hypnotic sound draws you in and brings you back to that time you sat watching the sunset during the Indian summer, or perhaps even back to your times as a Hobbit in the Shire. Honestly, I have no idea what she is saying but it really doesn’t matter. Her CD enchants, relaxes, and brings you to a place that cannot be described. Just listen to it and you will understand.

Amazon.com

Reviewer: John Diliaberto

Aine Minogue is one of the few remaining exponents of an ethereal brand of Celtic music that was created by Clannad in the 1970s and reached its popular zenith with Enya and the Celtic Twilight collections. It's a sound that favors airs and hymns over reels and jigs and is as much about mood as tradition. A skilled harpist and singer of fragile, but emotive force, Aine Minogue--born and raised in County Tipperary--is steeped in the Gaelic tradition. It's not only lineage, however, but scholarship that brings her a deep understanding of the traditional music she performs.

On Celtic Lamentations, Minogue investigates the sound of loss and redemption, from the wailing of Irish keening to the yearning of a Scottish lament. Minogue's albums have always been full of atmosphere. Although she's playing traditional music, her choral arrangement on the gothic "Deus Meus" and inventive instrumentation on "Awakening" give the music an even more timeless appeal. Producer Scott Petito adds his guitars, bass, and keyboards to many tracks, and on the haunting "Awakening," Baird Hersey seems to emerge from the other side with his unearthly throat singing.

Minogue is accompanied on most tracks by Irish whistle player Joannie Madden from Cherish the Ladies. Her low whistle on "Griogal Cridh" calls to Minogue's forlorn soprano sighs with a comforting embrace. Minogue is often compared to Enya, but while she doesn't have Enya's remarkably pure pipes, she makes music that is more organic and flows into the serene with joyful ease, even when the subject is lamentations.

CD Universe

One of the most popular creators of post-Enya Celtic new age music, Aine Minogue delights her fans album after album by focusing on the more ethereal aspects of Irish and Scottish songs.

Here she trains her mellifluous soprano on downcast lullabies, laments, and hymns, creating a cathartic sadness that opens the heart. Minogue has made an album that is not only musically valid but useful as a tool for grieving.

Scott Petito electric keyboard, upright bass, bass guitar, programming, sound effects); Aine Minoguel (harp); Joanie Madden (alto flute, whistle); Sam Zucchini (percussion); Randy Roos (sound effects); Leslie Ritter, Alasdair Halliday (background vocals).

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Album Research

Read about research carried out for the production of this album:

- Album Background
- Album Poetry
- Album Traditions

Background

INTRODUCTION

In traditional cultures, the entire community joined in honoring the dead, and almost every culture created rituals to honor and acknowledge the power of death. These rituals allowed the bereaved to fully experience the depths of loss, and begin to heal.

Many factors have contributed to contemporary culture's discomfort with death. The process of dying occurs most ofen now in hopsitals, not in homes; thus, death has become a medical issue first and foremost, while the emotional and spiritual needs of both the dying person and the loved ones left behind are almost an afterthought. And in stripping away the "superstitions" of traditional grieving practices, we have lost many powerful tools for coping with our grief.

Elizaebth Kübler Ross, M.D., the noted comptemprary scholar of death and dying, identified five stages of grief that each person must move through in the return to wholeness. These Stages of Mourning, first published in 1969 in the seminal book On Death and Dying are mirrored in the art, stories, and rituals of cultures from around the world. They are:

Denial
Rage and anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Ultimately, these stage of mourning are not simply ways to cope with death but, more importantly, ways to fully embrace living, because they help us face mortaility and embrace life in a deeper way.

There is no way to rush grief, as the ancients understood. In the Jewish tradition, a key part of the mourning ritual was the recitation of the Kaddish for at least seven days and somtimes for an entire year. For the first seven days after a death, mourners practice Sitting Shiva - they don't work, wash, or shave, but simply sit with their grief. It was only on the anniversary of the death that the mourner began to re-enter everyday life. In certain West African traditions, a second funeral was held a year after a death, when people had time to mourn and celebrate life agian.

In cultures from Ireland to Greece, keening was a common practice. Women wailed over the body of the deceased, giving voice to grief that might otherwise be internalized and harm the mourner. These universal rituals of remembrance, with their emphasis on physically acting out the mourning process and publicly acknowledging the loss, allow mourners to experience grief and then move beyond it.

We have few cultural rituals of this nature in the contemporary world. However, those who have suffered a loss have created their own rituals, and have used tools such as drawing, journaling, writing, and singing to help themself come to terms with grief and eventually to re-enter daily life in a deep and engaged way, with a new outlook informed by the grieving process. We are not alone in our losses; may the laments recorded here be of comfort to you.

"In three words I can sum up everythingI've learned about life: it goes on."

--Robert Frost

Poetry

Beannacht (Blessings)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the curach* of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the water
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O'Donohue
Anum Chara (Soul Friend)

*A Currach is a traditional boat made from canvas stretched over wood

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Pueblo Blessing

Hold on to what is good
even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life
even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand
even when I have gone away from you

Old Irish Blessing of Peace

Traditions

Celtic Mourning Traditions

Keening
private Keening; public keening; keening among women; keening across Western Europe; reasons it died out
The Banshee who was she? was she a type of fairy?
Months Mine
Wakes
Funeral Games