07: Death Notices: How Do You Mourn A Restaurant?

The farewell tour has been cancelled indefinitely... so, now what?

“The death has occurred…” the radio announcer declares, and three or four days later everything has settled into silence and relative normality. 

Ireland has very particular customs when it comes to death. We’re quicker than our neighbours in the UK. Three days, a life lived, mourned, buried, toasted, and bid a fond farewell. It doesn’t run over a number of weeks. A snappy funeral follows lying in state. Then, flowers lovingly placed at a grave, life gets back on track. And time - having been suspended - catches up to the clock again, and ticks on, and ticks on because it waits for no one.

Often, it seems more sing-song, session and endless storytelling rather than solemn sole contemplation, tears or reserved reflection. In Ireland, it’s a celebration of the life. Sure, there’s mourning; a life celebrated at its definitive end and ‘what could have been’ lamented. Of course the loss is viscerally felt and cuts deep, but the Irish are adept with changing the approach, maybe even the mindset, when it comes to death and being celebratory in their lookback-on-the-life-of formalities. 

The ‘Death Notices’ are arguably one of the most listened to slots on any regional or local radio station. Read out in near robotic recollection; a roll call of the recently deceased. Those ‘round the county listening in for a neighbour, an old school friend, a parish priest, quantifying that notion that us Irish love a bit of gossip, and revel in a bit of morbid misery ó am go h-am (from time to time). We often wonder: is the closing of a restaurant “a death?” Or is it just part of the process, part of the cycle, another page of the book? Inevitable; a mortal coil shaken off; and a confirmation that ‘none of us are going to get out of life alive’? How do you mourn the loss of a restaurant?