My dad is still dead; but life, ah, life goes on

A personal update

After my father died at the end of February, I took a break from posting on Substack. Not a break from thinking, or researching, or writing; just from posting. I went a little inward for a while, and didn’t feel like doing things in public.

What did I do? Spent time with my family; my wife, my son, my daughter; my mother, my brother. At my father’s funeral in Ireland, I met my cousins, my aunts, my father’s many, many friends.

The crowd in the church at dad’s funeral

It was a deeply consoling funeral; my father had left a detailed plan (down to precisely when and where each friend should sing each song), and we were able to carry out his every instruction. My brother Desmond did all the hard work to make that happen, coming down from Cavan for a full month to help our mother get through the whole thing and out the other side; I am intensely grateful to him. At the funeral, Desmond read out the last line of the funeral instructions, written in our father’s characteristically exuberant handwriting, and addressed to everyone in the packed church: “And enjoy it!”

We did, we did. There was as much laughing as crying.

The original lineup of my old band, Toasted Heretic, accidentally back together at the funeral. (My dad – the legendary Sixth Heretic, who appears in a number of Toasted Heretic videos, looking mildly disapproving – is the one in the coffin)… Neil Farrell (drums, sequencer, sampler), Declan Collins (guitars), Breffni O’Rourke (rhythm guitar), dad (vibes), me (singing), Aengus McMahon (bass guitar, and later rhythm, when Breffni left and Barry Wallace joined on bass.) Might be the first time since our final gig that we were all in the same room together. We’re laughing in the photo, reminiscing about the time the band found itself stranded in Dublin, the morning after a gig there; the van we’d hired to drive us to our gig in Cork that evening hadn’t turned up. Eventually, around lunchtime, the van driver (and owner) texted us to say he’d just sold the van... We tried to hire another; none available at such short notice. So yeah, I rang my dad. He called me a big eejit, drove up from Tipperary with a trailer, we piled all our equipment in the trailer, piled the band into the car, and he drove us to Cork in time for the gig, telling highly entertaining fire-fighting stories all the way… What a guy!

And I made some effort, over the past couple of months, to meet up with, to fix my frayed connections with, my own old friends. Several of us have lost parents over the past couple of years (mostly fathers, because fathers tend to go first). There was a lot to talk about. It was good.

I also did some things I needed to do. I put more effort into being a husband, and a father (and a brother, and a son). I applied for funding for The Egg and the Rock, to ensure I can keep doing this for the next year while still keeping my family in the luxury to which they have grown accustomed (ie, food, regularly). I worked on the introduction to the book, and the opening chapters, and the overall book proposal. I read a lot of scientific papers, and chapters, and even a few actual all-the-way-through-to-the-end books. I talked to some excellent scientists. Oh, and I had a children’s book come out, two weeks after dad died, which I did not promote as hard as I should have because I was sad.

Anyway, I am in good form now, and ready to post in public again. If you knew my dad, or would simply like to know more about him, there’s a full eulogy here. (I got them to remove the paywall, behind which it was originally trapped.) I'd like you to know his story, because I think it is a hopeful one, a useful one, an uplifting one; and because I love him, and am proud of him, and want more of the people with whom he shared the earth to know that he lived. Besides which, he was an extraordinary man; he led a remarkable life, which reflected (and was distorted by) many of the important events and trends of the first century of Irish independence. We need to understand our complicated and often painful past, if we are not to repeat its mistakes. So, if you have a few minutes, here it is.

Thanks for your patience while I was gone, and your kind words, both here in the comments and elsewhere, through other channels.

We’ll talk soon. Look after each other.