3 funerals and a wedding: my big Irish family

Dia dhuit! Hi guys, allow me to share some thoughts on my big Irish family - you see, I met my partner back in 1998 and we've been married a long time. But as we live in London, I don't get to see much of his family apart from at special occasions such as at Christmas or when there are massive family celebrations. But usually, I get to see only his immediate family: his mother, his siblings and their partners and children. I rarely ever get to see his extended family which includes uncles, aunties and cousins - however, there were 3 funerals and a wedding this year. My sister in law's son got married and that was the kind of occasion which brought the extended family together - then my mother in law passed away and she had 3 funerals. So, allow me to explain, first there was the cremation which took place shortly after she died in Scotland, that's sort of like the first funeral. Then there was the Scottish funeral since she had lived quite a long time in Scotland to be close to her grandchildren there, then there was the funeral in Ireland (where we laid her ashes in the family cemetery) where she had retired and lived for most of the last 25 years. I was surprised we didn't have a funeral in England as well, as she had spent most of her working life in Birmingham. But yes, that's why we had 3 funerals for her in total and yes, she had quite a send off. So this year, I had managed to see a lot more of my extended Irish family then I ever did in the last 21 years - funny how weddings and funerals tend to bring families together; so here's a few thoughts about my big Irish family as I have only just returned from Ireland yesterday after the final funeral.

Rural Ireland was desperately poor and still is relatively poor.

The reason why a lot of Irish people left Ireland was because of poverty. It goes way beyond the potato famine (1845 to 1849) which prompted millions of Irish people to leave but it did start a precedent of Irish people leaving for greener pastures rather than face a grim life of poverty in Ireland. Many people may think of Ireland as a relatively prosperous country today and there is certainly a lot of wealth in the Dublin area and the other bigger cities, but there's so little work in the countryside for young people. Most well educated Irish people end up leaving the countryside to find work in the city - perhaps they go to Dublin or Belfast but many more go to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, London and once they leave, they keep going to America, Australia, New Zealand, continental Europe, South Africa, South America etc - hence there is a massive Irish diaspora all over the world. My late mother in law had a strong sense of her Irish identity and roots so despite being born and bred in England, she wanted to return home to Ireland and retire. She picked one of the poorest places in Ireland, in this place called County Leitrim which was extremely rural. Now she had some money but she wasn't crazy rich - her life savings were a result of having worked many years at a university in Birmingham which paid her a good salary. With that money, she bought a massive plot of land there and built a beautiful house, but it was always a pain to get there. I had to fly into Dublin, get the bus to to Carrick-on-Shannon the nearest town (that takes 2.5 to 3 hours depending on traffic) then you need to switch to a local bus or take a taxi for the last leg of the journey which was another 14 km until you get to her house which was in the middle of nowhere near a tiny village. Somehow, she truly felt at home there - if she wanted value for her money, she had to pick somewhere like that rather than Dublin.

Those who left Ireland and those who stayed behind

So for the funeral in Ireland, so many people showed up and I would divide them into two groups: the international Irish diaspora and the Irish who stayed behind. We had relatives fly in from America, Switzerland, Germany and the Philippines for the funerals and the wedding - if I may be blunt, there was definitely a massive divide between those who left and those who remained behind. My mother in law's brother moved to Switzerland for better work opportunities and married a Swiss lady, hence we have a group of cousins who are German speaking Swiss citizens and they all showed up for the funeral in Ireland. They were rich with extremely well paid jobs, then you have the ones who moved to the UK and certainly most of them had done pretty okay (but not as well as the Swiss lot). The Americans certainly seemed pretty rich too - after all, if they could simply book a flight to Ireland at the drop of a hat to attend a funeral, they can't be poor. There are a large number of Americans who have never left the country and some have to save for years just to go on a nice holiday - these Americans cousins were in Ireland for a funeral, that tells you that they are pretty comfortable financially. And then you have the Irish who left behind, how can I put this nicely without being too blunt? They are poor and perhaps that's because of the way the people gossip about each other when they get together at a family gathering, there are no secrets. I'm sure plenty of them would be talking about me, "oh who's that Asian guy there? And what is his connection with the family?" That kinda thing. There was no malice or homophobia but I will back to that issue a bit later.

I will tell you about the guy I will refer to as Mr Cnocan (that's 'hill' in Irish) - as he was the guy who lives up in that house up on the hill. He wasn't related to the family by blood but was a very close friend of the family as he was one of the first people who befriended my mother in law when she retired to that little village. That was a nice thing about the rural community in Ireland - most of the people were genuinely friendly and welcoming, especially to my mother-in-law and I could tell that she was a fact of village life there as so many people (such as the entire Cnocan family) showed up for her funeral. Through casual gossip, I was told that Mr Cnocan is in a lot of debt and would probably try to borrow money from us, that he was probably hoping that my mother in law had left him something in her will. Mr Cnocan's story was pretty typical of that part of rural Ireland - he got married really young, had loads of children without really having much of a successful career that generated enough income to support all those many children: this is a kind of children-induced poverty. Fortunately for him, in that part of rural Ireland, land is so ridiculously cheap: in fact there are only 4.7 million people in Ireland compared to 5.7 million in Singapore but Ireland is 120 times larger, that makes it a an extremely sparsely populated country. Therefore Mr Cnocan has a relatively large house for his big family but as his many children grew up, he really struggled to pay for their further education and was dependent pretty much on the government's help to educate his kids. And if you wanted to buy your children computers, nice clothes or shoes, or if you wanted to take your family on a nice holiday somewhere exotic and interesting, then no that's never going to happen with Mr Cnocan's family given that he was simply not earning enough to support such a big family adequately and so he is in a lot of debt.

I'm afraid that seems to be the recurring theme in a lot of the Irish families I encountered on this last trip - they are trapped in poverty by this decision to have so many children at a young age before they have established a means to earn enough money to raise their large families. There is of course encouraged by both their religion and their culture and of course, I think that's really toxic. So if Mr Cnocan wanted to get some further training in order to access better paid, more highly skilled work, he couldn't do it because he has to spend all the money he has on his children and he has little time or energy left for further education or training after taking care of all his kids. If I may be blunt, Mr Cnocan is unable to provide adequately for his family and they are so poor. But of course, you wouldn't think that the Cnocans were poor as they had a big house - far bigger than anything us Londoners can dream of and given the poor start in life their kids had, I wonder how many of them will try to escape to Dublin or further for a brighter future or if they will just do what their father did. And of course, the richer Swiss, British and American cousins who showed up at the funeral had far fewer children - most of them had either none or only one child and thus were able to be far more focused on their careers, thus making a lot more money. Now don't get me wrong, I think the number of children you want to have is a personal decision though if you want to have more children, you owe it to your children to be able to provide for them adequately rather than struggle to bring them up in poverty. That's just plain irresponsible - you're being a bad parent, letting down your children if you are unable to provide for them. I have actually met a man with ten children (accumulated through various failed marriages) but he is rather wealthy, so he is at least able to provide for all ten children unlike Mr Cnocan.

The Irish desire to connect with their roots

This is something I simply do not understand but found interesting anyway. I remembered an evening when one of the Swiss cousins took out his laptop and we spent over an hour looking at old photos dating back to the period of 1910 to 1950 - these were of the previous generation in the family who the last generation who lived in Ireland before moving to either the UK, Switzerland, Germany or America. I don't even have a single photo of my grandmother - though I am sure my sister would have some if I really wanted one. That's a shame really, it would be nice to have a photo of myself with my late grandmother but unlike my Irish family, I am not close to my own family nor do I actually have a strong desire to find out more about it. In fact, the only time I took a brief interest in my genealogy was after I took a DNA test in 2012 and found out that I am in fact mixed rather than pure Chinese, but I was more than happy simply have a question mark over part of my lineage rather than try to track down my ancestors. I like that element of mystery, the unknown. But these Swiss cousins definitely took a very strong interest in their Irish roots and they were telling us long stories about, "oh this man you see in the photo is my great-granduncle who was born in County Mayo in 1911, but his entire family moved to Cleveland, Ohio in America shortly after his birth, around 1912 or 1913." The amount of detail they had about all these ancestors was stunning, especially since I don't even know my grandfather's full name. Furthermore, when they talked to me, they asked me so many questions about my ancestors to which I could only say, "Es tut mir leid, ich habe keine Ahnung." (I am sorry, I have no idea.) I chose to speak to them in German instead of English given how un-Irish I felt, I may as well connect with the Swiss in a different way. I didn't know why they were interested in my ancestry rather than what I did for a living or even what my hobbies were - the latter would tell you far more about me than my ancestry.

But nobody in the family speaks the Irish language.

To be honest, I really found it very puzzling for them to want to connect this way to this Irish roots - for me the most obvious way to connect and feel truly Irish would be to learn the Irish language. Well, being me, that's the most obvious thing. I speak Welsh fluently but that is not mutually understandable with Irish, though I can pick up some words when reading Irish. I have tried learning a bit of Irish over the years given that I already speak one other Celtic language fluently, but I must be the only one in the extended family who spoke any Irish (if we only include those related either via blood or marriage). Oh the irony. My late mother in law lived in Ireland for 25 years and didn't learn Irish because she didn't need it with the locals. No, instead they speak English with a thick Irish accent - or in the case of the American cousins, they just speak American English and in the case of the Swiss, they speak German, French and English. Oh and one Swiss cousin even speaks Tamil because she has worked with Tamil speaking refugees from Sri Lanka for many years. But of course, these ancestors they were talking about were all English speaking - none of them spoke any Irish at all. Irish was already dying as a language by the end of the 19th century with English becoming the primary language of the people Ireland - today, only small fringe communities in the North and West Ireland still speak any Irish and despite efforts to reintroduce it in the schools, only about 1.5% of the population use it daily. Your average Irish person is far more likely to be able to speak a language like French, Spanish or German instead of their own Irish language. It is a difficult language to learn, but if you're that desperate to connect with your Irish heritage, surely an ability to understand Irish would make you feel far more Irish than a pile of old photographs of deceased relatives you have never ever met?

What kind of family are your in laws? 

I am not the only Asian in my extended Irish family - my sister in law's son recently got married to a beautiful lady who is mixed: half Filipino half Scottish, so there were plenty of Filipinos at the wedding. Some people actually thought I was Filipino as well at the wedding. They were not the kind of Filipinos who were poor. Hardly, they were crazy rich Filipinos who had either moved to the USA or had been educated in Australia and/or America. Thus within the international side of my Irish family, ie. those Irish who ancestors had left Ireland two or three generations ago, then yeah we're very cosmopolitan, multi-lingual and it was perfectly normal for them to live in another country halfway around the world for work and marry a spouse of a different nationality or culture. In fact, one of the American cousins had actually lived and worked in Singapore for many years, though admittedly I found him somewhat too American for my liking - he was the kind of American who would vote for Trump so politically, we didn't see eye to eye and his knowledge of Singaporean culture didn't help bridge that gap. But nonetheless, at least he was the kind of person I could at least talk to because he is internationally mobile with his career, quite unlike the people in Ireland like the Cnocan family who are pretty much stuck in County Leitrim, trapped by their poverty there. So I found it easy to connect to those richer, upper to middle class relatives who had professional jobs than the poorer, working class relatives/family friends in my extended Irish family. I can't imagine myself ever getting into a relationship with someone who wasn't at least my social equal in terms of my social status. So like me, my partner is rather rich and successful, even if some of his relatives in Ireland are clearly not.

Oh there was this lady at the funeral who was so keen to prove to me that she was not one of these poorer folks who are stuck in rural Ireland that she started telling me about the only time she been to London about ten years ago - I didn't quite know how to react. It was obvious that she wanted to connect with me: you're from London, I've been to London, let me tell you what I saw in London. But on the other hand, her attempt was so desperate and she failed so miserably I was being polite to her just because I felt sorry for her. After all, in my head I had already dismissed her as a poor country bumpkin stuck in rural Ireland and nothing she could have said or done would have changed my opinion - I was merely being polite to her. After all, I spent most of the day saying, "thank you so much for coming today" to most of the people there, most of whom I had never ever met before and I would never meet again. Mind you, County Leitrim isn't that far away from London but it may as well have been on another planet. I was only too aware that the funeral had brought together a really strange mix of people who would never otherwise be in the same room together, but if I may be frank, I was quite happy to ignore half of them who were poor and working class. As for the other half, I suppose they made the funeral and the difficult task we had there a bit easier. Their social interaction was a welcome distraction from trying to clear out my mother in law's massive house before putting it up for sale - nobody in the family wants to inherit that house in County Leitrim and hence if we can get a bit of money for it, that'll be nice. I suppose my mother in law had visions of her extended family using that big house as a holiday home, where the whole family would get together for the holidays but no - we are far more interested in traveling to much prettier parts of the world than ever returning to County Leitrim.

Was my mother-in-law at home in Ireland? 

Here's the weird thing about my mother-in-law: she was born in England, she was educated there and worked all her life in England. Her parents were born in England and it was her grandparents who were the last generation to have been born in Ireland. Yet she identified as Irish and married a man who was pretty much like her - ie. born and bred in England but of Irish blood and shared a common love for Ireland. Hence they always had this dream about finally retiring to Ireland after working all their lives in England. And yes she had friends in that village in County Leitrim, I remember this moment as we left the church to walk to the cemetery with the casket containing her ashes. This old lady shouted at us, "wait, please wait!" When she caught up with us, she hugged the casket and sobbed so uncontrollably, saying her last goodbye to my mother-in-law. It was pouring with rain so I held my umbrella over her, but goodness even I started crying too as well at that point. I suppose that kind of emotion can be infectious because we would cry when we watch a scene like that in a movie and for it to happen right in front of me, I couldn't help but cry as well even though I had no idea whom this old lady was. That poor old lady was so overcome with grief that she could barely stand up and one of her friends came to help her up. Now you'll like to think that based on that kind of scene during the funeral (which even made a cold, heartless beast like me cry), my mother-in-law was very much loved and at home in Ireland, right? Well, sort of, you're half right. Sure there were people who took good care of her and some of the neighbours had been incredibly kind to her, since she was living on her own (she outlived my father-in-law by 25 years) and her children were all in the UK.

But (and there's always a but), my sister in law's husband and I had a conversation as we were clearing out her shed - he had discovered all these receipts where my mother in law had been hideously overcharged for a lot of 'services' around the house. My mother in law had a big house on a massive plot that was covered by forest, most people would be content with a nice garden but my mother in law wanted a real forest because she wanted to do her part to combat climate change. So she had all kinds of tools in her shed to tame the forest and I didn't know what most of those tools were for, but my sister in law's husband was very good with such machinery and tools. He pointed out that there was a piece of equipment that was supposed to have been repaired, that my mother in law had paid 150 euros for it to be 'serviced' (according to the invoice we found) but it was still broken - presumably the repairman ripped her off. She had a shed full of tools a little old lady like her would have never used, yet someone must have sold all these things to her at great cost. My partner has a more laid back attitude like, "well it's her money, she can do what she wants, even if it means wasting it on silly things as long as it makes her happy" but my sister in law and her husband were both quite frustrated with the whole situation. My mother in law had a distinctly English accent - she didn't sound Irish at all like the locals even after living there for 25 years, a part of me did wonder if she was seen as the senile old lady from England with more money than sense, was that the reason why she was always ripped off and perhaps this warm sense of Irish community wasn't as rosy as she had imagined. Sure she had some very good friends there who would miss her dearly, but not everyone in the village welcomed her. To assume that everything was perfect would have been somewhat naive.

Okay, that incident which could have been racism or homophobia. Or both. 

During the funeral, the priest invited the congregation to come up to the front row to pass their condolences onto the grieving family. I was sitting there in the front row with my partner, my sister in law, my brother in law, my sister in law's son and his wife. All the adults shook my hand and said something cliche like, "I am sorry for your loss." And I replied, "thank you for coming today." It was all very standard and brief as there was a pretty long queue of people. But remember the Cnocan family I mentioned earlier? Well, one of their kids refused to shake my hand. I am not sure what led to that but I remember looking at them earlier as they arrived at the church, the kids were messing around in the churchyard - they clearly had no idea who my mother in law was but were dragged along to the funeral by their parents (who did know my mother in law). I did think, "what are those kids doing here? What's the point of dragging children like that to funerals when they don't even know who died? So when I realized that the next person in line to shake my hand was one of the Cnocan children, I think there was a part of me that hesitated. In my mind I thought, "oh what's the point, even if I shook his hand, he doesn't know or care why he is doing it." I think my face must have betrayed exactly what I was thinking and so at the last moment, the child chose to walk right past me without shaking my hand and moved onto the next person beside me, who was my sister-in-law's son. I suppose I didn't want to be the victim here and say, "oh these Irish children are racist." No, that would be the kind of shit my parents do - instead, I decided to go on the offensive and made it my decision not to shake the hands of the rest of the Cnocan children. Yucks, these kids were probably unwashed and covered in germs anyway, Mr Cnocan probably brought them along just for the free food at the reception since they were starving and desperately poor. So the next few kids filed past me, our eyes met but I didn't extend my hand and neither did they. No, I refused to be the passive victim of some kind of racist and/or homophobic discrimination.

So what was going on? Note that I knew exactly who they were as someone had already told me all about that family (and their financial troubles), such is the nature of gossip in a small Irish town. But I actually don't think the kids knew whom I was - after all, they were at the funeral for an old Irish lady, then they see this Asian guy (well, I'm actually mixed, but I digress) with the family, let's just say it was not what they would have expected, there would have been some element of surprise. Perhaps the child who didn't shake my hand was simply perplexed or confused rather than racist or homophobic, they just didn't know whom I was. Perhaps it was simply a question of very poor social skills - the kids panicked and didn't have the presence of mind to handle an unexpected situation. I remember a situation years ago at a gymnastics competition when I was helping out - the warm up was about to begin and I saw a mother with a child, who was still just sitting around and talking instead of getting ready. So I said to the mother, "hello, we're going to get started very soon, would you like to get your daughter ready for the warm up please? The girls' changing room is over there." The mother glared at me and said, "excuse me, that is my son." Oh she was quite annoyed with me and I did a double take. Okay, so she had a very effeminate looking, androgynous boy with rather long hair and it was an easy mistake to make - but I thought that making a big fuss about my mistake would not help the situation, so I simply said quite calmly, "Sorry my bad, but your son really needs to get changed and get ready now please - the boy's changing room is to your left." It was awkward but I dealt with it - someone with poorer social skills may have been tempted to just run away from the situation; so perhaps that's exactly what that Irish kid did, it wasn't a snub per se, it was more an act of running away.

So that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? If you're married, how are your in laws? Do you connect with your spouse's extended family? If you've married someone from a different country or culture, how much do you feel a part of your spouse's culture? Do you find your in laws weird or difficult, or do you totally love them as a second family? Are your in laws a part of your family life or are they quite distant? Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading!