Tá Brón Orm - Sadness is upon me
On Grief and What It Takes to Remain Standing.
Seanie smoked a pipe. That’s what I remember most about him — not his face, not his voice, but the particular smell of him, warm and woody, the tobacco announcing his presence. He was my godfather, and he was fun in the unhurried way that certain adults are fun to children. Then he died, and someone brought me to see his body, and I stood at the casket and looked at him.
He was cold and blue.
I remember the observation more than the grief. The way the colour had gone out of him, the stillness that was nothing like sleep. I was sad, I knew I was sad, but I stood there and I looked, and I filed it away. I was about 14 years old, and I was doing something I would spend the rest of my life doing without knowing it had a name.
In Irish, you don’t say I am sad.
You say Tá brón orm. Sadness is upon me. The emotion arrives from outside, settles on you like weather, like a hand on your shoulder. You are not sad. Sadness has come to where you are. You keep a gap between the self and the feeling, preserve the self as separate, as the location of the emotion rather than the emotion itself.
The same pattern runs through the whole emotional register of this beautiful language. Tá fearg orm — anger is on me. Tá áthas orm — happiness is on me. The feelings visit. They do not define.
I don’t know if there’s a proven link between grammar and psychology. But I do believe that language affects thought, nudges it, reinforces orientations that were already there. That grammar and culture co-evolve, each shaping the other across centuries.
What I can say for sure is, standing at Seanie’s casket in the Mortuary Chapel in Naas Hospital, I was doing something the language had a structure for. I was letting the sadness be upon me without letting it be me. I was 14 years old and I was, without knowing it, thinking in Irish.
My parents had brought me to see Seanie. I was the oldest so they probably thought I was ready. I remember watching them, they knew what to do. Where to stand. What to say.
I don’t remember them crying. I had never, in my child life, seen either of my parents cry. Crying did happen in our house, we kids cried for all kinds of reasons, but Mam and Dad were always stoic.
Funerals came and went. Neighbours died. Relatives died. The adults gathered in kitchens and groups outside the door of the church. Cups of tea appeared, sandwiches were made, arrangements handled. My mother is the one I have always turned to. She is the one who knows what to do. She showed me that being practical was a useful way to deal with grief. That this was, in fact, what was required of you.
A few months ago, I was at the Giants Causeway hiking back up from the stones. I had been delaying but finally called a friend I had meant to call earlier. My breath was a little labored as the incline increased, my attention split between the physical effort of the hill and the emotional weight of the conversation. We work together, know each other well, the kind of friendship built on years on the road. His wife has cancer. Things don’t look good.
He told me about her treatment in the particular way that people tell you about terrible things when they are trying to manage the telling. Leading with the positive, the pain management going well, some semblance of normal life maintained, the doctors cautiously this or cautiously that. She had moved downstairs into the new extension he had finished recently. He was holding it at arm’s length. I recognised it immediately. I have done it myself.
And I said …. I don’t remember exactly what I said.
Something.
Something that acknowledged what he was going through, that expressed care, that tried to land in the right place.
But I felt, as I said it, the inadequacy of the words. The way they sat on the surface of what was actually happening.
His wife is dying. He knows it. I know it. And I was on the phone, reaching for something, and coming up with phrases. Warm but insufficient. Present but not quite there.
I felt, when I hung up, embarrassed. Not by anything I’d said. By the distance I couldn’t close.
Tá brón orm. Sadness is on me.
Keeping emotion at arm’s length is a way of surviving grief, of remaining functional, of standing at a casket when you are 14 years old and not being destroyed by what you’re looking at. It works.
I have moved through difficult things in my life with a steadiness I am genuinely grateful for.
We all develop a method to get through life. The question I find myself asking now is whether the same method that protects us can also keep something out.
I feel inadequate in moments of grief. Give me a problem and I will look for the solution. Give me a crisis and I will find the next thing that needs doing. But place me beside someone whose pain cannot be fixed, and I sometimes don’t know where to put my hands.
My parents modelled a coping mechanism that served me from childhood to adulthood. When someone I care about is drowning in their brón, I am not fluent in that language. I, who normally have an easy line of small talk, am struck dumb.
Seanie is cold and blue in my memory, and the tobacco smell is gone. My friend’s wife is dying, and I didn’t know what to say. My parents endured their sorrows privately, and I watched, and here I am.
Tá brón orm. The sadness is on me. It visits, and I observe it, and I remain standing. I am not sure, anymore, whether this is inheritance or identity. Whether it could have been otherwise. Whether I would want it to be.
I think now of my mother, dry-eyed at every graveside I can remember. I used to think that meant grief did not reach her. Now I wonder if she simply carries it differently.
And I wonder what it costs her. I have never asked.