1 hr 7 min
Episode 6 - Waking the Dead The Pure Ballina Podcast
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- Arts
As part of our festival programme earlier in the week, we live-streamed this fascinating conversation between author Kevin Toolis and funeral director, David McGowan.
Kevin Toolis is a filmmaker and author of ‘My Father’s Wake’, and ‘Nine Rules to Conquer Death’, just newly released this week. For twenty years, he hunted death in famine, war and plague across the world before finding the answer to his quest on the island of his forebears.
In My Father’s Wake, he gives an intimate, eye-witness account of the death and wake of his father, and explores the wider history of the Irish Wake. With an uplifting, positive message at its heart, My Father’s Wake celebrates the spiritual depth of the Irish Wake and shows how we too can find a better way to deal with our mortality, by living and loving in the acceptance of death.
Easkey native David McGowan is a pioneering funeral director who has been in the funeral business for over 30 years. He operates funeral homes in Ballina and Sligo, and a state-of-the-art embalming facility in Collooney. David strives to ‘protect the living and maintain the dignity of the deceased’ during the Covid-19 crisis, and was recently the subject of a compelling documentary for RTE by produced by Gillian Marsh for RTÉ called ‘The Funeral Director’.
You can hear Gillian in conversation with Eibhlín ní Chonghaile in episode 3 of Pure Ballina, released earlier this week.
This conversation is a raw, thoughtful and sensitive examination of death and how we deal with it, and how our uniquely Irish customs influence our own reaction to death and dying.
As part of our festival programme earlier in the week, we live-streamed this fascinating conversation between author Kevin Toolis and funeral director, David McGowan.
Kevin Toolis is a filmmaker and author of ‘My Father’s Wake’, and ‘Nine Rules to Conquer Death’, just newly released this week. For twenty years, he hunted death in famine, war and plague across the world before finding the answer to his quest on the island of his forebears.
In My Father’s Wake, he gives an intimate, eye-witness account of the death and wake of his father, and explores the wider history of the Irish Wake. With an uplifting, positive message at its heart, My Father’s Wake celebrates the spiritual depth of the Irish Wake and shows how we too can find a better way to deal with our mortality, by living and loving in the acceptance of death.
Easkey native David McGowan is a pioneering funeral director who has been in the funeral business for over 30 years. He operates funeral homes in Ballina and Sligo, and a state-of-the-art embalming facility in Collooney. David strives to ‘protect the living and maintain the dignity of the deceased’ during the Covid-19 crisis, and was recently the subject of a compelling documentary for RTE by produced by Gillian Marsh for RTÉ called ‘The Funeral Director’.
You can hear Gillian in conversation with Eibhlín ní Chonghaile in episode 3 of Pure Ballina, released earlier this week.
This conversation is a raw, thoughtful and sensitive examination of death and how we deal with it, and how our uniquely Irish customs influence our own reaction to death and dying.
1 hr 7 min