Marian Finucane’s weekend radio show is something I try not to miss. Yesterday she interviewed Melanie Verwoerd, partner of the late Gerry Ryan, who spoke movingly about their relationship and his death. It reminded me for many reasons, not least because of her honesty and the palpable rawness of how she is feeling, of a recent interview that Stephen Gately’s husband gave on The Late Late Show. Both interviews included details of finding dead loved ones, of the moment of realising that they had passed away. This is extremely private information, and Finucane and Ryan Tubridy are certainly not at fault for asking. It’s clear that both presenters were aware of the sensitivities, perhaps even been reluctant to ask, but knew that we live in times when the public demand they ask scrupulous details about the most private acts. There’s an almost gruesome curiosity here, but should these moments be up for very public discussion? Maybe, but I don’t need to know about which room someone breathed their last breath in or how they were curled up vulnerably on a couch. It’s disrespectful to the dead who aren’t here to sanction talk of their last minutes, and nothing but harrowing for their loved ones to recount.
Asking and answering questions about death publicly
June 27, 2010 by Sinéad Gleeson
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Well said. There’s an increasing appetite in the media for all the gory details of someone’s death. Remember the pictures of Michael Jackson’s death-bed on the front pages of some of the tabloids last year? Nasty stuff altogether, people who would buy a paper on the strength of that need to take a long, hard look at themselves.
I totally agree. I think Gerry would have hated the scene of his death recountered, if only to protect his children from the sad image of him dying alone.
Michelle
I don’ know – my mum died six weeks ago of cancer, and I find i really comforting to repeat the details of her death and what we experienced over those few days and weeks either side. I’ve written about it too, and I will probably write more. When people ask me how I am or how those few weeks were, I am really grateful, because I need to talk about it to remember that it happened and how it was.
I don’t expect that’s true for everyone, of course, but I wouldn’t assume that talking about the details of finding someone dead was harrowing. It can be incredibly cathartic and helpful.
Mary – I kind of agree and kind of don’t. I think there’s a difference between the cathartic value of speaking and writing about someone’s death for those close to you, and a journalist asking about it so strangers can indulge their interest. The first – definitely, as much as the bereaved person is comfortable with. The second? Well, I suppose if the bereaved person is comfortable with it, too – but I think the need to talk about the person and their death that you have in the first few weeks and months means you might say things to people you later feel uncomfortable about. And that’s a vulnerability that journalists should be aware of and not exploit.
Wow. After our year long absence, I can’t believe there are actually comments! Thanks for that.
Michelle and Andrew, there’s a real sense that disclosing this kind of information now seems to be mandatory, rather than optional.
Mary, I’m very sorry for your loss. It must be very raw still. I completely agree that talking to those close to us about death (and its specifics) can be cathartic. It’s the detailed public discussions on radio/TV that make me uncomfortable.
Kate, good point about the vulnerability in the early days of grief.
I saw Melanie V on the front of a paper today with a quote about how devastated she is. Of course she is but I sort of curled up when I saw the piece, thinking ‘Why does the public need to share this?’
I lost my sister and, yes, I appreciated when people acknowledged the loss but public grieving feels wrong and intrusive. You are not in your right mind so soon after a loss, you really aren’t. I can’t see how having publicity as such helps.
I listened to Marian Finucane’s interview with Ms.Verwoerd and I must say that I was appalled at some of the questions she asked – I’m not a big fan of Marian at the best of times and think that however much she tries, she has a strange and sometimes offensive was of getting details from someone.
I refer, specifically, to when she made the comment about finding Gerry Ryan’s dead body as “an almost intimate experience” for the poor woman …
And there were details asked of the room, the house, how she got in and seeing the dead man’s feet from behind the bed … it’s one thing, as a commenter above said, to have Ms.Verwoerd say these things if she needs to say them but tis another for RTE to have this in the public domain …
Two things of this ilk disturbed me no end in the last year…both in the UK though. One was a ‘photo project’ that was allegedly ‘tastefully’ done of terminally ill people while still alive and then ‘at peace’ when they were dead. It totally freaked me out. I felt awful strange for weeks afterwards. And another was a documentary of terminally ill people and what they were going through in the months and weeks beforehand, in a ‘coming to terms with it’ type of way. At the same time there was a more mainstream-type docu on British TV about all aspects of death which threw up some interesting points: in Victorian times people sent ‘postcard’ photosnaps of their dead children or relatives, seeing the dead in this way was the norm. We don’t deal with death at all now which is why it feels so uncomfortable. Some people may feel comforted talking about it soon after someone dies, others don’t, but it’s so incredibly personal I don’t think it should ever slip into the BB-esque mainstream. If you stick someone who is grieving on a prime-time TV show, they are gonna be asked all kinds of intrusive yack for the sake of making ‘good telly’.
Ooooops, mean to say for the sake of good TV or radio…