To be honest, I am a little surprised that there is such a fuss at the moment about the growing trend of funerals being streamed live across the world via the internet.
Critics of the practice say it is in poor taste and even a little ghoulish while others say it is just another way of including absent family and friends in an important family event.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the practice and I am aware of one instance when an illegal immigrant in the United States didn’t dare come home for his father’s funeral because he wouldn’t have been able to return to his partner and child.
With the permission of his family and the local clergy the Removal, Requiem Mass and burial were discretely filmed and put on line.
Apparently, it is a common practice now and many funeral directors include it in their prospective to bereaved families, especially those with members living abroad.
It all reminds me of the plaintive and heartbreaking lyric of the famous ballad, ‘The Old Bog Road’.
‘My mother died last springtime,
When Ireland’s fields were green
The neighbours said her waking
Was the finest ever seen
There were snowdrops and primroses
Piled high above her bed
And Ferns Church was crowded
When her Funeral Mass was read
And here was I on Broadway
A building bricks per load
When they carried out her coffin
Down the Old Bog Road’