We have to attend two funerals this evening—for Joe, and for a woman who I might have passed in the street while walking the dog.

One reason why we (and, I suspect, most people in rural Ireland) attend so many funerals is that if a person had so much as sneezed in one's direction, it was, according to the mother-in-law, a good enough reason to attend their funeral. It's no wonder why www.rip.ie is among the most popular websites in Ireland.

Once we traveled nearly an hour to a funeral in the late father-in-law's homeplace. When I asked the mother-in-law for the name of the person who had died, she said she didn't know.

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