TY - JOUR T1 - A hard time to die: grief and the coronavirus JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 343 LP - 343 DO - 10.3399/bjgp20X710513 VL - 70 IS - 696 AU - Mary Jane Boland Y1 - 2020/07/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/70/696/343.abstract N2 - Michael Boland. Image used with kind permission of his daughter, Mary.People say we do death well in Ireland.When my husband’s father died suddenly 5 years ago, there was an exceptional outpouring of community support. His body was laid out in the family’s front room, friends brought casseroles, people drove from all over the country for the funeral. Memories were shared. Tears were shed.This is not an unusual story. In fact, it describes every death in Ireland I have ever experienced.We do death well, not because we grasp onto archaic traditions of wailing women and waked corpses, but because, even now, in the 21st century, it is a ritual: we come together for the ‘removal’. We shake hands. We hug the relatives we know. We say something awkward to the ones we … ER -