Have you ever craved a funeral sandwich? Or better yet, the soup that is handed to you in a mug while your neighbour runs around with a saucepan of tea waiting for someone to accept a cup?

The Irish do funerals well. It’s a cultural phenomenon, if you haven’t experienced it first-hand.

As Catholicism’s rigorous routines slowly disintegrate, I still feel guilt about eating meat on Good Friday. And I still appreciate a good Irish funeral. I am always taken aback when I speak to someone of my age and they let me know they have never been to a funeral, or have attended very few.

“We have been on this earth for so long, what do you mean you haven’t been to an extensive amounts of wakes?”

I am 23.

There is a strict routine when it comes to Irish funerals. They might look different, depending on the county, but they follow the same pattern. The women land into the kitchen – this is where those fabulous funeral sandwiches come into play. There are mountains of cakes, tarts, bread with sugar sprinkled on. (Not really, but there’s a lot of sweet things). By the third day you can’t look a Pat the Baker sliced pan in the eye.

It’s parallel to an Irish wedding: three days of drinking, three days of eating food that will sit in your stomach for weeks and three days of polite small talk to extended family members you may never see again.

The local men help dig the grave. If there are grandchildren they must be on standby for errands: tea-pouring, hotting of the whiskey. Otherwise there is little parental supervision. Someone will quietly criticise those smoking inside (“I thought she quit?”)

Once, at a funeral, I saw children playing funerals. Pringles were the Communion. This was the pre-tablet age, back when children had pure imaginations. (I was one of the children.)

We’re not bouncy castle Catholics – we’re the incense and eulogies kind

The three days of wake, removal and funeral, can bring nuanced feelings. The rooms are full of laughter, nostalgia and, simultaneously, even despair. “He was only 88.”

You practice your prayer of the faithful, intrigued by the gifts to be placed on the coffin and then, of course, the eulogy, when hankies are grabbed out of sleeves and even the most stoic of men just can’t keep it in any more.

There is the awkward walk as you slither into the chapel trying not to trip on the overly long skirt you keep just for these morbid family occasions, scanning the pews to see who came, while also trying to avoid eye contact so you don’t have to smile. It is either freezing to the point where your jaw starts to tremble and your breath is visible, or you’re sweating like you’re on a walk in peak July Tenerife.

“Someone get me an antihistamine quick and get this jumper off me now.”

The sympathising starts – such a beautiful thing, community coming together. (I hope I don’t pick up something shaking all these hands.) “I am so sorry for your loss,” they say as they shake your hand, and then: “God, I remember when you were yea high.”

You shuffle out behind the gorgeous oak coffin and ponder the impermanence of the past several days. The men walk shoulder to shoulder. I say my thanks that I will never have to do that part, but there is also disappointment I will never have to do that part. Or maybe I will. It is 2026. Who is to say I can’t shoulder a coffin, especially since I have started the gym?

Edwards syndrome: ‘How many siblings do you have?’ I once had two and now I have one

There is a pressure that accompanies these events, such as the feeling I am hosting a family member’s entire life in the good sittingroom. But mostly it’s a great excuse to see everyone. You hear mumbles from locals trying to suss out who you are. “She’s his daughter – went to Dublin, full of notions,” someone will say.

I am privileged I don’t have to measure up to the same ideologies past generations in my family have had to.

Do I appreciate an Irish funeral or is it the familiarity of rural Ireland’s cosiness?

One day, you reach an age where you no longer are playing funeral at a funeral. You are in the kitchen ensuring the butter is spread evenly on the sandwiches. Before long, checking Rip.ie becomes an evening ritual. And then you arrive at the stage where you are grateful that it’s been a while since you had to eat a funeral sandwich.

Molly O’Reilly is a journalist with considerable experience of funerals in rural Ireland