The joys of Christmas can often be tempered by the loss of a family member, but for those in the Irish traditional music community who can express themselves by playing music as part of the farewell to a loved one it also succeeds in lifting the spirit when mere words fail.

Jim Coogan, the 76-year old box player, was laid to rest by relatives and friends who accompanied daughter Mary and son James and their Aunt Peggy away from Sacred Heart Church in a funeral cortège past his Newburgh home, adorned out front by a beautiful floral display in the shape of an accordion on the way to the cemetery.

Graveside, the Navy veteran was accorded a dual honor guard by the U.S. Navy, with taps played by his accordion business partner Al Gessner, followed by music by box players Joe Madden, John Nolan, Mary Rafferty and Mirella Murray, accompanied by other members of Cherish the Ladies like Joanie Madden, Heidi Talbot and Aoife Clancy. Later on Mike Rafferty joined them for some tunes at the restaurant reception at the Big Easy.

After a long battle with cancer, his passing was a blessing and his gift of music and fellowship would help ease the pain for his family and many friends.

In Ireland last week the sudden death of fiddler and flute player, Felix O’Raghallaigh at 41 due to a blood clot was the type of loss from which it is harder to recover. Leaving a wife, Yvonne Goff O’Raghallaigh (sister of piper Ivan), and two young children Sorcha, 7, and Padraig, 6, is especially tragic.

The eldest child of Padraig (from Connemara) and Maire (from Drimnagh in Dublin), Felim was part of a close-knit and extremely talented family of traditional musicians (Nora, Aine, Micheal and Mac Dara) raised in Co. Meath who were instrumental in an extraordinarily active music and dance community.

He was the first fiddle student in Meath of the influential fiddler Antoin MacGabhann in Ashbourne, though many more followed including his siblings Nora, Aine and Mac Dara.

MacGabhann (a brother of the late Hugh Smith from Long Island) helped organize musicians to play for the Friday evening removal to the Rathmoylan Church, and one poignant passage had eight flute players (an instrument that Felim later took up) playing three of his favorite Josie McDermott reels.

Some 40 musicians played at the Mass before, during and after the Saturday service, though the sight of his two brothers Micheal and Mac Dara and two sisters, Nora and Aine playing alongside an empty chair with his flute on it at the offertory procession must have been heart-breaking.

This area of Meath has become legendary in recent decades because of families like the MacGabhanns, O’Raghallaighs and the McGormans who live and breathe the music through the old-fashioned house sessions, and dances and handing down the music through myriad classes and workshops.

Their community felt the severe loss of one of their own but sought solace in sharing the spirit of life that Irish music brings to help us heal and to celebrate that creative spark within us.

That so many musicians came from all parts of Ireland to pay tribute to a fallen comrade was indicative of the high regard for the O’Raghallaigh family and must have been of some consolation to them.

My thanks to Antoin MacGabhann, Catherine McEvoy McGorman and Martin Donohoe for sharing the sad news of Felim O’Raghallaigh’s short time with us and all too soon departure.

Ar Dheis De go raibh a Anam.