I don’t even know how to ease into this one. I had to rewrite this a few times just to get close to what it felt like watching it.
“Irish Goodbye” isn’t just a song. It’s grief laid out in the quietest, most unflinching way. It’s about Naoise Ó Cairealláin losing his mother, Aoife Ní Riain, to suicide… and everything that disappears with her.
Not the big moments. The small ones.
The conversations you don’t get back.
The walks that never happen again.
The advice you didn’t know you’d miss until it’s gone.
The way the video unfolds absolutely wrecked me—the way it holds not just his grief, but the weight of a family around it, the way it bleeds through every line, the sound of it in his voice, and how the grief is just right there, unguarded, with nowhere to hide.
And the short film below… it doesn’t let you look away. It’s a reminder of what was lost and what’s left behind. Grief is something you can’t ever fix—it stays with you for the rest of your life.
It’s heavy. It’s honest.
And yeah… it hurts to watch.
