The Parish

by Alice Taylor

  The following day, people came from further afield. His GAA and bridge friends gathered and many games were replayed in corners around the room. It was as if the full story of Gabriel’s life was being woven around him. Bertie Kelleher, who had lived in our village for many years and was an exemplary member of the Garda in nearby Bandon, said something that stayed with me.

  “In all the places I have served,” he told me, “I have found in many cases that one solid citizen can hold an entire community together.” It was the creed of the Blasket islanders—Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine (“We live in the shelter of each other.”) Now, as a family, we were benefiting from that shelter.

  During that day we sorted out readings and hymns. Con’s brother, Fr Denis, was in America and we were unable to make contact, but his brother, Fr Pat from Clonard in Belfast, was with us, and our own priest, Fr John, who had been away on holidays, had miraculously appeared. Over the Christmas of Con’s death, Gabriel had given Fr Pat a revised copy of Dinneen’s Irish dictionary and had gone over with him the prayers of an Irish mass. In a strange twist of fate, now Fr Pat was going to say the mass in Irish. Gabriel would have wanted his funeral mass in his native language.

  The time of the removal drew near and the house was thronged; among those present were many young people who over the years had done holiday work in the shop. I had never quite realised until then how many young girls had had summer jobs with us, and Gabriel and themselves had often had innocent fun together. Now they laughed and cried as they recalled some of the incidents that are part of running a local shop. As a teenager, Gabriel had delivered telegrams to remote corners of the parish where he had forged friendships with many families, and in more recent times, through sorting the mail, he was often the first to become aware of newcomers’ addresses and to welcome them to the parish. For the new residents his was a welcoming face gone, and for his old friends he had been a corner-stone of the parish. They were all shocked at the suddenness of his going, saying, “But I saw him earlier this week out the road walking.”

  Soon there was no more time for talking and we all knelt and said the final rosary. Over the past few days, we had said the rosary many times and there is something extremely calming about its repetitive mantra. It is a family and community prayer, and in times of trauma, because it is a shared prayer, it encompasses all in a sense of togetherness.

  When the rosary ended, the people eased out, and we as a family were left on our own to say our goodbyes. How do you say goodbye to forty-four years of loving and togetherness? Your insides disintegrate and, when the coffin lid goes down, you know that the best of your life is under it. My heart bled for Lena and the lads because Gabriel was the one who had loved them most in life.

  Mike and Seán brought the coffin out the door and then the four of them shouldered their father past our home to the corner of the street. There, members of the Valley Rovers hurling and football club lined up and carried Gabriel up the hill. Since childhood he had been involved in the club and over the years had been chairman, secretary, treasurer and trainer; there had been times when I had thought the Valley Rovers were shooting balls through our house. People lined along both sides of the hill and, as the lighted church came into sight, the bell tolled.

  A strange tranquillity descended on me. This was the place where Gabriel had spent so much time changing bulbs, brushing out leaves and blocking draughts. In some way, this was his place and he was coming home. It was the home of his spiritual side, which was a big part of Gabriel’s life. So, up into the beautifully restored church, into which he had put so much love and effort, we brought Gabriel, and after the prayers people filed up to sympathise.

  The “sorry for your trouble” procedure is probably a very Irish concept and when it is heartfelt and genuine it brings great comfort, but if it is delivered mechanically, as a matter of routine, with a limp handshake and no feeling, it is meaningless. One young lad of about ten came at the end of the queue and went straight for Mike who was his team trainer. He put his arms wordlessly around Mike’s neck, gave him a hug and went straight out the door. It was an expression of deep sympathy and affection.

  Gabriel’s funeral mass brought me comfort. By chance or otherwise, the candelabrum by the altar was full of lighting candles, and light has a indefinably uplifting effect. Fr Pat’s amazing homily opened new doors in my mind, leading me into zones of new thought. He told us that Gabriel’s spirit was now part of something far greater and beyond our understanding, but emphasised that “Gabriel is dead.” In the celebration of the life Gabriel had had and the welcoming of a new beginning we needed always to face the reality of death and the need to mourn. It was comforting to hear some of the prayers in the language that Gabriel loved, and Seán, who had inherited his father’s love of our native tongue, gave the reading in Irish. My niece Treasa’s wonderful voice filled the church. The pathos of the Pie Jesu gripped me and connected in a powerful way with the last hours of Gabriel’s life. It brought a realisation that the separation of the divine soul from the earthly body is a huge wrenching. It is beyond all human understanding. The piteous agony of the Pie Jesu captures the trauma of that deep suffering. It had been beyond understanding until then.

  As the bell tolled, the coffin, escorted by members of his bridge club, was taken down to Uncle Jacky and Aunty Peg’s grave; as Gabriel was lowered into the earth, I thought: The next coffin in there will be mine. When the grave was covered, Treasa sang Gabriel’s favorite song, “Carrigdown”. Because the lads had asked me, I said a few words about him. I tried to convey as best I could that, soon after coming to Innishannon, I realised that I had married with this man an entire parish. Gabriel had really believed that we live in the shelter of each other. Then Con Murphy, who had taken Gabriel to the North Mon on his first day there, gave a wonderful tribute in Irish and English.

  We returned to an overflowing house where the wonderful “kitchen staff” had everything under control. It was a day of talk, crying and comforting, and if an observer had looked in the window it might have seemed like a big family get-together. But the heart of the family was gone and we had a long hard road ahead of us.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Grief Road

  Nothing prepares for the ferocity of grief. You have a hard, cold pain in your gut, and where your mind was is now a black hole. You walk and talk as if you are normal and you may appear to be, but inside you are carrying around waves of knifing pain. This is the world of bereavement, a prison of desolation without walls.

  Bereavement takes you on a solitary journey. Death disturbs your deepest roots and catapults you bruised, broken and unprepared on that journey. The light that normally leads you on is gone and, in that dark pit, you flounder around and grasp at nothingness. There is no escape. No easy way out. No short cut. Hurting encompasses like a shroud and grief takes hold and cripples.

  Death is a cold, bleak subject. Even the very word strikes a chill into the mind. Is that why we sometimes avoid using it and prefer instead “passed away” or “gone to rest”. But no matter what handle we put on it, death cannot be clothed in a flowery language that masks its face and makes it in any way easier to handle. For most of our life we may try to ignore it, like people walking backwards towards a cliff edge. But one day, when a loved one goes over that edge, we are forced to turn around and look death in the face.

  Nothing prepares for the finality of death. Someone who was part of your life has gone and taken a chunk of you with them. The vacuum left by that chunk is a raw, bleeding hole. Death, as well as taking your loved one, has also taken part of you. You are left with a gaping wound. Grief is physical as well as mental. You have had a beloved limb amputated. But the bewildering thing is that your loved one is still part of your everyday thought pattern, and their presence is still around the house. You are living in two worlds—the before and after worlds. These two worlds are not welded together, so the ground beneath your feet is split with a deep chasm.

  I
nto that deep hole people will throw thousands of words. If it was a sudden death, they will tell you, “At least he did not suffer.” If it came after a long illness, you will be told, “Wasn’t it a blessed relief?” And there is the sympathiser who will tell you of a far greater tragedy. As if that should make you feel better! They think by making you feel worse that you should feel better! They have no idea that bereavement is a frozen coat of mail, inside which you and all your mental anguish are completely trapped. Your pain is so intense that you have no space left into which other feelings can creep.

  Friends may try to reason you out of your grief. But reason and grief have no relationship. Grief is raw emotion; reason does not come into it. When someone you love dies, deep dormant feelings escape out of a previously unquarried reservoir. Like a roaring tide let loose, they break down all barriers and sweep on, creating mental chaos. Grief has no respect for boundaries. It sweeps all before it. You are flattened and torn along in a ferocious flood, being belted off rocks of raw pain and crashed into deeper black holes. As you search for ease, you may come on a reading that tells you, “Death is nothing at all….” Then you might well think that you are losing your mind.

  Previous death experiences reawaken; their healed scab is blown off and they add their old pain to the new. Ground that you had previously thought was firm beneath your feet shifts; you become a cauldron of doubt and terror. Where is the beginning and end of anything? You wake up in the morning and for one second you think that the nightmare has not happened. But then reality crashes in. Your mind is a whirl of black cloud; your legs are rigid with some kind of restraint that you cannot even begin to describe. It is as if there are iron rods where previously you had bone and muscle; as if where your stomach was is now a revolving churn. Black shadows and monsters awake with you and begin to slither around your mind. Another day begins!

  Your grief is now, but past griefs also swim underneath. If as a child you lost a sibling or carry an unmourned death, that old trauma now stirs like a monster in an underground cave. He rises, and all past griefs become part of the present eruption.

  You look around at people who have survived terrible trauma and you think, “How can they keep going?” I said this to a young widowed friend of mine and she smiled sadly and told me, “No choice.” When I asked a friend, “Will I get over this?” she said wisely, “You will, because if people did not recover from grief, the world would come to a standstill.”

  Nevertheless, in grief your world certainly is at a standstill. It is impossible to reach over the void that separates you from the rest of the world. You are on an isolated island and the world is moving around outside but you have no wish to be part of it. You are cold and miserable and rendered immobile by hurt. All your energy is sapped by your grief so you are unable to distract yourself with activity. You feel like a bird whose wings have been brutally hacked off at the knuckle.

  It is a time when prayer should help. But it may not do so. Your loved one has gone across that great divide into a place where all your prayers have gone. But heaven may be silent now and God may have become the God of no explanations. Your world here has been turned upside down, so how can you be comforted by a remote world? But in the dark of night, when a fierce storm rages, the deep roots of a tree hold it in the earth and the human spirit finds within it the power of amazing endurance.

  As you struggle on, tiny stepping stones appear in front of you. They will be created by kindness, nature and your own inner resources, and by a source above and beyond our human understanding.

  Cold Dawn

  Grey light seeps in

  And the razor edge

  Of realisation cuts

  Through my waking mind

  The coldness of aloneness

  Chills my nakedness.

  Have I the courage

  To reinvent myself

  Because I was part

  Of a whole?

  Wet Blanket

  My first day out

  After the funeral

  A stranger takes my hand,

  “Sorry about your husband;

  Buried mine ten years ago

  Want you to know

  It doesn’t get any better.”

  Are the bereaved a coat hanger

  For tales of misery?

  The Gap

  We went there together

  But now I go alone

  And cannot fill the space.

  I want to go home

  To lock myself in

  Where I do not have

  To hold back tears

  And pretend to be normal.

  Keeping Busy

  Am I afraid to stop

  In case all my pieces

  Will fall apart

  Could I disintegrate

  And never come back

  Together again?

  The Backyard

  With a mind full of throbbing pain

  I washed the backyard

  Each corner a thorn of memory.

  Scalding tears joined piped water

  Through hoses that you had joined.

  When all was clean and rearranged

  I asked myself, “Why did I bother?”

  It is in the ordinary everyday

  That I miss you most.

  Savage grief must

  Be worked through

  And grappled with hour by hour

  So that one day your memory

  Could be a yard full of glowing flowers.

  Climbing

  With grim determination

  I claw up the black face of grief

  Gripping each ledge

  Seeking tiny footholds

  Because if I slip

  I fall into nothingness

  But if I keep climbing

  You will be there

  In the sunshine

  Of wholeness.

  Secrets

  You are gone

  Now I walk

  The beach alone.

  Pick up a black stone

  Glistening with sea and sand,

  Massage it in my palm.

  The smooth hard stone

  Enclosed and impenetrable

  Is as incomprehensible

  As death.

  The Glen Falls

  The roaring waterfall blew the crust

  Off the hard wound of grief.

  Screaming pain burst forth

  Into the raging torrents.

  Determined water penetrated

  The depths of locked-up grief.

  I cried with anger and relief

  As foaming water washed out

  Locked-up pain.

  When the storm abated

  I was more at home

  With my deep sorrow

  Cleansed in my inner being

  Where icy water had

  Penetrated the depths.

  The Grief Road

  On a cold January day

  She visited

  Exuding warmth and comfort.

  She told me gently

  “The sun will shine again.”

  On that frozen day

  As we sat by a warm fire

  She melted for a little while

  My inner ice.

  She was a constant caller

  And walked with me

  Along the road of grief.

  She had been there

  And knew the way

  A friend who had learned

  How to be a friend.

  CHAPTER 19

  In the Shelter of Each Other

  “What are you doing on Dad’s anniversary?” Diarmuid asked as the date of Gabriel’s first anniversary loomed on the horizon.

  “I’m trying not to think about it,” I told him bleakly; “but the mass that morning will be for Gabriel. I’ve arranged it with Fr Kingston.”

  “And after that?” Diarmuid asked.

  “Well, I suppose we’ll all come down here for breakfast,” I said.

  “And then?” Diarmuid persisted.
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br />   “I’ve no idea,” I told him wearily. I really did not want to think about it because every day was tough but the anniversary loomed before me like a tall, black cliff.

  “I’ve an idea, but I’m not sure what you’ll think about it,” Diarmuid began tentatively.

  “What is it?” I asked cautiously, in case I’d be letting myself in for something that I could not handle.

  “You remember when we were all small, some Sundays we’d go to West Cork for picnics. I was thinking that, on Dad’s anniversary, you and I and any of the others who want to could do the Ring of Beara. Dad loved that drive and at least we would all be together. What do you think?”

  “Maybe it’s not a bad idea,” I agreed slowly. “It would be better than all being miserable in different corners.”

  “Say it to the rest of them anyway,” he told me.

  During the weeks before the anniversary, the happenings of the previous year replayed like a tape in my head. I wished that I could press the stop button or the fast forward, but on the grief road there is no stop button or fast forward. I was very grateful to our friends and neighbours who popped in or rang, and some brought garden plants or pot plants. Some plants went into the garden and some on Gabriel’s grave. I had found throughout the year that visiting the grave had brought inexplicable comfort, and afterwards I would go in and sit in the quiet of the church where meditation quietened my chaotic mind. One evening, a neighbour whose wife had been killed in a road accident came into the church. As a teenager, his wife had worked during her holidays with us in the guesthouse, and Gabriel and herself had been good friends. Now we were both too upset for words, but words were not necessary because we were travellers on the same road.