Two traditions united in grief reflected with compassion and dignity on a tragic loss of life, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
ON A bleak Monday afternoon, on his 68th birthday, George Rothwell was buried in the family plot beside the Good Shepherd parish church of Lorum, a few miles from Bagenalstown, Co Carlow. The mourners who thronged the beautiful, old Church of Ireland church for the 2.30pm funeral service were drawn from the same people who had earlier filled St Andrew’s Catholic Church in Bagenalstown, for the 11am funeral Mass of Michael Jordan, the church he attended every Sunday, before visiting his parents’ grave.
To give them some breathing space, parish priest Fr Declan Foley had set local tradition aside. Instead of walking with Michael Jordan’s coffin to the cemetery, mourners followed the hearse in their cars, still bewildered by the tragic events of last Wednesday, when Michael Jordan is believed to have shot his brother-in-law before taking his own life.
Hilda Jordan, a petite and extremely dignified figure, followed the coffins of her husband and her brother into both churches, surrounded by the extended Rothwell and Jordan families. Priests and rectors participated in each others’ ceremonies.
During the prayers of the faithful in St Andrew’s, a small nephew said a prayer, “for my uncle Michael, who I loved – and for my best friend George, whom I loved to visit”. None of the speakers made the claim that Michael Jordan and George Rothwell were the closest of friends, but Fr Foley stressed in his homily, in Ballycormack and Glenaharry, homeplaces of the Rothwells and Jordans respectively, “there is only one community – a community that belongs to two traditions, but bonded in friendship and farming, supporting each other in good times and bad, always there with, and for, each other”. He spoke of God’s love, compassion, forgiveness and support for those most in need.
In recent days, he said, he had seen “the gospel being lived out at its best” in this community.
By contrast, he had some harsh words for “some elements of the print media”, for whom “unfortunately, the concept of compassion is uncomfortable. Because having a compassionate heart doesn’t allow you to inflict more hurt and crucifixion on already suffering families and community”, he said, to spontaneous applause. “I feel sorry for such people who have great difficulty finding a moral centre – a sense of decency or compassion”.
The two men’s deep rural roots were palpable, with a shared passion for sheep breeding, vintage tractors and orderly farmyards. In a deeply affectionate and emotional tribute, Jordan’s close friend and neighbour, Arthur McCullagh, noted that both “Michael and George prided their sheep flocks and took part in many sheep breed competitions, with many fine days in Borris and Bagenalstown”. The gifts brought to the altar to symbolise Michael Jordan’s life included his much-prided Mitchell trophy for sheep breeding, a 1999 All-Ireland third place award from Tullow Livestock Show for a pair of Suffolk Cheviot X ewe lambs and two big wrenches representing his passion for machinery.
To smiles around the church, McCullagh recalled that Michael Jordan used so much power with his welder and angle grinder out in the sheds, that “lights in the local community dimmed”.
It was always thus. As a boy, he had stripped down a Ferguson 20 tractor, much to his father’s dismay, and in later years, he and Hilda had “many a great day out” at steam rallies, to which he would pilot the trusty Ferguson – nicknamed the Grey Mare – accompanied by Hilda, driving an old Nuffield.
He was a great neighbour and a great friend to everyone, a man who was quiet but mixed well and always found time to support local events, said McCullagh. And although his dog training sounded a bit like a full football team in session, he never used swear words, confining himself to “four or five key words – like horrid, terrible, fierce, woeful . . . In his sisters’ words, he was a caring brother and in Hilda’s words, a great husband”. On behalf of Michael’s neighbours, he said, “we will truly miss Michael”.
A short while later, up a one-lane road, at the foothills of Mount Leinster, George Rothwell’s coffin was borne into the Good Shepherd parish church in Lorum, bearing the colours of his racehorses.
In his sermon, the Rev Charles McCollum talked of George’s successful horses and twin passions for farming and music. He was a gifted saxophonist with a showband and a progressive modern farmer, “meticulous and exact”, a winner of many sheep and cattle awards.
The Rev McCollum noted that other similarity to Michael Jordan – the love of vintage tractors. And yet, he said, George was “definitely hard to understand and to know in life”. The over-riding comment he had heard about him in recent days was “the mantra – ‘You couldn’t get to know George’. He was a deep and meditative fellow. He could sort of go into a sort of trance with people – into a pensive mood. Somebody said to me, ‘You could be talking to George on the phone and you could go off and put on the kettle and come back, and he would still be on the phone and he probably wouldn’t have said anything in the meantime . . . He was popular with everybody in a peculiar sort of way. He certainly would not do a mischief on anyone”.
So he was hard to understand, and the manner of his death “is equally something we do not understand. But we don’t have to. We are helpless in the face of deaths like these. But in that helplessness, we see clearly the fragility of our own lives, of our expectations. If everything depended on what we could achieve and what we could endure, we would be lost . . . We do not meet in Christian worship in order to condemn those who have killed or to praise the association to which the dead belonged . . . If we were wise, we would thank God that once again, God’s good judgment will triumph over the most evil judgment we can make”.
At his burial, a soloist played Amazing Grace, after which the lonely sound of a hunting horn echoed across the hills.