MY grandfather, Patsy McGarry, is 33 years dead today. His was the first corpse I saw, as he lay there on his bed. My nephew, Sam O'Connor was three weeks dead last Friday. His was the last corpse saw, as he lay there in his cot, his mother, father, grandparents, godparents, and all of us, standing around weeping.
My grandfather was 84, possibly 87 - no one is sure. He was so old he could remember when Parnell died. Sam lived for just 10 hours. He went from being a seemingly healthy nine pound 10 ounce broth of a boy to his death with such speed, that no sooner were we aware of his arrival than we had to get used to the shock of his leaving. He had a rare blood disorder.
Despite a share of life's difficulties, we are a most fortunate family. We have not known too much of death. And though all of our grandparents have died, their passing was as it should be. It was in the order of things. No violation there. Our parents are very much with us, and we have always been healthy. As have our next generation
Unforgettable mark
So when my mother rang on the evening of Thursday June 12th to announce Sam's safe arrival, I heard the news with a certain nonchalance. When my sister Sinead, Sam's aunt, rang at 2.30 a.m. the following morning to say he was very ill, I was jolted. When his father John rang at 5.30 a.m. to say he had died, I was stunned. And as the events of his passing unfolded, over the following hours and days, I began to realise that this 10-hour old boy would leave a mark on all of us such as we had never experienced before. It ensures he will always be with us.
My sister Mary and her husband, John O'Connor, live at Ballykelly, near Cashel in Co Tipperary. They have three other children, Roisin, Barney, and JJ. Earlier this year when Roisin, who is four, became aware Mary was pregnant, she insisted the expected baby would be a girl. Her logic, as usual, was impeccable. God would not be "so silly" to send another one of "them." Roisin has a strained relationship with her brothers. She even picked a name for her new sister. It would be Sarah.
As a precaution, and being more familiar with the silliness of God's ways, Mary and John asked her to choose a boy's name too. She chose Sam. And when Sam was born at the hospital in Clonmel, John rang home to break the news, gently, to Roisin. She took it very well. No doubt this was helped by the fact that Sam had brought presents with him for Roisin, Barney, and JJ. He brought Roisin a toy cat. She decided the cat was a girl, and called it Sarah instead.
A few hours later that evening staff at the hospital became anxious about Sam, and he was sent to Ardkeen in Waterford.
By the time he got there he was seriously ill. John, who accompanied him to Wateiford, realised he might not make it. He returned to Clonmel for Mary.
By the time they got back, he was dead. Mary remembers he was still warm when she held him.
Not just 'the baby'
They brought him back to the hospital in Clonmel, where he lay in a cot next to Mary's bed for the following two days. She found it hard to part with him, and wanted all of us to see him first. So we would remember him, and as Sam, not just as "the baby." Lying there in his cot, he was perfect and still as a porcelain doll, his finely formed fingers interlaced. Strewn around him were a couple of stuffed toys and a small bouquet of three red roses from Ballykelly.
"He's dead," announced Roisin, when she saw him. Then, examining him more closely she noticed how all his finger nails had darkened. "Why are his nails painted?" she asked Mary, "boy's don't have their nails painted." And Mary spoke to her about heaven.
Meanwhile Sam's godparents, Seamus and Noelle Killeen, saw to the practicalities, while two other family friends, "Aunty" Carmel and Rita, kept the show on the road as we and the O'Connors gathered and grieved. It is at such times you realise it's not such a bad old world that has such people in it.
My brother Declan drove my mother and sister there, instructing them forcefully en route that they were to keep a grip on themselves in front of Mary. But when all three arrived in the hospital room, it was he who was least prepared for the sight of Mary and Sam side by side.
The worst moment was on the Sunday morning, just prior to Sam's funeral. John took him to another room to be confined, and Mary's heart shattered.
I had heard a mother ache like that just once before. It was in a graveyard in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, in February 1993. Mrs Chris Statham watched as her only child. Julie, was lowered into the earth. Julie was 20, and had taken her own life on February 2nd. The previous evening she had attended a month's mind Mass for her boy-friend, Diarmiud Shields, and his father, Patrick, at their home near Dungannon.
They had been murdered by a UVF gang. They were just Catholics who loved Gaelic football and Irish music.
Little did Mary and John think they themselves would be facing into grief that week before Sam, when, so moved by pictures of another grieving Northern family, they had decided to invite them to Ballykelly for a break. Mrs Kathleen Taylor and her son Christopher (10), who has cerebral palsy, had been very distressed at the funeral of RUC officer Greg Taylor. He had been kicked to death by a mob.
Bad moments
"It's so cruel," wept Mary, as her son was taken away. And it is. Life is hard on mothers. They suffer in our coming and in our going. There were other bad moments. Mary being taken to the funeral in a wheel-chair, still too weak to stand or walk. The sight of that small white coffin as it rested at an awkward angle on a trolley, inside a hospital. Seeing it lifted single-handed by an undertaker, and placed on the back seat of Mary and John's car. The small opening cut into a corner of the grave where Sam would rest. Mary at the graveside in her wheelchair.
The funeral Mass was kept brief. What Mary and John needed, the priest said, was "Christ's touch, not Christ's teaching," and he urged us all to embrace and hug them. And we followed Sam to the small graveyard nearby, where he was buried with his grandfather, Bernard, (Barney) O'Connor.
All of us returned to Ballykelly then, where we ruminated on the day's events as Roisin, Barney, and JJ, played to an attentive, unexpected, and large audience. Roisin kicked her cousin Garry in the shin, because he said her dog was stupid.
It was on the following day that the IRA murdered two young policemen in Lurgan. Leaving Rebecca (10), Louie (7), Abigail (7), Joshua (3), and Katie (2), without a father. They were just Protestants who were seen as British symbols. It made me wonder once more whether anything is more unforgiveable than man-made grief. Or whether it can be forgiven at all. Sadness and sorrow. Bitterness too.