by Alice Taylor
At 7 a.m. on Friday morning the phone call came. He had died peacefully in his sleep during the night. When I heard the news my mind could hardly absorb it. My first thought was of Aunty Peg. How were we to tell her? As it was early we decided to let her sleep on. I went out to the guest-house to get the breakfast for the guests, my mind in a turmoil. I put three trays of rashers one after the other under the grill and burned each one. One of my friends came into the kitchen and took over.
When Aunty Peg got up I went in as she was having her breakfast and told her as gently as I could. Her first reaction was to cry, “Oh, no, no,” and then she looked at me sadly and said, “After all he went through: to think that it should come to this.” But I learned that day that the old can be far more resilient than the young. The news went around the village and the neighbours who during the previous weeks had come to encourage now poured in all through the day to bring comfort. Aunty Peg proved to be amazingly strong, and the companionship of old friends helped to ease her pain. On such occasions people certainly need others. Old friends laughed and cried with Aunty Peg as they swopped funny and sad stories of Jacky’s years in their village shop. But most of all they recalled his kindness. With tears in her eyes one woman said to me, “God bless him, but he kept food on many a table including my own when times were hard, and often he was never paid for it, but no one ever knew.”
The following day we drove to Dún Laoghaire with the local undertaker and some friends to bring Jacky home. We were taken into the little mortuary chapel where he was laid out. Since I had heard of his death I had had an ache inside in me, but when I saw him the pain eased. He had a smile on his face and looked as if he had just heard good news. How could we be sad when he looked so joyful? Aunty Peg came out of the mortuary looking more at peace, and I thought to myself that he was helping us still.
Waiting for us in Dún Laoghaire were people who had connections with our village. Some were old natives of Innishannon who were now living in Dublin; others’ parents had come from the village and they themselves had often come back on holidays. All had been contacted by relatives from home and it was heart-warming to meet them.
As we drove home through the various towns it was strangely comforting to see people bless themselves as the hearse passed by. Prior to that I had never really thought about it. Arriving home was a very touching experience. At the entrance to the village the Valley Rovers lined both sides of the street. Weather-beaten country men who had played with him, younger men whom he had sometimes cheered to victory, and young lads whose hurleys he had often banded and to whom he had given penny bars stood together in respect. They walked along beside the hearse through the village and up the hill to our little church, where Fr Seamus was waiting to welcome him home. Inside the front porch his old friend Ellie, the chapel woman, was there to signal her altar boys to toll his home-coming bell.
When we came back from the church the house was packed with neighbours and far-flung relatives. Aunty Peg surprised me afterwards by remembering exactly who was there – and even who was not and should have been. Despite her sorrow, and her exhaustion after the long journey, she still had a spark of her old humour. She looked down the length of the dining-room at a cousin whom she had never really liked, and said to me with a tired smile on her pale face, “Would you look at the hat on that one. Isn’t it time she had more sense, at this hour of her life!”
The following morning I awoke with the dawn and went out into Jacky’s garden. It was full of dew, sunshine and singing birds. Going up past the old apple-tree, I sat on a stone with my back against the hen-house and soaked in the warmth and peace. The hens clucked as they woke up on their perches behind me. Here in close harmony with God and nature Jacky had developed a deep inner peace which he had exuded in a warm love of his fellow human-beings. His death had been a release from his suffering but his spirit was still here in the beauty he had created. White butterflies drifted along between the flowers and as the tears ran down my face I knew that I was experiencing a moment when the division between the here and the hereafter was very thin.
Later that morning in a graveyard filled with sunshine and people we laid him to rest, surrounded by his old friends above and beside him. As the white butterflies fluttered around the yew trees I watched Aunty Peg’s bowed figure heave in sorrow, and wondered how she would cope with life without him, or how we could fill for her the gap his going had left. Then somewhere in my mind on that warm August day he let me know that he would be waiting, and that the wait would not be long.
Later that day Cork won the All-Ireland Final. From where he surely watched with delight, Jacky did not need a stand ticket.
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS
TO JACKY DEATH was nothing to be afraid of, but for Aunty Peg it was a different matter. Soon after his death she began to feel unwell, so the doctor sent her into hospital for tests. She hated every minute of it, and objected vehemently to all the injections and tubes that were part of hospital routine. Finally she could tolerate it no longer and, having always been her own woman, she discharged herself and came home, much to the annoyance of the consultant and matron. That day she sat by the fire in her sitting-room and told me, “I’m not going back into that hospital. If I’m going to die it’s going to be here in the comfort of my own home.”
I sought out the doctor for advice. “Well,” he said, “she has cancer and it is fairly advanced. They could operate but there are no guarantees, and if she wants to stay at home she should have that choice.”
“Will she suffer?” I asked.
“Not with proper medical care, and I’ll be here when she needs me.”
He was as good as his word, and during the months that followed proved to be a tower of strength.
In the beginning Aunty Peg came down the narrow high stairs behind the shop every day to sit by her sitting-room fire. She wrote dozens of letters to people who had written to her since Jacky’s death. At night one of our children slept with her, but as she gradually grew weaker she could no longer get out of bed by herself, and I changed places with Sean.
The time that followed was a very lonely, disturbing, sometimes sad experience, but strange as it may seem, there were times, too, which were very funny. She was a great patient, which made caring for her very easy, but she did not want to die and this on occasions caused me real distress. On a bad day she would ask me plaintively, “Am I going to die?” and I could never tell her because the following day she might be feeling in better spirits and talking about going to the wood for a walk when she was better. I did not want to take the joy of those good days from her while she still had them. It was almost as if she did not want to know.
And yet, as she grew weaker, part of her did know. But she did not want to discuss it. One night she instructed me to open the tall press in her bedroom. “Take out the parcel on the top shelf,” she told me. I did as I was asked and laid it on the bed where we opened it. Inside was a pair of white linen sheets, pillow-cases edged with lace, and a heavy crochet bedspread. “You know what they are for?” she asked. I nodded silently, wrapped them up and put them back in the press. I sat on her bed wondering if she wanted to say anything more, but she caught my hand and said, “We’ll let it at that.”
She never mentioned the bedclothes for her wake again, but from then on we both knew, and understood that she did not want to talk about her approaching death.
Again her relatives and friends came to see her. One well-meaning lady, however, annoyed her intensely.
“Peg,” she would gush, “you are looking wonderful!”
When she left Peg would look at me with a knowing smile on her face. “Does she think that I am a pure fool? I know well how I look.” Another, much wiser visitor brought her brandy, and every night before settling down she would smile and say, “We’ll have a drop.” I would pour two glasses. “Sláinte,” she would say raising her glass. “If I don’t die soon you’ll be an alcoholic!”
Her long, narrow bedroom had
a window that opened onto the garden at the back and another that opened to the street at the front. All her life she had needed very little sleep and had often passed hours of the night looking out the window. Now, even though she could no longer stand or walk, she continued to get out of bed and was in danger of falling on the floor. She could not understand why she could not walk because in her dreams, which she mixed up with reality, she had no difficulty in walking. She would wake up after a long sleep and tell me that she had been on a farm outside the village, a place which she had perhaps visited regularly years previously. Then in surprise she would ask me, “How is it I can walk around the fields over there and I cannot walk at all here?” Her mind began to wander and went way back to the days of her girlhood. Sometimes she thought that her dead relatives were all around the room, especially Jacky, and she would ask me if I could see them. Gradually the memory of Jacky faded, and it was her parents and her early childhood that she spoke about. Childhood hurts long forgotten and buried in the deep recesses of her mind came to the surface.
It was my first experience of caring for a dying person, and I found it mentally draining. She had lost touch with this world and in some strange way I felt that I, too, was going along with her. It gave me a sense of release to leave the room and come downstairs and cross the garden to hear the children laughing and shouting in our kitchen. Their youthful energy revitalised me, and sustained me against the malaise of death in the sickroom. Their attitude to her illness was interesting to see. The two teenagers were obviously shaken and dismayed by the change in Aunty Peg, while the younger ones bounced in and out of her room as if everything was normal.
During those months our friends and neighbours were wonderful. They visited and cooked but most important of all they took time to talk and sit with her. At Christmas one friend brought a large supply of mincepies; the children were especially thrilled because it had seemed that they were going to have a pie-less Christmas. When we had a power failure during a very cold spell in January, one old man brought his gas heater and tank of gas up the stairs to keep her room warm. Up the street was the lady whom we called the Nurse, and she came some evenings and sat for a few hours, as did another retired lady who was an old friend of Peg’s. Another friend, Betsy, also sat with her during the evening. At the time we had a marvellous girl called Ann working in the shop. She was always willing to help and when we had to leave the room during the day she ran up and down the stairs to check that everything was all right. It was a great mental ease to us, because always on our minds was the worry that Aunty Peg would fall out of bed. While it happened occasionally, thankfully she never hurt herself. Nevertheless, whenever I ran upstairs after a short absence I was always apprehensive that something could have gone wrong while I had been away. Even when we were not in the room with her she was still in our minds. The security of having somebody to sit with her was a tremendous relief. Only her friends could stay with her; it would have been difficult to introduce into her room anybody who was not already close to her. She herself only wanted around her people whom she knew well and loved. She had always been a religious person in the sense of performing her religious duties regularly, but with death approaching she cast aside all the trappings of religion as if they brought her no comfort. Her face lit up though when Gabriel came into the room, to sit on the bed and hold her hand. She needed love more than prayers now.
Waiting for this slow, inevitable death had a strangely hypnotic effect on me. It was almost like standing on the beach watching the tide come relentlessly nearer, waiting for a wave to wash over her and take her away. Sometimes I wished that it would just come and that there would be an end to it; then I was flooded with guilt to have even had such a thought. Because she did not want to die she was like someone hanging from a cliff by her finger-tips; afraid to let go, she held on desperately, even as her grip weakened. I had this extraordinary feeling that I was holding her: if I let go, she would fall; if I did not, I would go with her. From long hours together in that room we were both slightly outside the ordinary world then. Her room had become the focus of my life.
One grey day in March I reviewed the situation with the doctor. He came regularly and was a great comfort. Because she was used to me and we understood each other well I did not want to upset Aunty Peg by getting anybody else in to stay with her at night, but if the present situation continued it would have to be done. “How long more will it go on?” I asked the doctor. I felt guilty even to be voicing the question because it made me feel that I was wishing her death closer. But he answered, “It will be all over before the week is out.” As in everything about her illness he was right. She would sleep for long periods but would wake at times and be perfectly lucid for a few minutes. One day she asked me for her jewellery box, and having looked at the different pieces she smiled and went back to sleep. Another day she looked at me and said, “When you came here first I did not like you. I thought you were young and silly with daft ideas,” and she smiled with a spark of her old humour.
Gradually the periods of sleep grew longer and one wet evening when a cold wind whipped the rain against the small windows she slipped into a coma. Fr Seamus, who had come regularly to visit her, said the prayers for the dying and anointed her. I wondered if she could still hear us. Gabriel and the two younger children gathered around the bed. The two older ones had opted not to be there and we felt that it should be their own choice. Sean, who was ten, had always been particularly close to her; he touched her face and arranged her well-worn rosary beads between her fingers. I hoped that she could feel him near. As the night wore on her breathing became more laboured. While her niece, Agnes, came and sat with her, I went to the bed in the next room and dreamed of falling over a high cliff.
It took Aunty Peg a long time to die and it was very distressing to listen and watch. Betsy came and was far more supportive than I, and then the Nurse came and brought with her an air of serene capability because she had sat at many a death-bed around the parish. She was wonderful and soothing both to the woman in the bed and the one standing weakly beside it. When the laboured breathing gasped to a halt at midday it was a welcome release. Quietness filled the long, low room as life slowly whispered away, and a great peace came over Aunty Peg and indeed over me. I felt drained of vitality, as if some of my inner being had gone with her. An absolute stillness filled every corner of the room.
Walking down the stairs and opening the door into her sitting-room the finality of death hit me. I realised that all the little things which she had treasured and cared for all her life were now left behind, and that she would never again sit here where she had spent most of her days. Standing in this quiet room on that cold day I was aware of how final death was. It was no great truth I had discovered, but it was the first time that I had realised it in the marrow of my bones.
Later Gabriel and I wrapped her in a blanket and carried her through the garden full of daffodils to the front room of the guest-house where she was to be laid out convenient to the street and the people coming in for the wake. While the Nurse and Betsy laid her out I brought in big bunches of the daffodils that she had always loved and arranged them around her bed between the lighted candles. Now it was her turn to use the shining brass candlesticks which had travelled around the village to different wakes over the years. She had always kept them polished and gleaming, ready for anybody who needed them. Her bed was dressed with the bed-linen and crochet bedspread which she had shown me months before.
We wondered how the children would react to what had happened when they came home from school. I took the two younger ones into the candle-lit room. They looked at Aunty Peg in silence for a few minutes and then Sean took the rosary beads that were entwined around her fingers and said, “That’s the wrong rosary beads. She told me that she wanted the old black ones when she was laid out. I’ll get it now.” He ran out of the room and returned with her old rosary beads. They had obviously discussed all these details, much to my surprise. Diarmuid, aged seven
, promptly went out and collected all his friends from around the village and made them kneel and say their prayers, and threatened them that they were not to laugh as this was a very serious occasion. But though they did not laugh, I certainly smiled as he stood in front of his row of mourners and watched over them sternly.
Because she had been part of the place for so long it was fitting that Aunty Peg’s wake should take place in the middle of the village. Because she had died in the afternoon the wake continued until the following evening. There was a constant flow of people through the house. Many of the neighbours sat through the night quietly chatting, and as the news spread around the parish her old friends came to say goodbye. It was a peaceful farewell in the end.
MATURE MOTHERHOOD
THERE IS NO such thing as the perfect mother, because motherhood calls for the stamina of youth allied to the wisdom of age. I had had four children with nothing but the stamina of youth to sustain me. When I became pregnant soon after Aunty Peg’s death I learned what the state of motherhood was like when, if not actually blessed by the wisdom of old age, it was at least made more resilient by the cushion of maturity.
Children, I believed, reached a civilised level of behaviour when you could sit them all down at the dinner table without wondering when the youngest member was going to upset a plate on top of an unsuspecting visitor or turn a sauce-boat sideways with a misdirected elbow. That year when our youngest got his First Holy Communion we went out for lunch. Up to then we had always celebrated family occasions at home, where we were joined by Jacky and Peg. Now they were gone, and their absence would be less noticeable away from familiar surroundings. We had a great day and I felt that I had reached a milestone on the road of motherhood. I was pleased with my progress but a little sad to be celebrating, as we thought, our final First Holy Communion.
