I was having coffee with a couple of colleagues in their 20s the other day and asked whether they had plans for the long weekend. They had. They were going to festivals I had barely heard of to hear bands I had never heard of. “Have you any plans yourself?” they asked politely.
“No, none at all,” I said, “no wait, actually, I’m going to a funeral in the midlands on Saturday morning but other than that, I have nothing planned.” I think I might be 102.
I am addled from courses. I am sick of putting in assignments. This has taken from my blogging time. And then life has been busy; this time of year is always a bit frantic. One week I found myself out almost every evening: I concede bookclub on Monday was my own fault;Tuesday was supposed to be a quiet evening in but the boys had their French tutor come and they had stayed late at school at games club and everyone was extremely ratty; Wednesday was baptism preparation where the other volunteer pointed out to me that my name is on the rota 6 times which is more than anyone else’s and I had some very unChristian thoughts; on Thursday, I had volunteered to help out at the school graduation evening, Daniel had GAA and Mr. Waffle was stuck late at work. By the time Friday rolled around, I was good for nothing. There was a lot of this kind of thing all through May and June.
And then the house started collapsing around us, there was a problem with the gutter and the unseasonable weather meant that we were met by a waterfall every time we went out the back door. The back door itself broke – totally vindicating the builder’s prediction that we would rue the purchase of a bifold door – and in the weeks it took the man to come out to fix it we secured it with a bicycle spider [which is what we call the springy yoke to secure things on the back of a bicycle] which was actually, probably not super secure. The shed door broke and the man didn’t come to fix it for four weeks which meant bringing bicycles into the house through the broken back door and under the waterfall. A sub-optimal system. Then the broadband gave up. Three long weeks we were without broadband. Twice eircom engineers came to our house in the middle of the day without notice and twice we missed them. Because we have jobs; to pay for the broadband, inter alia.
On one day they arrived during the only two hours the house was empty as it was the children’s last day of school. They are cunning the eircom engineers.
Our new curtains arrived. I hated them. A bit unfortunate as they cost us a fortune. I have christened them the curtains of doom. I am hoping that removing the pleating from the pelmet [a misunderstanding, let us not speak of it] may help but I am beginning to fear that I may finally have encountered the limits to my affection for beige and cream.
Seriously, is it any wonder it’s been quiet on the blogging front with one thing and another?
Herself was 16 on April 12 so this is a very belated birthday post.
In the run up to her birthday she conducted a concerted campaign to get her nose pierced. We yielded though I fought a good, but ultimately unsuccessful fight, on the “this is cultural appropriation” angle. Once her birthday had passed, Mr. Waffle took her to a tattooed man on the quays who pierced her nose. It’s the outside of enough to have to support something you don’t even want but I didn’t want her going on her own so Mr. Waffle nobly took her. I do not love the nose piercing but it is reversible, I suppose.
Poor child, I was glad she had something to look forward to as she got braces on her bottom teeth and was absolutely miserable. I am slightly in the horrors about our choices on braces. Her teeth were fine and I feel I have been susceptible to American influence in my belief that they should be perfect. She bitterly points out that, as is often the case, I have learnt my lesson from her and would be pretty reluctant to put her brothers through the same misery unless the dentist insists.
This year in school is Transition Year where they do fewer academic subjects and more other things. One of the things they did was a school musical. She told me it was terrible and that she had a tiny part. I don’t know why I believed her because it wasn’t true and had I known the nature of the performance I would have brought along the extended family to admire her genius. It was held in a small theatre and the children did a wonderful job. Herself was fantastic, funny and clever and really engaging in one of the three main roles. I loved it and so did her father and brothers who are a much harder audience to please. One of the other parents said to me afterwards, “Is there nothing that daughter of yours can’t do?” and a part of me thought, “Nope, there isn’t really.”
Yet again this year she was on the organising committee for the school trust’s gathering of all its schools. She is now an expert conference organiser. She also basically runs the school and has got herself on to the student council for the fifth year running.
Although she missed three months at the start of the year, she still got a “Teastas Ór” – gold award for her year’s work. Not worth seeing she assured me as she gathered up her portfolio of stuff and hid it away from me forever. Sigh.
She has been very good about going to French class on Saturdays which she only finds alright. All the children in the class except for her and one boy, A, go to single sex schools. She and A sit together at the centre of the semi circle of students as they are the only two students who can speak to everyone in the group without embarrassment. “Once,” she told me, “a boy spoke to a girl and she went to the toilets and never came back.” This really takes me back, I was that soldier. I still cannot think of my debs without a slight shudder.
Due to constant efforts on my part, she realises that the rest of the country exists and that views outside Dublin may be ambivalent towards the capital. She was on a school day out to Tayto Park (the theme park devoted to a crisp, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it) and seeing all of the other children wearing GAA shirts in county colours, her friend E said, “We’re surrounded by culchies.” Acutely aware of how this term is less than appealing to people from outside Dublin, she said to her Dublin friend, “Don’t say that.” E replied, “What should I say then, ‘people of the farm’?” My poor daughter, she has a mountain to climb.
She is still a vegetarian. I find this tough going but I am resigned. She’s doing it for climate change reasons which her father finds admirable. Like many teenagers (but unlike her brothers, it must be said) she is always off marching against climate change and trying to get us to buy less plastic and worry about the environment. It’s working a bit although, obviously, I bought the Aga which is an environmental mortal sin. Her vegetarianism and my poor cooking skills are not a great match. I find myself buying things in cartons (paper, recyclable cartons) for her from the supermarket which I know is not great. “What was your Indian vegetarian thing like?” I asked. “See the way it has a smiling white Irish man on the packet and it’s described as mild?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “It tasted like that,” she said. Alas, another failure. She’s a great cook herself and occasionally she cooks for all of us. I am hoping this will become more of a thing over the summer holidays. I came home recently to find she had made a very elaborate blueberry pie. I definitely regard this as a good sign.
She spent a weekend in Sligo with her aunt and uncle who were going to a wedding and retained her services to mind her two year old cousin. She found it tiring but lucrative. She’s working on her CV and is anxious to add to her list of skills. She did some work experience as part of Transition Year, so she’s got that as well. She would like to get a job. I am a bit unsure. I’m prepared to fund a reasonable degree of excitement and I feel she ought to have fun during her school summers. She feels a job would be fun which shows how little her work experience has taught her.
I find her a delight to be with. The two of us went to Cork together last weekend and she was such a charming companion. She was lovely with all of the elderly relatives. She was lovely with me. And she makes me laugh. We watched “The Lives of Others” recently and she commented, “I know it’s the fault of the repressive State but honestly, if we’d lived with you in East Germany, you would have been disastrous.” Funny because it’s true, people.
She is very wise. I am not sure why that should be but it is. I find her advice helpful and thoughtful. As she says herself, she is a wise owl in training. She reads a great deal; almost all of it very serious and worthy. A lot of it in French which is even more serious and more worthy. She gets this from her father who loves a serious book. Not from me, I’m rereading Harry Potter.
She seems very cool and trendy to me though, as she pointed out, if I think this, it is, basically, the kiss of death.
She is very good about telling us where she’s going and who she is with. She travels around the city, the suburbs and surrounding counties without any difficulty whatsoever. Her travel card is her most precious possession. I find myself praying she won’t be injured while riding her bicycle in town. Is it any wonder that I have become infinitely tedious on the subject of segregated cycle lanes?
This academic year has seen her change and grow a lot. The three months in France made a big difference but so did the freedom from the school academic routine. When she got back from France she had work experience one day a week; she also did a university law and politics course one day a week as part of an early university entrance programme; and then when she was in school they did different things – first aid, driving, the school musical, making a radio show. It was all pretty good, I think. It may be part of the reason why she described herself as being like a battery chicken who has experienced going free range but is now being sent back to the coop. I think she has strong views on our education system and they may not be entirely positive.
Earlier today, I saw her off on a plane to Zambia (via Madrid and Addis Ababa, mmm) where she and some classmates are going on a school tour (can I point out that all we got for our school tour was a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon?). They spent the year raising money for a school and orphanage in Zambia and they’re going to visit it as part of the trip which should be eye opening for them. I am terrified that she will get malaria, a terror not remotely helped by my father who snorted when he heard where she was going and feared that she would certainly get something. He’s a bit of a pessimist my father. I’m hopeful she will have a fantastic time but I am a little bit afraid. Honestly, this seems to be the basic state of being a parent of a 16 year old: I’m a little bit afraid at every new step but hopeful that it will all be fine, even better than fine, perhaps.
Saturday, June 15
I was up in bed reading at 1.30 in the morning when my mobile phone rang downstairs. By the time I got there, the caller had rung off and there was no indication of who it was in my recent calls. I instantly thought of herself who was due to be arriving in Addis Ababa. Had something gone wrong? Mr. Waffle was off in Copenhagen for the weekend (a college reunion) and I sat up in bed reading and worrying for a bit. At 2 the phone rang again and I leapt out of bed and got there just in time. It was my brother. The nursing home had called him, my mother had just died. He was actually in Dublin for the weekend. I drove out to his friend’s place in West Dublin and at 3 in the morning in driving rain picked up him and his bike and brought them back to our house. We couldn’t get my sister.
I went back to bed but I couldn’t sleep which never happens to me. My sister said, a bit tartly, I thought, “If this teaches you some empathy with people who can’t sleep, it won’t be a bad thing.” I spoke to her in the morning. She went to tell my father which was a pretty miserable job. My brother went down to Cork on the train. I was going to drive down with him and the boys but then I thought that would be crazy, the boys were only back from Cork and how would it help. I think I put in the longest day on Saturday. I told Mr. Waffle but unfortunately he couldn’t get back from Copenhagen until the following day. I told the boys about their grandmother. They were surprised and a bit sad but very kind to me. I rang my mother’s oldest friend from college and told her. I told the woman from the church that I wouldn’t be able to run the ice cream stall at the garden party the next day. I emailed work, I texted my boss. I tried to ring herself in Zambia but no joy. Michael had his drama showcase that day so Daniel and I went in. All the time I was exhausted and slightly spaced out. It all felt completely surreal. While the boys were great I did feel a bit alone; stuck in Dublin, unable to go to Cork.
My brother and sister went to see the body in the nursing home. My sister sent me a photo. It was pretty awful not to be there. My father and brother and sister met the undertaker. I really wanted to be there but I couldn’t and it couldn’t be put off. My sister put me on speaker phone. It’s really not the same as being there. We agreed the wording of the death notice and agreed to do some research on possible burial spots. When next I talked to my brother and sister they were wandering around a graveyard well outside Cork looking for my grandfather’s plot. I was able to provide the useful information that I knew that a big gravestone had been stuck up in the 80s as there had been a bit of family…discussion in relation to it. They found it.
I got an email from my friend in Paris setting out the programme of entertainment she had devised for Daniel (who is off to Paris in the morning). I felt I ought probably to say about my mother. I got an oddly formal reply in French (we usually speak to each other in French and write in English). I found it oddly comforting. It is, as she said, “toujours un moment douloureux”.
And then I was in Dublin, a bit sad with the two boys. We went out to my sister-in-law’s house. My little niece was two and we brought her a present. It was so strange but it was nice to be with people who I liked. I was cheered by the two year old. My sister-in-law said wisely, “The worst thing is telling people.” She volunteered to pass on the news to some friends we had in common. I was anxious to tell people they didn’t have to come as a mid-week funeral 250kms away is probably the worst thing.
I talked to my friend M in Helsinki who I have known all my life and who knew my mother really well. Her father died last year and she said I would be exhausted. She was right. We talked about my mother and in a weird way, it felt like I was getting her back after five long years in the nursing home when she was, as a friend said, “Getting further and further away”. On Sunday morning, one of the nicest messages I got was from a friend of M’s, who is really only an acquaintance of mine, it was the combination of kind and surprising.
On Saturday night I got a call from my cousin, my aunt was flying out to America the next day and she wanted to visit Cork as she would miss the funeral. I felt utterly useless as I passed him on to my brother and sister.
Sunday, June 16
Sunday was a better day. Firstly, I slept Saturday night and then I knew Mr. Waffle was coming back. I entered into some complex logistical arrangements to farm the boys out to their Dublin uncle but in the end I left them in the house waiting for their father’s return while I cycled off to the station. Inevitably, my bag split and I had to traipse home again and swap it for a new one. Still, I got a seat on the train, which was not a given, and I was going home. My phone started pinging constantly with messages from expected and unexpected people. I felt it was an achievement to have got myself on the train.
My sister met me at the station in Cork at 4.30. It turns out that grief is exhausting and it saps your power to get things done but many things need to be done and so many decisions need to be made. What would be a good outfit for my mother to wear in her coffin? How about that brooch and scarf that she always liked? What kind of a coffin should she have? An eco-coffin we decided (unvarnished, if you’re curious, quite nice actually). What readings should we have for the funeral service? We had Wisdom 3:1-9 and Revelation 14:13. Turns out you can pick the gospel as well but we didn’t know that so the priest picked it on the morning which was fine too. Who would sing at the funeral? A cousin volunteered. What hymns would we have? More challenging than you might think. It turns out my father doesn’t like a lot of hymns (Lord of all Hopefulness? Too gloomy apparently). And if you get a headache when you are tired and weepy (and who doesn’t?) you are doing all this while regularly popping paracetamol. “Is there such a thing as a wedding planner for a funeral?” asked my brother. “Yes,” said my sister and I, “he’s called an undertaker.”
I still hadn’t managed to contact the Princess who was now in Zambia. I was anxious to talk to her before the notice went up on rip.ie (death’s finest resource) in case in some weird way someone else in the group saw it or heard about it.
Monday, 17 June
The notice went up on rip.ie but didn’t appear in the paper.
Apparently my grandfather’s plot was full and my mother would be buried with my great uncles and aunts and my great-grandfather who, prudently, had bought a plot with perpetual burial rights in 1913. Due to my family’s filing abilities which, I have to tell you, are phenomenal we had the original 1913 document to hand and were able to get a space in a lovely old graveyard in the city.
I went to the chemist to pick up a prescription for my father and the chemist, who I know well from our regular interactions asked how my parents were. I said that my mother had died on Saturday. “Oh,” he said, “sympathetically, I’m so sorry, she was such a lady.” The poor chemist, I don’t know how used he is to customers dissolving into tears but he was really kind.
An old friend of my parents had died at the weekend also and I was sent off to get sympathy cards. I brought them out for my father’s approval. “Well, not that one,” he said, “she was a devout Protestant and would have been outraged to have someone praying for her soul.” Who knew?
My sister and I went to the funeral service in Mallow. We were late. As we sprinted up to the church, I said to my sister, “I bet Protestants are never late for funerals.” “Well,” she said, “we have an excellent excuse.” It was a lovely, lovely service. The eldest child gave a great speech at the end and my sister and I wept through it. It’s not that we weren’t sorry for the deceased, we were, she was a lovely person, but we were more sorry for our own mother. Outside the church we sympathised with the dapper widower. He was not crying demonstrating admirable sang froid but we mortified ourselves by snuffling away and having him sympathise with us at his own wife’s funeral. She had suffered from Alzheimer’s for the last ten years of her life and he had minded her at home. He said to me, “You know, people said to me that I was very good, but I wasn’t really, I loved having her there; your poor father didn’t even have that.” More tears.
My sister and I went to the funeral home to see the body. It’s a strange thing to see your mother in a coffin. Her hands were stone cold, of course, and she looked waxy. “Good outfit,” I said to my sister. We fixed her hair. It felt almost like she might sit up and talk.
We dropped into the cemetery on the way home to see if we could find the family plot but to no avail. We found Fr. Matthew’s grave alright. While we were wandering around, herself rang me from Zambia. The line wasn’t great but she was full of news and excitement. “I have some bad news,” I said my voice catching, “I’m afraid Nana died at the weekend. You won’t be able to make it home for the funeral.” Whether it was me crying or the bad line, I was surprised to hear her say after a shocked moment, “Not attend my own father’s funeral?” “Not Daddy, Nana!” I shouted. The poor child, she was so relieved to find that it wasn’t her father, that I think she was able to bear the news with much greater equanimity than she might otherwise have done. Honestly, it feels like she only has to go away for a grandparent to keel over.
I went back to my parents’ house to wait some more. Waiting for a funeral is a bit like waiting for a flight. You’re tense waiting for an event and there’s nothing to really do except wait.
Tuesday, 18 June
The death notice finally appeared in the paper.
Mr. Waffle and the boys came down. It was lovely to see them. We had the removal. Some of my friends and colleagues from Dublin came down. I was simultaneously delighted to see them and slightly appalled at how awkward it must have been. I have decided I will never again miss a funeral or removal. The Lady Captain of my mother’s golf club turned up and the head of the Chemistry Department in UCC where she had worked. These were surprisingly lovely things to happen. The bishop also turned up. I am still a bit unclear as to why.
Loads of my mother’s relatives came, people I knew well and people I only dimly remembered from childhood. A woman pressed my hand and said, “I will always remember going back to your mother’s house on the pony and trap at Christmas. Han, your grandmother you know, had all the trappings and cakes and things we never had in our house and we came in and your mother was wearing a long skirt and writing Christmas cards beside the piano with Perry Como playing in the background. We thought she was the most sophisticated thing we had ever seen in our lives.” It made me laugh. Almost nothing made me cry at the removal actually. A woman who had been a good friend and golf partner of my mother’s stopped to talk to me. Another crony of theirs who lived up the road from my parents had died a couple of weeks ago. This woman said to me, “I think of your mother all the time, you know she gave me her driver when she couldn’t play any more and I used it this morning.” That was the only thing that made me cry. It does make me happy to think that her clubs are getting use. She would have liked that she was very generous but also frugal. She used to say reprovingly to me and my brother and sister, “I’m not part of the throw-away generation, you know.”
I lost count of the times I explained that I was not my sister and that I was “still above in Dublin” (always the faint tone of disapproval). The boys and Mr. Waffle provided moral support. The boys were very good and very patient, there was a lot of shaking hands.
When we went to the church, the sacristan was very helpful. Mr. Waffle said he sounded like a neighbour. Turned out he grew up near us in Dublin but moved to Cork at 17 to marry a Cork woman. Despite all his years in Cork he never lost his Dublin accent. “Do your family say you’re ‘still below in Cork?’†I asked. Apparently not.
Mr. Waffle and I went to check in to a local little hotel that night, we felt the boys would probably not welcome having to double up and there really wasn’t room for everyone in my parents’ house. The woman on reception was, God love her, full of enthusiasm as we checked in. Were we well? Had we had a good journey? What were our plans while staying in Cork? There was an awkward pause. “It’s my mother’s funeral in the morning,” I said. Oh dear, I did feel bad, but I was too exhausted to dissemble for the woman on reception. We got a lovely room though.
Wednesday, 19 June
The morning of the funeral dawned mercifully bright and sunny. I was surprised by the people who were there. People we hadn’t told at all but who had heard through the inevitable grapevine – a college friend, a school friend now living in Dublin (she heard from her father who had it from the retired academic network – who knew?). And then there were millions of my brother’s friends who my mother fed for years and some of their parents as well, colleagues, cousins, an old college friend of my mother’s from Dublin and all sorts of other people. The funeral seemed to go fine. My sister and I did readings, the boys did prayers of the faithful along with various other relatives. My brother made did a good job on a speech which reminded those of us who knew her what she was like and, I think, gave a good picture to those who never knew her and he said how sad the Princess was not to be there.
We went on to the cemetery which was beautiful in the sunshine. The priest said a prayer and she was lowered into the grave bought by my prudent great-grandfather to bury my great-grandmother in 1913.
I walked out of the cemetery with the undertaker chatting to him about the boom (it’s only in Dublin apparently, he anticipates a downturn there at any moment and thinks in the rest of the country it will get even worse – he anxiously twirled his bowler as he spoke – though I imagine his line of work is quite steady). I thanked him for everything and wanted to particularly commend the woman on reception who received my first teary phone call on Saturday morning – I imagine she has teary phone calls are part of her lot but she’s quite good at managing them. I asked about what they look for in a recruit and he said, “Well, once my brother interviewed a man who asked what the hours were. My brother said, ‘Do you have a watch?’ He said that of course he did and my brother said, ‘You can throw that away for starters.'”
We went for lunch afterwards to the hotel where my brother and sister and I went for first communion and confirmation lunches as children. A friend of mine had brought his two children with him and weirdly the four children (his two and my two) had a lovely time over lunch. Lunch generally was fine and then eventually everyone drifted away. Mr. Waffle and the boys and I went for a walk and then round to my sister for tea which turned into dinner. We went back to my father at 9 to find that due to miscommunication, he had been all alone since 6. I felt like a heel as I made him a couple of sandwiches.
Thursday, 20 June
We called in to my aunt and wished her many happy returns on her 90th birthday. We had seen a lot of each other over the past few days and we were perhaps not in as celebratory a mood as we might have been but I am going to call down again in a week and we will perhaps be in a better mood to celebrate then.
After our birthday visit, we gathered ourselves up and drove back to Dublin. It was a long enough day and having been so anxious to leave home on Sunday, I was glad to get back to it on Thursday evening notwithstanding that the cat left us a dead pigeon in the utility room.
Friday, 21 June
I went out to visit my mother’s friend from college who lives in Dublin. I just wanted to talk about my mother and she seemed the best person to do it with. I have known her my whole life and I remember going to the zoo with her when we are children. She is delightfully entertaining and acerbic and talking to her about my mother reminds me of what my mother was like before she got sick.
Saturday, 22 June
Almost back to normal today. I feel like I am recovering from illness or something. Delicate and a bit light headed but on the mend. Mr. Waffle said something funny this afternoon and it made me laugh in the hall and the boys came running out to the hall, arms outstretched, sure that I was crying and relieved to see that all was well.
Back to work on Monday.
We saw Daniel off to Paris yesterday. It was his first time flying without school or family and I was a bit nervous even though, flying as an unaccompanied minor, he was accompanied by a bored airline employee. You will be pleased to hear that he made it safely to Paris, notwithstanding my concerns. Herself is in Botswana due to fly home via Addis Ababa. Michael is enrolled in a drama course for the week despite his protests.
I see in today’s Irish Times that i) the heatwave is expected to be so intense in Paris this week that they are opening the swimming pools at night and ii) there has been a coup attempt in Ethiopia and that there are “reports of gunfire in Addis Ababa”. Also, Michael is loathing his drama course.
My father’s sister was 90 on June 20 or possibly June 22 (there is some debate on this point, my grandmother and the official record did not agree). My father was 94 on March 25. My aunt told me that the matron in the Bons in Cork commented to my granny that “Of course, we will have to shoot your relatives.” Her meaning I think being that they lived a long time rather than a revolutionary proposal.
I hope that I have those genes.