This is a post to mark the fact, to complete the story that I started here. I have always been a fan of the Irish Catholic wake and funeral, in spite of my own sturdy atheism. Over three days from her death to her burial, we had the opportunity to reclaim something of the woman that her stroke had stolen from us. For 9 whole months, we were unable to miss her because nominally she was still with us. Our discussions about her centred on the hidden code (imagined or otherwise) behind her blinks and head movements, the adequacy of her medication, the quality of her care. I can barely express the luxury of days on end devoted to talking about the real her: her tastes, her interests, her exploits.
I didn't mean this to be a long post, but maybe there are one or two things I should recount.
I brought Simon to the Muintir Na Tire hall, to show him where I had spent hundreds of evenings as a child. One of Nana's old friends told me that without her, the hall would never have been built. She and two allies had raised the money to build a community hall (they were convinced that the town needed it), secured the site, and then backed the purchase with their own homes. This in 1950s Ireland; the two allies were men, while Nana was not, and didn't own the house that she mortgaged for the Muintir Na Tire hall. I doubt my granddad had a say in the matter. I am charmed and astonished by her determination; when you look at photos from that period she's a smiley Irish housewife in ugly dresses and hair fixed with curlers. But she made things happen.
Playing cards was one of Nana's great pleasures later in life, and over the course of the weekend the house filled with her card buddies. People come to funeral houses ("corpse houses", they're called in Roscrea) for so many reasons: when our mother died my siblings and I identified a category of "die hard funeral junkies" who came for the company, the sandwiches and the tea. One of the most touching visitors was one of Nana's cards partners. Billy is in his 80s, and doesn't drive; so not only was Nana a treasured partner, she was also his lift to cards 4 nights a week. They were great friends. Billy broke down and wept like a child at the door of the room where Nana was laid out. "She wasn't just my friend," said this conservative old country man, "she was my best friend".
Nana only took up cards (she played 25, mainly) after my grandfather died. Danny was a great man for the cards, a great man for the pub too, and neither was appropriate for his wife. He used to tell her that she wouldn't be able to play; she'd be no use. Nana wasn't one to protest - she accepted the things she couldn't change, and this was a strong willed man - but after Danny died 17 years ago, she learned to play, and she developed a whole new lease of life. Said one of her partners, she was a far better player than Dan ever was.
I spent much of the weekend manning the phone, keeping my aunt insulated from the pathological bores and the nosy. One man phoned from his home Miami Beach in Florida - neither a relative nor a particularly close friend - and told me simply that he had to phone to tell us how much my grandmother would be missed. Without her, he said, the community life of Roscrea would be much much poorer, and traditional music would never have gained a niche.
The tributes of others reaffirmed the cruelty of the stroke in wiping out such an extraordinary woman. But more than that, they reassured us that out of 88 exceptional years, 9 horrific months were nothing more than a blip. And I felt I got my Nana back.
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