Conversation from a Graveside

A folded copy of the Racing Post and your peaked cap rest together on top of the chestnut coffin. Together, they summarise your life more eloquently than the priest ever could. But he’ll put on a good show; smoothly dipping into his bag of religious tricks, kept for such occasions. ‘He was a gentleman / well-liked / hardworking’. Insert name here. Crammed in the front row, like a cityscape outline sits your legacy. Adults dressed in obligatory black; still and sombre. Between them, children poke and twitch like squirrels. I slip into a middle pew, listening to the polite shuffle of others behind me.

The congregation, for the most part, are of your generation. Old school churchgoers who never missed a Sunday mass in their youth and see no reason to start now. Men remove hats as they enter the church, resting a knotted hand on each pew while they walk - as if testing if it will support their weight. The women wear sensible shoes and satin headscarves tied under strict chins. Their spindly legs are covered in thick brown stockings - the kind once sold in old drapery shops alongside hair ribbons on the main street. The windows were always covered with toffee-tinted cellophane, making the mannequins look jaundiced.

Despite hinged hips and grinding knees, the older folk stand, kneel and sit diligently throughout the sermon. In front of me, a frail-looking woman responds resolutely to every refrain with a voice that belies her delicate figure. Several layers of clothing peek from her coat collar, like the curling pages of a damp book. As fingers thumb pearl rosary beads, her skin, the colour of old cobwebs stretches over huge knuckles like tree knurls. I notice her knitted hat is on inside out and the tag, at my eye level, is as distracting as a wasp.

There is no shelter in the small graveyard from the stinging March wind. I tuck myself by an imposing granite cross, politely greeting the occupants below, and lamenting the lack of trees. Callow fields roll gloriously away from low stone walls, but the dead don’t appreciate the view. With vestments flapping like ship’s sails, the priest begins, despite the two elderly men still strolling up the path. I glance over, wondering did they know you or are they here for the day out. They casually lean worn elbows on a convenient headstone to rest, as if ordering a pint at the bar. Oblivious to the burial, they begin to converse, distracting me from the sermon. Their conversation ranges from the price of petrol (scandalous) to recent grass growth (up a bit for the time of year) and how you, the deceased, will miss going to the bookies. They only pause in their dialogue as your coffin is lowered, removing tweed caps with ruddy hands and sighing in unison.

Heels shiver into the soft ground. One by one the family toss daffodils into your grave. The first clod of soil lands with a wet thump as a boy steps forward to read from a sheet of paper, firmly gripped against the buffeting wind. Your grandson, reading your favourite poem. He begins, but doesn’t have your bravado, and we can’t hear him. His mother cuffs him gently on the shoulder, mouthing ‘Speak up’ and the boy shouts, just as the priest lowers the microphone to the child’s mouth. ‘A man awaits his end/ Dreading and hoping all’ blasts across the cemetery, loud enough to wake the dead. For a second, a cold sun flashes through a tear in the clouds, and I hear you laughing.

The rest of the homily is carried away by the wind. The elderly men sigh, push themselves upright and fix back on their caps.

‘Sure the weather helps.’

‘T’was a good send-off.’

‘He wouldn’t have hoped for much better’ agrees his companion. Hands clasped behind bent spines, the men amble away, silent now.

by Dianne McPhelim

Incongruous comfort

In memory filled pockets

Sticky and gritty

From a life

Of building walls

Chasing cattle

Planting daffodils And handing out A Silvermint to a crying child.

Remnants of tobacco threads

From a habit

Long since abandoned With brutal determination.

A well thumbed Relic of Padre Pio

Authentic in the anguish and prayers Committed

Through its badge of blessing.

Rusty debris

Navigates its way

Under fingernails seeking solace In this trove Of lingering legacy.

by Celia Keenaghan