Uncle Denis is gone but gathers us all together to share best of memories

SO IT was that we brought uncle Denis home from his beloved Dublin to be buried with his own. We can fix our bearings for the future from the geography of the past and reference the timeline of a life from a walk around the town. So there I am up at my parents’ grave in the old cemetery on my dad’s anniversary, just a few days ago.

I was in our sitting room. Dad had only just passed. The early morning sun stole in the front window and lit up the photo of my Auntie Kathleen, who was smiling as if she was delighted to have her fun-loving big brother for company, free of pain and care. I’d say she knew dad would be singing for her – he knew the words of every song. I believe in some sort of a hereafter. Auntie Kathleen’s smile won me over on the day Dad died.

On Friday I got to present the medals for the John B Keane league, played for by the under eights and tens. The unconfined joy surely got Dad out from his anything but final resting place. Up with him, legs dangling and hands waving, sitting on the graveyard wall for the watching of the games.

The league is named in his honour. Better to him than an honorary doctorate is that.

The reverie on Dad’s anniversary was gloriously interrupted by the ringing of the bell for the break over the town side wall in Scoil Réalta na Maidine primary school. I was a boy there, once.

The whole school was out having fun on the fine day that was in it. This old graveyard was full of life.

Mam is buried next to Dad and there have been days when I cried here until the trickle of tears turned to salt on the corners of my lips.

I think it was the unfairness of it all that got to me, but on Dad’s anniversary I am in a good place. There was a languor there in the warm air and a mauve cat played possum under an old lichen-lined gravestone.

The swallows were back, flitting between the Celtic crosses. I love the swallows. They never give up and they always find their way home.

Over the front wall and down a small bit is Greenlawn, where I was born, a long time ago. The Emmets won the treble that day. I have no great memory of the occasion myself but Mam said she could hear the cheers coming from Sheehy Park just across the road when she was in labour.

The next up from the football field is St Michael’s College, our secondary school. Dad was beaten badly there but I was very happy even if I did get the occasional walloping. St Michael’s is an arm-aroundthe-shoulder school nowadays.

So there it is, the most of my life, where I started out and where I will end up, laid out in an L shape, up at the top of our town.

Uncle Denis is home now too, home for good, and laid to rest with his mam and dad.

We gave him a good old send-off. Pierre arrived from Cape Town and Bill flew in from Tokyo. David and Mamie travelled from Italy. Fergal came from wherever is dangerous right now and he and my brother Conor gave two incredibly lyrical, funny and poignant eulogies.

There was a good share of drink involved and we talked even more than usual about our uncle who never married. He saw every one of us as his own kid.

After the funeral, I walked down Church Street. And it seemed to me the old neighbours, who are long gone but never really went away, were out. In the pictures in my head Uncle Denis was leaning on the frame of the door of number 45 as he often did, all day long, giddy out.

I called my lovely Auntie Anne in California and told her the feeling that came over me. She is the last one alive of Dad’s siblings and was unable to travel. Auntie Anne, who Denis called every day, said she had a good feeling too. Anne felt her baby brother was still there with her. Ten thousand miles is no journey for spirituality.

Maybe we think too much in terms of a landscape that confines us and hems us in, when the reality is the places we can travel over know no boundaries. My L grounds me but the age of discovery brings us to the lands of spirituality, the last free unfettered and unmapped frontier.

Alex O’Connor knows this and he is but 13. Alex is Down syndrome. His dad John is my first cousin and yesterday was his last school day as principal of Coláiste na Sceilige in Cahersiveen. John and his wife Peggy are devoted to their boy, who is a full-time job.

Alex placed his hands on the grave of his ancestors at uncle Denis’s funeral. I believe Down syndrome people can communicate on a more sensitive and refined wavelength we cannot access.

So there it is, the most of my life, where I started out and where I will end up, laid out in an L shape, up at the top of our town

CAREFULLY, gently, Alex went on his knees and placed his soft hands on the dice throw of pebbles. It was as if Alex was communicating with Grandad Bill and Nana Hanna. He spoke too to Denis, in his coffin: “Love you, Uncle Denis.” Alex was mad about Denis, who was cuddly.

The swallows came back and dipped their wings like a flying squadron pass over. We sang ‘The Black Hills of Dakota’, our anthem.

I’d say Mam and Dad travelled from over the way to be with us, and Niccolai Schuster, who fell straight to Heaven from a balcony in Berkeley, was surely there. Nicc could never bear to miss the sing-song.

Then Alex placed his fingers along the indented roll call, carved in to the headstone. The names of Eamonn, Nana, Grandad, Baby Joseph, Julianne and Danny were traced. Alex ran his index finger through every letter. It was spiritual braille for a boy who sees and feels and greets.

I’m fairly sure there is a better place, somewhere. There are no absolutes but even the thinking is good for us and keeps our own alive by the very recall.

So it was a young boy revived the spirits of our beloveds, who surely came out to welcome Alex, Uncle Din and us.