Grave Sunday is communal memory time for the Blessing of the Graves and bunches of flowers for the loved ones, writes MICHAEL HARDING
A FEW weeks ago, Majella, my favourite hairdresser, was away in Spain, so I had to go to the barber instead, and then last week, as I was passing her salon she was looking out the window, so I decided to go in and say hello.
I said, “Hello Majella,” and she said, “Hello Michael,” and I said, “I was looking for you last week, to cut my hair, but you were in Spain.”
And the Buzz Nally was in the salon, so I shook hands with him and I said, “It’s great to meet you, at last, because everyone is always telling me what a wonderful person you are.”
The Buzz is renowned as the Second Joe Dolan. He toured with Joe for 10 years, as part of the road crew, and looked and sounded so much like Joe that eventually he took to the stage himself, impersonating Joe, and wearing a white suit that Joe had given him as a gift.
Me and the Buzz got on so well that we left the shop together, and strolled a little bit, chatting away and waving at people because lots of people know the Buzz, and they salute him as he passes.
And then I met a very dear and beautiful friend, who had travelled up from Portlaoise where she had been attending the Blessing of the Graves.
She said, “The sun shone, and there was a great turn-out, and everyone had bunches of flowers for their departed loved ones.”
I said, “I sometimes go to Cavan for Grave Sunday, where my father is buried.”
My father’s tombstone is of the usual black Kilkenny limestone, common to so many Irish graves, and the words etched on it are terse and simple. He would not have wanted anything florid.
The stonemason doing the work at the time added a footnote to acknowledge who had erected it, and I laughed the first time I read the words carved on the stone – The Lord is my shepherd — there is nothing I shall want – erected by his sons.
The children who died in the convent fire in Cavan are buried in the local graveyard, and as a child I often sat beside them, on Grave Sunday, and asked them what it was like to be dead.
On Sunday in Portlaoise some people brought summer chairs and stools and they sat on top of the graves while they were waiting for the priest to start the rosary. That never happened when I was young. In my young days no one would have dared set foot on the grave itself, but things are less formal now, and a graveyard looks very pleasant and leisurely on a warm afternoon.
Graveyards are lovely places, because people manicure them each year as Grave Sunday approaches.
Strimmers and clippers buzz like bees, and there’s a smell of freshly cut grass, as people get down on all fours patching stonework that has been damaged, or wiping away the lichen and moss from the monuments, removing the weeds that grow through the white pebbles, or taking away last year’s plastic flowers and replacing them with fresh ones.
A graveyard is like a communal memory wherein the past is cherished: the infant who died in the cot and the young wife who fell down dead on her kitchen floor, the farmer who was mangled by a combine harvester and the teenagers who were burned when the car turned over and exploded into flames; all have their place.
And all the old grandfathers who lived to a great age are there in the ground. And the grannies and spinsters of my childhood are there. And the invalids who sat on seats outside their front doors on Bridge Street, with handkerchiefs on their heads and who always gave me pennies to go to Donoghue’s corner shop to buy ice pops; they are all down there now, in the clay.
So it’s nice to be close to them, for a few hours, and sit around chatting, and enjoying the sunshine, and the beauty of a graveyard or cemetery decked with flowers.
And everybody knows that the only difference between the ones underground and the ones overground is the preciousness of time.
The overground ones may still have some time left, but in the end, there’s only so many haircuts anyone can have.