Letter from Boston:Eddie Treacy was a man of simple pleasures. He didn't ask for, nor expect, much. Once, he told his great pal, Muldoon, that he'd be happy if he died in his own bed and they played The Fields of Athenryat his funeral, writes Kevin Cullen.
Eddie and Muldoon laughed at that, because they were young and young men don't think they'll die.
Last week, Eddie Treacy died in his own bed, in the Dorchester section of Boston, and they played The Fields of Athenryat his funeral here in the American city where he lived in the shadows.
He was 33-years-old and he had an eminently treatable form of pneumonia. But he was also living in Boston illegally, one of the thousands of Irish who live in a country increasingly hostile to those who are undocumented.
He left Athenry and came to Boston eight years ago, joining his brother Michael as part of the last great wave of young Irish to come to the most Irish city in America. After 160 years of steady immigration from Ireland to Boston, the boom created by the Celtic Tiger and the crackdown created by 9/11 have conspired to make Boston and the rest of America far less desirable a destination for the young, undocumented Irish.
But Boston is still Irish enough to be a comfortable and comforting home for young men like Eddie Treacy.
There's plenty of work. The GAA pitches in the suburb of Canton hum at the weekends. And there's good brown bread and scones to be had at the Greenhills Bakery in Dorchester every day. Michael went home, but Eddie stayed on. He liked it here.
Eddie was a master carpenter and made a good living. For a young man, he was decidedly old school, using a simple tool called a square. Eddie only needed one measurement for a job. Others would punch away at calculators, but Eddie would do the calculations in his head, and hand off the wood, cut precisely, like a diamond.
After a day's work, Eddie would make his way to the Eire Pub for a few jars. If the stool next to Muldoon, a plasterer from Galway, was open, he would take it.
"How's Mul?" Eddie would ask.
"How's Eddie?" Muldoon would ask back.
And then they would silently watch the news on the TV, or step outside for a wordless smoke, watching the rush-hour commuters stream toward the suburbs. With Eddie, there was no need for long yarns or running commentary.
Eddie was a rare Irishman in that he was a great listener, not a great talker. If he agreed with you, he'd nod, almost imperceptibly. If he thought you were a chancer, he'd raise an eyebrow, a silent indictment.
Like other illegal immigrants, he wanted to legalise his residency.
He would have paid anything, done anything. But there was no way. The immigration system in the US is broken, and there is no will to fix it.
Eddie kept his head down, and kept to the shadows. It's unclear if it was just stubborn pride or a fear of being deported that kept him from going to a hospital to treat the pneumonia that killed him. Maybe he just didn't realise how sick he really was.
Sister Marguerite Kelly, a nun from Ballinasloe who works with immigrants in the Irish Pastoral Centre in Boston, sat at Eddie's wake and shook her head.
"The young people, the undocumented, a lot of them are afraid to go to the hospital," she said. "I don't know if that's what happened with Eddie, but it happens a lot."
Gerry Treacy hadn't seen his brother in eight years, and when he finally did Eddie was lying in a casket inside the Keaney Funeral Home on Dorchester Avenue.
"He was a quiet lad," Gerry Treacy said, softly.
Next to the open casket, there was a photo of Eddie, in a jaunty pose, a cowboy hat on his head, a thin cigar in his mouth. He looked like the Sundance Kid. In front of the photo, there was a sliothar. Eddie was a great man for the hurling. He hurled for the Father Tom Burke club in Dorchester and managed the club's juniors.
Brendan McCann, a senior at Boston College High School, whose father emigrated from Co Antrim some 30 years before, stood near the altar and played The Fields on his fiddle as they wheeled Eddie 's casket down the aisle of St Brendan's Church.
After Mass, about 200 people posed on the front steps of the church for a photo to send to Eddie's mother, Ann, in Galway so she would know that Eddie mattered here. Many of the young men standing there, shivering in the cold, had given up a day's wages to pay their respects.
Then everybody went round to Sonny's, the pub that sponsors the hurling teams Eddie played for and managed. Muldoon raised a glass to his friend. "We'll never see the likes of him again," he said.
On Monday night, as President Bush gave the State of the Union address, telling Congress and the American people that they need to find "a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally," Eddie Treacy's body was in the cargo hold of Aer Lingus flight 132, somewhere over the Atlantic, heading home.
Eddie Treacy was buried yesterday in the fields of Athenry.