THE BAND: A Parallel Life

The Band

‘If anyone gives you a cup of water to drink just because you belong to Christ, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward.' (Mark 9)

A cup of water given, the gift of a musical instrument, responding to a poor person, chance encounters, a photo posted on facebook - the prophetic nature of seemingly insignificant acts. Signs of the active presence of God in ordinary life experiences.

It’s odd, even interesting at times how things converge. Sometimes I call it Providence. A friend posted a photo on facebook from the early 1970’s of the Mervue/Renmore Comhaltas Ceoltori featuring my sister Rosaleen and myself among others, including two members of St. Patrick’s School Band of which I also was a member.

The following evening we were having dinner with a family who used to live beside us in Mervue, three of whom were home from the USA for a short break. An absolutely beautiful evening of connecting and remembering.

We talked lightly about what threats our parent’s used to get us to do what they wanted. I mentioned the threat of Letterfrack that was used to frighten me into getting my act together. The younger ones at the table never heard of it. The older among us remember well the talk of it.

The photo stirred memories of a difficult period in my childhood, especially the years 1965-1966 when I was in my final year in Primary. School had become a serious problem for me when I was about nine and I began mitching when I was ten. The report of it got home and there was, quite naturally, consternation and uproar.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Being in trouble at school meant being in trouble at home; it meant being punished in one way or another in both places. It was then that the threat of Letterfrack was issued and I was perversely relieved at the prospect. And oddly, from the perspective of what we know today, no one ever asked me why or what was wrong and I didn’t have the words to explain myself.

But I had refuge in the empty sanctuary of the Augustinian church and the band was my great escape into a parallel world.

The Band was given to me in the ways of Divine Providence. When I was in third class the Principal, Brother Cuthbert, wanted to start a choir so he went round the classes auditioning. When he rejected me my teacher, Brother Claver, asked him to listen again and I was chosen the second time, even being given a solo for An Poc Ar Buile.

The choir transmuted into a mouth organ band and I was handed a Horner alto which he taught me to play. Neither he nor I had any idea of the importance of this moment for this period in my life. I had no ambition to play any musical instrument. It was given to me, I accepted it and, while I had no passion for it, I was technically very good.

The mouth organ band in its turn transmuted into a ceili band under the very capable guidance of Brother Albinus and I was the leader of the band, out front on my own when we marched in parades.

It was in this that I entered into the parallel life that I loved so much. Not the music but the friendship, enjoyment and especially travelling to fleadh ceoil’s all around the country. In the way that I had no words to express my sorrow, I have no words to express the joy of those days, those journeys.

We won many prizes, including all-Ireland’s as a band and as individuals. I came first in solo all-Ireland’s in 1968 & 1970 as well as a number of province and county competitions. From being an accordion, tin whistle, mouth organ band with a drummer, we graduated to playing fiddles and banjo as well. Again I was given a banjo to learn and play, though again I had no personal interest in it as an instrument. I probably didn’t even like it but it turns out that I was good at it, even being singled out for praise at the all-Ireland one year. I was mystified when the judge spoke his praise of my playing. Mystified, because it was news to me that I was any good at all.

Evelyn asks me if I was nervous performing in front of other people. Nervousness, self-consciousness or pride never entered my head. I simply played and was very content doing so. And it was the only sphere of life in those few years where there was no trouble.

I thank God for it because without it I would not have survived as well as I did or maybe not survived at all.

So, I’m thinking that God gives us gifts for a time in our lives, prophetic gifts that speak of his presence, a presence that often simply keeps us going, hanging in there for want of a better phrase.

I played the mouth organ for the season in which it was given, for its time and I don’t play it anymore because it’s time and mine has passed. There are other prophetic gifts given along the way so that I may remember the simple truth that God is with me, with us.

PS

I have just met Andy Byrne down at the Post Office here in Shankill, a widower and mouth organ player who asked me if I picked up playing it again. When I said no, he suggested I get one and start playing – the longer type in the key of G. He and I met three years ago when his wife Nora died and I celebrated her funeral Mass. At the burial he himself played the mouth organ and sang at her grave. A most touching moment.

Is this convergence a prophetic meeting reminding me that I have need to play the mouth organ again for some reason?

BUSTANI - A Place Of My Own

For nearly six years now since my mother died, I've been travelling down the distance from Dublin to Galway first of all to visit my family and secondly to keep the gardens of home in check. It sounds posh to say "gardens" as if I own an estate.

The housing estate of Mervue that was built by the corporation in the 1950's was well planned, thoughtfully providing a lot of public and private space. Our family home is one of six terraced houses in Ceannt Avenue where we were given three gardens. One small one at the front, another small one at the back and then the big back garden that was used in our youth for growing vegetables.

It was my mother's garden. It was she who cultivated it when she was young and strong enough to do so. In later years she turned it into a lawn edged on one side with lovely shrubs and small trees. And she left all of this to me before she died, wanting me to have a place of my own to come home to.     

I'm no Diarmuid Gavin but I keep the front garden in fairly good shape for the sake of the neighbours so that they're not looking at an eyesore. 

It's the big back garden that challenges me most - internally. I don't mind the physical part of it at all. Tending it I always ask "who am I doing this for?" since very few people ever get to see it. Of course God sees it all the time and I've no doubt but that He would be happy with it even if it were an out of control jungle.

Sometimes someone has looked in on it with regret, saying something like "it's not the same as when Maureen was here."  Indeed it has spoken to me of her absence and it has certainly grown wild in spots with a wildness that I find attractive and convenient.

Mam's lilac tree fell in the storm of a recent winter and I left it there, though I cut away some of the dead branches. When people suggested that I remove it I said no because it's a memorial of her. Then to my great pleasure the fallen tree sprouted new shoots in the spring and has blossomed for two summers now. 

So it rests there as a parable for me of the hope that abides in the fallen states of life. A reminder of the line from the Book of Job , "there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail." (Job 14:7)

A parable for me! Even though I am solitary by nature, there is something innate in me, part of my vocation as a priest that lives and works for the benefit of the "other" rather than for myself. I live for God first and then other people. So it doesn't make sense to me to be tending a garden that is of benefit to no one but me.

But now on this day in May I know that this garden is mine and for me. I tend it largely for my own benefit. For the first time in years I have sat here alone for a couple of hours - reading, gazing up at the blue sky, watching seagulls, pigeons, magpies, blackbirds and the multitude of minute insects that hum in the grass. I listen to the robins and I am visited by them. 

For the first time ever this garden speaks of me and my presence. 

All of this is happening to me on Ascension Thursday, an appropriate feast for homecoming and the place of one's belonging. Jesus is returning home to the Father, to the place where He belongs from all eternity. I haven't quite ascended but I have arrived home in a new way to the place where I belong. A place of my own.

BUSTANI - A Place Of My Own

For nearly six years now since my mother died, I've been travelling down the distance from Dublin to Galway first of all to visit my family and secondly to keep the gardens of home in check. It sounds posh to say "gardens" as if I own an estate.

The housing estate of Mervue that was built by the corporation in the 1950's was well planned, thoughtfully providing a lot of public and private space. Our family home is one of six terraced houses in Ceannt Avenue where we were given three gardens. One small one at the front, another small one at the back and then the big back garden that was used in our youth for growing vegetables.

It was my mother's garden. It was she who cultivated it when she was young and strong enough to do so. In later years she turned it into a lawn edged on one side with lovely shrubs and small trees. And she left all of this to me before she died, wanting me to have a place of my own to come home to.     

I'm no Diarmuid Gavin but I keep the front garden in fairly good shape for the sake of the neighbours so that they're not looking at an eyesore. 

It's the big back garden that challenges me most - internally. I don't mind the physical part of it at all. Tending it I always ask "who am I doing this for?" since very few people ever get to see it. Of course God sees it all the time and I've no doubt but that He would be happy with it even if it were an out of control jungle.

Sometimes someone has looked in on it with regret, saying something like "it's not the same as when Maureen was here."  Indeed it has spoken to me of her absence and it has certainly grown wild in spots with a wildness that I find attractive and convenient.

Mam's lilac tree fell in the storm of a recent winter and I left it there, though I cut away some of the dead branches. When people suggested that I remove it I said no because it's a memorial of her. Then to my great pleasure the fallen tree sprouted new shoots in the spring and has blossomed for two summers now. 

So it rests there as a parable for me of the hope that abides in the fallen states of life. A reminder of the line from the Book of Job , "there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail." (Job 14:7)

A parable for me! Even though I am solitary by nature, there is something innate in me, part of my vocation as a priest that lives and works for the benefit of the "other" rather than for myself. I live for God first and then other people. So it doesn't make sense to me to be tending a garden that is of benefit to no one but me.

But now on this day in May I know that this garden is mine and for me. I tend it largely for my own benefit. For the first time in years I have sat here alone for a couple of hours - reading, gazing up at the blue sky, watching seagulls, pigeons, magpies, blackbirds and the multitude of minute insects that hum in the grass. I listen to the robins and I am visited by them. 

For the first time ever this garden speaks of me and my presence. 

All of this is happening to me on Ascension Thursday, an appropriate feast for homecoming and the place of one's belonging. Jesus is returning home to the Father, to the place where He belongs from all eternity. I haven't quite ascended but I have arrived home in a new way to the place where I belong. A place of my own.

I WANT TO SEE THE STARS

August 10, 2008

It seems that every day now is like pushing an elephant up a stairs. I awake each morning to begin hauling myself up all over again. What was achieved yesterday seems to be of no use for today. I am somehow disconnected from life and fiercely connected to loss. It’s like a massive hangover, without having had the pleasure.

“You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity”

(St. Catherine Of Sienna)

The Lord veiled His divinity in the clay of Mam’s humanity, most especially in the ending of her time on earth - the final ten days. The Office Of Readings today has the lovely reading from Hosea 11 and I have experienced the tenderness of that love. The night before she died Mam drew me down to her, holding me to her cheek. I had asked her if she knew who I was and she opened her eyes, smiled and said, “you are Eamonn Monson, my lovely son”. She drifted into sleep still holding me, and in her I believe, I know, that God was holding me, speaking to me. 

There is something enormous about the experience of a maternal love that is spontaneous, unfiltered and pure. It can bring with it a certain breaking down of one's being and is followed – and even accompanied by - an extraordinary peace. It leaves no doubt in its wake and is beyond question. It is the greatest security one can have. When life attacks me with its threats I return to that moment on Friday evening, July 25th, and I am made strong.

Motherhood is the best expression of God that we have, especially when it is lived in faith. Next to God our Mother is the most important reality in our lives and when she goes from us we experience a profound shifting of the ground of our being. Profound is probably not an adequate word at all. It is a loss akin to the loss of God. 

We spoke one day of the Blessed Virgin. Years ago when Mam was a young married woman in Mervue her uncle Paddy Walsh arrived late at the door one night. Dad must have opened it because Paddy saw Mam coming down the stairs in her dressing gown and he said afterward, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, down the stairs she came looking just like the Blessed Virgin.” 

We were tucking Mam in bed in the hospital, smoothing the white sheet around her shoulders and I said, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph you look just like the Blessed Virgin.” So we laughed at that and every so often when we settled her she herself would say “the Blessed Virgin.”

That’s how we got talking about Our Lady. I told her of the Hopkins poem “The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe”. He calls her “wild air, world mothering air, nestling me everywhere.” Mam liked that.

People speak of Mam as being nice. Nice is much too tame. She was in her time and in her ways often the wild, even furious, air; she was the nestling air; and she was deep and strong as the ocean. 

She had at one time in her life an untamed fury but she experienced real transformation as her life progressed. Life itself transformed her, tragedy such as Maura's death brought her to a depth in which she recognised clearly what mattered most in life. The material became less significant and what mattered most was the human person.

Prayer brought about its own transformation – adoration, praying alone at home and especially the Mass. It brought her to a level of peace that was radiant, sometimes even visible.

The transformation we saw in her has become for us a source of hope. Transformation, change is possible.

Having been sick since the end of June Mam finally agreed to see a doctor and was admitted to Merlin Park hospital. The indications were that she had pneumonia and systemic infection for which she was receiving antibiotics.

I was at a meeting in Rome the week she went to hospital. For me that was an experience of letting go. Every part of me wanted to go home but reason – and others - persuaded me that there was no need.  I went through agony and prayed to get a grip on myself and arrived at peace. I got home on July 12 and on July 16 Mam was told she had widespread and advanced cancer.

Rose, Evelyn, Harry and I were told this by the doctor who then went to tell Mam privately. That morning before talking with the doctor I was alone with Mam who began talking about her illness, wondering why she had so much wrong with her and she asked me “are you preparing yourself for cancer?” I said yes, and asked if she was preparing for it. “Yes, but not fully” she replied.

The four of us (her children) went to see her when the doctor had left. “I’m 82 and I have to die of something.” To Rose she said “no more high heels for me!” 

With her death on the horizon I wanted to make sure that no dark traces would remain for me and that she would leave me knowing that I loved her. I apologized to her for all the hurt I had done to her. She said, “you more than made up for them.” 

There was no denying of the fact that I had hurt her and that bit of honesty has been good for me. Things weren’t fudged or nicified. I’m not sure if anyone else felt the need to make such an apology.  Mam did not feel the need to apologise for the hurts she had done. There was the sense that all such things were past and only love remained.

All the days that followed were spent in preparation for her death, though neither she nor any of us expected it to be immanent.  She spoke of all the things she needed to sort out – her will, the house, what she would be laid out in and where. To Harry she spoke of the hymns she would like sung at her funeral.

They were times of great tenderness, love and honesty. She allowed Rose and Evelyn to tend to her most intimate needs. Harry was good to massage her feet and arms. The love in this physical caring and touch was a real anointing. She turned to me for prayer.

The experience of praying with her was so inspiring. There was a pure childlike quality to her way of praying which was as profound as it was pure. It was good that all of us as a family could participate in prayer with her. Sometimes we sat still, in silent meditation, while she slept. And often we would simply hold her hand. 

We celebrated Mass with her most days and she considered that to be a great privilege. One day after communion at Mass in her hospital room she went into some kind of trance or ecstasy – he eyes lifted up and focused on some distant reality and she raised up her two hands in a kind of graceful flourish. We were sure that the end would come then but it didn’t. 

There were the moments when she would sit up suddenly out of sleep and sit on the side of the bed. The first time she sat in silence with her hands open, palms upward as in prayer and finished by saying “through Christ our Lord.”

The second time was when her sister Eileen was visiting. When Mam sat on the edge of the bed she said, “I want to see the stars.”  Another time, after sitting there in silence she opened out her hands and said with humour “ye can venerate me now!”

When asked if she were afraid, she said, “there is nothing to be afraid of. I know where I’m going.” And when I said she seemed so at peace she said that with me she was in the presence of peace.

On the weekend of July 19-20 many people came to see her. We limited the length of visits because it was so tiring for her but it was also vitally important that these visits took place. It was a pilgrimage of farewell. Most people cried on leaving her and I would say went away with a blessing from her. It was a powerful and draining experience.

Friday July 25, 2008 St. James

We brought Mam home on Wednesday and had a bed prepared for her in the sitting room. Yesterday was another day of pilgrimage, with many of the neighbours calling. She had asked to see Rob who had a bit of time alone with her. She was pleased and afterwards said, “it was my hearts desire.” 

Today was quieter and Mam slept a lot. We played Strauss. At breakfast I offered her water and she replied, “I’m tired of water. I’ll have a brandy.  Brandy and Strauss for breakfast! What better could you have!”

In the afternoon we celebrated Mass and the sacrament of anointing. Katie asleep on Elaine’s lap, Mam asleep in her bed and their breathing rhyming, like they were answering, echoing each other – the new and the old; the beginning and the end; Alpha and Omega.

In the evening Margaret Dowling, Noreen Henry and May Fergus sat quietly with her. 

Saturday July 26, 2008 Saints Joachim & Anne

They took into their own a hand unseen

(From the Liturgy)

Harry and I sat up with Mam until 2.30 a.m. when Rose and Bernard took over. Evelyn was on the couch in the hall, ready to be called if Mam needed to be changed.

It was the first sign of pain and it began with restlessness and a continuous groaning. She resolutely resisted oral morphine and even the sleeping tablet she herself had requested on leaving the hospital. When Evelyn tried to get her to take it she asked in a suspicious tone, “what do you want me to take that for?”

Carmel spent some time alone with Mam and ministered to her very naturally when no one else was looking.

In the early morning she got frustrated and said, “why don’t ye leave me alone” and when Evelyn and I tried to lift her up in the bed she said with agony “you’re hurting me”. 

Yet there was that morning one of the most tender moments, an experience of touch. Mam needed to be changed and there were only Evelyn and myself. I said I would hold her and not look. So she lay on her left side at the edge of the bed and I held her very tenderly and lovingly. She allowed herself to be held in that way, without any resistance. I had previously said that I would change her if necessary and she said, “sure I know you would but it would not be right.”

We knew at that stage that the pain was severe enough. Evelyn called the hospice nurse who came in the early afternoon. With great patience and tenderness Breda administered a sedative and morphine. It took it a long time to have any effect.

It had not yet taken effect, and the nurse was still working, when I went to Kilgannons for a chat with Julia. Shortly before 5.30 David came over to say the others wanted me. When I got in it was a very different Mam. The effect of morphine was dramatic. Her whole being was stilled, eyes glazed and only a slight murmur when I spoke to her.

There were others in the house but I suggested that the five of us would celebrate Mass around Mam’s bed. Between the Sanctus and Eucharistic prayer Mam passed quietly away. Roisin had just arrived in from work.  It was almost imperceptible – a little gurgling, the slightest change in her appearance, a single tear falling from her eye.

A life of eighty-two years, the reference point of all our lives, gone in a breath. The Gospel of Mass was appropriate, Feast of the parents of the Blessed Virgin, “Happy are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear” (Matthew 13).  After reading the gospel I said to her that soon she would be seeing and hearing what every human being desires, that it was our prayer for her. They were the last words I spoke directly to her.

We cried and continued with Mass. I think I cried all the way through and Rose held me. It was very difficult but also the right thing.

Mam died, resting on her left side. When Mass was over we turned her on her back and the last groan of breath went up through her, so that some thought she was not dead at all. Evelyn closed her eyes; we joined her hands and placed her St. Benedict’s cross & beads between her fingers. She looked lucent and at peace.

Word went out and people started to flow in. And so a new kind of gathering took place around her.

August 23, 2008

It’s now exactly four weeks since Mam died and it’s still raining. After the month’s mind tomorrow I’ll go back to Dublin and seek meaning in what offers little. At a time like this I realize how disconnected and irrelevant the celibate life appears to be. From a selfish point of view there is no one like a mother or a spouse to gather you in during a time of grief. When you don’t have children – well, when you don’t have children…. How I miss the children, those last days at home when we were all living at home together. The life, the energy of it – Roisin, Brian, Peter and Katie.

I’ll put my head down against the weather and keep going a while further up the road.

“Words have no meaning now,

Silence is master,

Laughter and songs bow”

(Brendan Behan)

The words of Brendan Behan spoken at the funeral of Ronnie Drew. It’s the kind of event Mam would be tuned into and now I think of picking up the phone to talk to her about it. This is part of the absence that hits us every day - the need to tell her something and she’s not there.

Laughter is almost out of the question and silence is a hard taskmaster. It holds such heaviness and pain. But there are songs that fit the time and they rise spontaneously, expressing something of the sorrow and the desire - Go Rest high On That Mountain; Softly And Tenderly; You’re My Best Friend.

Mam’s death is not tragic. There was a plane crash in Madrid, horrific deaths. Ours is not that kind of tragedy but it is still life changing because it is our mother who has died. The reference point.

Rose and I are in Aran. The last time I was here with Derry in June, Mam came up with Rose. There’s a lot of “the last time”. There will be many more. Being here, getting out on the sea has peacefulness and a sense of getting far away from everything - especially my work. It’s my work as Provincial, my life as a Pallottine, which is the hardest thing. I hate it with a vengeance and yet engaging in it brings life. It’s the thought of it...

People have spoken about Mam’s funeral being the best ever experienced, saying it was so dignified and prayerful.  We avoided excess. The singing - provided by the senior choir, Pat Naughton and Harry - was uplifting and in tune with the mood of the day. Over thirty priests - mostly Pallottine - concelebrated. Mam had a great love for priests - especially the Pallottines - and their presence in such numbers would have pleased her. For me the funeral was emotionally demanding but the strength to hold it together was also there and it is a privilege to be able to celebrate Mass for Mam.

We have just been up to see Agnes Powell Faherty. She was someone Mam loved and I missed her the day of the funeral. Her son drowned four years ago when his trawler sank off the Connemara coast. He had no fear of the sea, she said, no respect for it - and everything has to be respected. Her son Oliver brought us up in his mini bus before his day’s work began. We had met him near the old pier yesterday and when I said I had missed seeing his mother, he was on the phone to her and had the visit arranged.

The dead made up a lot of our conversation and each time the name of the deceased was mentioned her husband Tommy raised his cap. They are of that generation that had great respect. Tommy used to be a jarvey, carrying tourists around the island with his pony and trap.

Our talk was not just about the dead. I asked about Maura Dirrane who used to work in Powells house the time I stayed there as a child. She is someone I have always wanted to meet ever since, but never had the opportunity. Now I hear she is back on the island and working in the restaurant in Kilmurvey.

September 2, 208

“You have seduced me Lord and I have let myself be seduced; you have overpowered me: you were the stronger.” (Jeremiah 20,7)

I’m reading Paul Auster's “The Invention Of Solitude”. His father has died suddenly and is portrayed as an empty man.

Mam was anything but empty. Strong, powerfully present, alive and finding meaning in the ordinary, fiddling with the objects of her solitude of eighteen years. 

I'm a long way from home, from the house that is now my own. It speaks of her in its way, speaks an emptiness and absence. The objects associated with her, things she used, picked up and put down again – are somehow disconnected with her now.

But the clothes she wore are different, more intimate, retaining a touch of her. I've taken one of her scarves; maybe one of those I bought her. It's got her scent. From time to time I hold it to my face, put it under my pillow. It is gentle and kind.

Since she died I am thinking again about the meaning of my existence and go back to the catechism – God made man to know, love and serve him in this life and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. I know, love and serve Him. But something in me wants more, to know the meaning more deeply in every fibre of my being.

There is a veil to be stepped through, unexplored ground to be walked upon. And confidence – more confidence in who I am. Queen Catherine challenged Henry VIII to “be the king that you are.”

Be the man that I am – the priest and the provincial.

When Mam died Rose said no one will ever know her like Mam did. One is only truly known by one's mother.

I dislike being known because something in me has learned that to be known is to be known to be wrong; knowing gives the other power – too much negative power over me. It has proved dangerous, an entrapment. The only knowing I really trust is God's. I only feel truly safe with him.

What I sense in the past seven weeks since Mam died is that I have to stand on my own two feet now and live in fidelity to the man God made me to be. While Mam was alive she was always there as a reference point, a point of approval or approbation. This is natural between child and mother.

In the days before she died she gave me unreserved approval. And she did what I always wanted love to do. She set me free.

That moment when she drew me – her “lovely son” - to herself and held me. Right then she set me free and launched me into my own rightful orbit. The outer space of my being in God.

Sometimes I think that the confinement of marriage didn't suit her and when dad died it was as if her solitary soul were allowed to breathe. That is not to say she should not have married. The confinement of it produced greatness in her. I am not made for confinement either – the intimate confinement of son – but it too has produced something in me.

I am no longer a son in the flesh. No longer bound. My mother has given me away, given me back.

The phone at home has been disconnected – a chord snapped, umbilical cut. A very symbolic statement of what has happened in our lives and it hurts.

I WANT TO SEE THE STARS (On The Death of My Mother)

August 10, 2008

It seems that every day now is like pushing an elephant up a stairs. I awake each morning to begin hauling myself up all over again. What was achieved yesterday seems to be of no use for today. I am somehow disconnected from life and fiercely connected to loss. It’s like a massive hangover, without having had the pleasure.

“You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity”

(St. Catherine Of Sienna)

The Lord veiled His divinity in the clay of Mam’s humanity, most especially in the ending of her time on earth - the final ten days. The Office Of Readings today has the lovely reading from Hosea 11 and I have experienced the tenderness of that love. The night before she died Mam drew me down to her, holding me to her cheek. I had asked her if she knew who I was and she opened her eyes, smiled and said, “you are Eamonn Monson, my lovely son”. She drifted into sleep still holding me, and in her I believe, I know, that God was holding me, speaking to me. 

There is something enormous about the experience of a maternal love that is spontaneous, unfiltered and pure. It can bring with it a certain breaking down of one's being and is followed – and even accompanied by - an extraordinary peace. It leaves no doubt in its wake and is beyond question. It is the greatest security one can have. When life attacks me with its threats I return to that moment on Friday evening, July 25th, and I am made strong.

Motherhood is the best expression of God that we have, especially when it is lived in faith. Next to God our Mother is the most important reality in our lives and when she goes from us we experience a profound shifting of the ground of our being. Profound is probably not an adequate word at all. It is a loss akin to the loss of God. 

We spoke one day of the Blessed Virgin. Years ago when Mam was a young married woman in Mervue her uncle Paddy Walsh arrived late at the door one night. Dad must have opened it because Paddy saw Mam coming down the stairs in her dressing gown and he said afterward, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, down the stairs she came looking just like the Blessed Virgin.” 

We were tucking Mam in bed in the hospital, smoothing the white sheet around her shoulders and I said, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph you look just like the Blessed Virgin.” So we laughed at that and every so often when we settled her she herself would say “the Blessed Virgin.”

That’s how we got talking about Our Lady. I told her of the Hopkins poem “The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe”. He calls her “wild air, world mothering air, nestling me everywhere.” Mam liked that.

People speak of Mam as being nice. Nice is much too tame. She was in her time and in her ways often the wild, even furious, air; she was the nestling air; and she was deep and strong as the ocean. 

She had at one time in her life an untamed fury but she experienced real transformation as her life progressed. Life itself transformed her, tragedy such as Maura's death brought her to a depth in which she recognised clearly what mattered most in life. The material became less significant and what mattered most was the human person.

Prayer brought about its own transformation – adoration, praying alone at home and especially the Mass. It brought her to a level of peace that was radiant, sometimes even visible.

The transformation we saw in her has become for us a source of hope. Transformation, change is possible.

Having been sick since the end of June Mam finally agreed to see a doctor and was admitted to Merlin Park hospital. The indications were that she had pneumonia and systemic infection for which she was receiving antibiotics.

I was at a meeting in Rome the week she went to hospital. For me that was an experience of letting go. Every part of me wanted to go home but reason – and others - persuaded me that there was no need.  I went through agony and prayed to get a grip on myself and arrived at peace. I got home on July 12 and on July 16 Mam was told she had widespread and advanced cancer.

Rose, Evelyn, Harry and I were told this by the doctor who then went to tell Mam privately. That morning before talking with the doctor I was alone with Mam who began talking about her illness, wondering why she had so much wrong with her and she asked me “are you preparing yourself for cancer?” I said yes, and asked if she was preparing for it. “Yes, but not fully” she replied.

The four of us (her children) went to see her when the doctor had left. “I’m 82 and I have to die of something.” To Rose she said “no more high heels for me!” 

With her death on the horizon I wanted to make sure that no dark traces would remain for me and that she would leave me knowing that I loved her. I apologized to her for all the hurt I had done to her. She said, “you more than made up for them.” 

There was no denying of the fact that I had hurt her and that bit of honesty has been good for me. Things weren’t fudged or nicified. I’m not sure if anyone else felt the need to make such an apology.  Mam did not feel the need to apologise for the hurts she had done. There was the sense that all such things were past and only love remained.

All the days that followed were spent in preparation for her death, though neither she nor any of us expected it to be immanent.  She spoke of all the things she needed to sort out – her will, the house, what she would be laid out in and where. To Harry she spoke of the hymns she would like sung at her funeral.

They were times of great tenderness, love and honesty. She allowed Rose and Evelyn to tend to her most intimate needs. Harry was good to massage her feet and arms. The love in this physical caring and touch was a real anointing. She turned to me for prayer.

The experience of praying with her was so inspiring. There was a pure childlike quality to her way of praying which was as profound as it was pure. It was good that all of us as a family could participate in prayer with her. Sometimes we sat still, in silent meditation, while she slept. And often we would simply hold her hand. 

We celebrated Mass with her most days and she considered that to be a great privilege. One day after communion at Mass in her hospital room she went into some kind of trance or ecstasy – he eyes lifted up and focused on some distant reality and she raised up her two hands in a kind of graceful flourish. We were sure that the end would come then but it didn’t. 

There were the moments when she would sit up suddenly out of sleep and sit on the side of the bed. The first time she sat in silence with her hands open, palms upward as in prayer and finished by saying “through Christ our Lord.”

The second time was when her sister Eileen was visiting. When Mam sat on the edge of the bed she said, “I want to see the stars.”  Another time, after sitting there in silence she opened out her hands and said with humour “ye can venerate me now!”

When asked if she were afraid, she said, “there is nothing to be afraid of. I know where I’m going.” And when I said she seemed so at peace she said that with me she was in the presence of peace.

On the weekend of July 19-20 many people came to see her. We limited the length of visits because it was so tiring for her but it was also vitally important that these visits took place. It was a pilgrimage of farewell. Most people cried on leaving her and I would say went away with a blessing from her. It was a powerful and draining experience.

Friday July 25, 2008 St. James

We brought Mam home on Wednesday and had a bed prepared for her in the sitting room. Yesterday was another day of pilgrimage, with many of the neighbours calling. She had asked to see Rob who had a bit of time alone with her. She was pleased and afterwards said, “it was my hearts desire.” 

Today was quieter and Mam slept a lot. We played Strauss. At breakfast I offered her water and she replied, “I’m tired of water. I’ll have a brandy.  Brandy and Strauss for breakfast! What better could you have!”

In the afternoon we celebrated Mass and the sacrament of anointing. Katie asleep on Elaine’s lap, Mam asleep in her bed and their breathing rhyming, like they were answering, echoing each other – the new and the old; the beginning and the end; Alpha and Omega.

In the evening Margaret Dowling, Noreen Henry and May Fergus sat quietly with her. 

Saturday July 26, 2008 Saints Joachim & Anne

They took into their own a hand unseen

(From the Liturgy)

Harry and I sat up with Mam until 2.30 a.m. when Rose and Bernard took over. Evelyn was on the couch in the hall, ready to be called if Mam needed to be changed.

It was the first sign of pain and it began with restlessness and a continuous groaning. She resolutely resisted oral morphine and even the sleeping tablet she herself had requested on leaving the hospital. When Evelyn tried to get her to take it she asked in a suspicious tone, “what do you want me to take that for?”

Carmel spent some time alone with Mam and ministered to her very naturally when no one else was looking.

In the early morning she got frustrated and said, “why don’t ye leave me alone” and when Evelyn and I tried to lift her up in the bed she said with agony “you’re hurting me”. 

Yet there was that morning one of the most tender moments, an experience of touch. Mam needed to be changed and there were only Evelyn and myself. I said I would hold her and not look. So she lay on her left side at the edge of the bed and I held her very tenderly and lovingly. She allowed herself to be held in that way, without any resistance. I had previously said that I would change her if necessary and she said, “sure I know you would but it would not be right.”

We knew at that stage that the pain was severe enough. Evelyn called the hospice nurse who came in the early afternoon. With great patience and tenderness Breda administered a sedative and morphine. It took it a long time to have any effect.

It had not yet taken effect, and the nurse was still working, when I went to Kilgannons for a chat with Julia. Shortly before 5.30 David came over to say the others wanted me. When I got in it was a very different Mam. The effect of morphine was dramatic. Her whole being was stilled, eyes glazed and only a slight murmur when I spoke to her.

There were others in the house but I suggested that the five of us would celebrate Mass around Mam’s bed. Between the Sanctus and Eucharistic prayer Mam passed quietly away. Roisin had just arrived in from work.  It was almost imperceptible – a little gurgling, the slightest change in her appearance, a single tear falling from her eye.

A life of eighty-two years, the reference point of all our lives, gone in a breath. The Gospel of Mass was appropriate, Feast of the parents of the Blessed Virgin, “Happy are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear” (Matthew 13).  After reading the gospel I said to her that soon she would be seeing and hearing what every human being desires, that it was our prayer for her. They were the last words I spoke directly to her.

We cried and continued with Mass. I think I cried all the way through and Rose held me. It was very difficult but also the right thing.

Mam died, resting on her left side. When Mass was over we turned her on her back and the last groan of breath went up through her, so that some thought she was not dead at all. Evelyn closed her eyes; we joined her hands and placed her St. Benedict’s cross & beads between her fingers. She looked lucent and at peace.

Word went out and people started to flow in. And so a new kind of gathering took place around her.

August 23, 2008

It’s now exactly four weeks since Mam died and it’s still raining. After the month’s mind tomorrow I’ll go back to Dublin and seek meaning in what offers little. At a time like this I realize how disconnected and irrelevant the celibate life appears to be. From a selfish point of view there is no one like a mother or a spouse to gather you in during a time of grief. When you don’t have children – well, when you don’t have children…. How I miss the children, those last days at home when we were all living at home together. The life, the energy of it – Roisin, Brian, Peter and Katie.

The rantings and moods and complaints of a religious community are simply ridiculous. So I’ll put my head down against the weather and keep going a while further up the road.

“Words have no meaning now,

Silence is master,

Laughter and songs bow”

(Brendan Behan)

The words of Brendan Behan spoken at the funeral of Ronnie Drew. It’s the kind of event Mam would be tuned into and now I think of picking up the phone to talk to her about it. This is part of the absence that hits us every day - the need to tell her something and she’s not there.

Laughter is almost out of the question and silence is a hard taskmaster. It holds such heaviness and pain. But there are songs that fit the time and they rise spontaneously, expressing something of the sorrow and the desire - Go Rest high On That Mountain; Softly And Tenderly; You’re My Best Friend.

Mam’s death is not tragic. There was a plane crash in Madrid, horrific deaths. Ours is not that kind of tragedy but it is still life changing because it is our mother who has died. The reference point.

Rose and I are in Aran. The last time I was here with Derry in June, Mam came up with Rose. There’s a lot of “the last time”. There will be many more. Being here, getting out on the sea has peacefulness and a sense of getting far away from everything - especially my work. It’s my work as Provincial, my life as a Pallottine, which is the hardest thing. I hate it with a vengeance and yet engaging in it brings life. It’s the thought of it...

People have spoken about Mam’s funeral being the best ever experienced, saying it was so dignified and prayerful.  We avoided excess. The singing - provided by the senior choir, Pat Naughton and Harry - was uplifting and in tune with the mood of the day. Over thirty priests - mostly Pallottine - concelebrated. Mam had a great love for priests - especially the Pallottines - and their presence in such numbers would have pleased her. For me the funeral was emotionally demanding but the strength to hold it together was also there and it is a privilege to be able to celebrate Mass for Mam.

We have just been up to see Agnes Powell Faherty. She was someone Mam loved and I missed her the day of the funeral. Her son drowned four years ago when his trawler sank off the Connemara coast. He had no fear of the sea, she said, no respect for it - and everything has to be respected. Her son Oliver brought us up in his mini bus before his day’s work began. We had met him near the old pier yesterday and when I said I had missed seeing his mother, he was on the phone to her and had the visit arranged.

The dead made up a lot of our conversation and each time the name of the deceased was mentioned her husband Tommy raised his cap. They are of that generation that had great respect. Tommy used to be a jarvey, carrying tourists around the island with his pony and trap.

Our talk was not just about the dead. I asked about Maura Dirrane who used to work in Powells house the time I stayed there as a child. She is someone I have always wanted to meet ever since, but never had the opportunity. Now I hear she is back on the island and working in the restaurant in Kilmurvey.

September 2, 208

“You have seduced me Lord and I have let myself be seduced; you have overpowered me: you were the stronger.” (Jeremiah 20,7)

September 14, 2008

It's an odd thing to arrive into the end of the Argentine winter, to be approaching spring without having had a summer. The leaves are beginning to appear on the trees, the air is dry and cool. They haven't had rain here for 7 months.

John O'Connor and I came here a week ago. He's in Belgrano – about two hours away – and I'm in Mercedes. It's been good to be stationery, to have the Pallottines come to me rather than me going from house to house.

There are difficult moments, difficult personal problems of some of the men to resolve. I have experienced some of their anger – a father figure, target for the un-nameable. But I am at peace, a lovely peace.

I've had three dreams of Mam this week. They're a bit distant. In the first Mam is telling to get my will sorted. The second takes place at a session with my counsellor. Mam and Rose are present and I explain to Mam that I've been seeing Olive for over two years. We talk of my healing, the healing of stuff from childhood. I make an appointment for later in the year. As we are leaving Olive said that it was important for us to have our priests as well as possible, or something like that. In the third dream Mam, Maura and I are in my bedroom and I am giving it a thorough cleaning. I'm polishing a bronze pot that has the Pallottine crest on it.

We will go home on Sunday, the first day of Spring here, and we will re-enter the Autumn at home that is already in the grip of winter. So be it. It could be worse.

September 21, 2008 Flight home.

The sky over Brazil is the most turbulent I've ever experienced. The food trolley and stewardess almost capsized beside us. John caught her and I the trolley. She ran to make an announcement – that we should put our cups of coffee on the floor.

Something in me enjoys this even when it gets to the point when it seems the plane might fall out of the sky. Maybe I want it to. I pray for us all.

I think it's 9.30 pm local time and we've been flying for over four hours. My watch has gone on to Paris and the middle of the night. We are approaching the Atlantic coast of Brazil.

My playlist has gone from Elvis to Bruce Springsteen and I’m reading Paul Auster's “The Invention Of Solitude”. His father has died suddenly and is portrayed as an empty man.

Mam was anything but empty. Strong, powerfully present, alive and finding meaning in the ordinary, fiddling with the objects of her solitude of eighteen years. 

I'm a long way from home, from the house that is now my own. It speaks of her in its way, speaks an emptiness and absence. The objects associated with her, things she used, picked up and put down again – are somehow disconnected with her now.

But the clothes she wore are different, more intimate, retaining a touch of her. I've taken one of her scarves; maybe one of those I bought her. It's got her scent. From time to time I hold it to my face, put it under my pillow. It is gentle and kind.

Since she died I am thinking again about the meaning of my existence and go back to the catechism – God made man to know, love and serve him in this life and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. I know, love and serve Him. But something in me wants more, to know the meaning more deeply in every fibre of my being.

There is a veil to be stepped through, unexplored ground to be walked upon. And confidence – more confidence in who I am. Queen Catherine challenged Henry VIII to “be the king that you are.”

Be the man that I am – the priest and the provincial.

When Mam died Rose said no one will ever know her like Mam did. One is only truly known by one's mother.

I dislike being known because something in me has learned that to be known is to be known to be wrong; knowing gives the other power – too much negative power over me. It has proved dangerous, an entrapment. The only knowing I really trust is God's. I only feel truly safe with him.

What I sense in the past seven weeks since Mam died is that I have to stand on my own two feet now and live in fidelity to the man God made me to be. While Mam was alive she was always there as a reference point, a point of approval or approbation. This is natural between child and mother.

In the days before she died she gave me unreserved approval. And she did what I always wanted love to do. She set me free.

That moment when she drew me – her “lovely son” - to herself and held me. Right then she set me free and launched me into my own rightful orbit. The outer space of my being in God.

Sometimes I think that the confinement of marriage didn't suit her and when dad died it was as if her solitary soul were allowed to breathe. That is not to say she should not have married. The confinement of it produced greatness in her. I am not made for confinement either – the intimate confinement of son – but it too has produced something in me.

I am no longer a son in the flesh. No longer bound. My mother has given me away, given me back.

The phone at home has been disconnected – a chord snapped, umbilical cut. A very symbolic statement of what has happened in our lives and it hurts.