[A very creaky gate leading into an old cemetery. Photo is mine.]

Suaimhneas Siorai Air

~~Old Irish Epitaph “Eternal Rest be Upon Him/Her”

The green and rusted rotating gate made a noise that seemed more like a stifled scream of metal against metal. It pierced my ears. The harshness of the sound, under other circumstances, could peel paint off a wall.

I wasn’t complaining. The gate sounded precisely what I would expect of one that led into an old and unmaintained graveyard. But there were more interesting things to see inside the lichen-covered stone walls.

[The copse of trees hid a ruined chapel. Photo is mine.]

Like a roofless abandoned chapel?

I pushed through the rusty gate and found myself on a faint path through the unmowed grass. Then the path faded and the hummocks of turf were all I had to walk on. The footing was uneasy, uneven, difficult. Sunken rectangles of weeds told a story of old wooden coffins that were no longer extant. Ahead was a copse of trees. A wall? Did I see a twelve foot stone wall engulfed by the trees? I walked around the side. An arch. It lead through the wall.

I made my way toward the arch.

[The entrance to the former chapel. Photo is mine.]

{NOTE: I intended to insert a short video of my walking into the space beyond the arch. For some inexplicable reason WordPress would not allow the video to be loaded. And I failed to take any single photos of the graves in the interior. Suffice it to say, the graves I did see were so overgrown with shrubs, they were barely visible. There was nothing so see there. I apologize. It was a cool video. Perhaps there is another explanation? Who knows?}

But the visit was not a total loss. My distant cousin, Joan Egan, and I did locate a grave of another of my very distant relatives. The stone was so weathered only the surname was visible.

[The grave of a distant relative. The name was visible, barely. No dates. Photo is mine.]

A little short story to pass the time…

I leaned against the stone wall, near the narrow lane, out of the heat and sun, in the cool of the tree and stone wall. Mariam and my cousin were busy chatting in the car. I needed a quick break before we drove on to where I was to meet more of my Irish family. I flattened myself against the wall and stretched my back. That’s what I needed. I had been sitting in a car for days now. I needed a moment to listen to the wind blow through and around the graveyard. A few sheep walked past me as I stood working out a pain in my L4 & L5. An older man with hair of grey was following the sheep.

“Hello,” I said.

“Good afternoon,” said the man, brushing his white hair.

“Where are walking to?” I asked of the man.

“Oh,” he said, “I’m going to off the distillery over there. See it?”

“Yes, I do see it,” I replied.

“I’m going to buy something for my son, he lives in America, you see?”

“That’s so nice of you, sir,” I said.

“The least I could do. I miss him. And I love him with all my heart.”

Earlier, we had visited a much newer cemetery, St. Patrick’s. Here is where many of my Irish family are interred.

[Joan, at the headstone for her grandfather, Michael. He, as I understand it, is how she and her brothers are related to me. Photo is mine.]

I returned to the car and we drove to Culleens where more of my family lived. I first visited the place in 1975. Again in 1984 and the most recent time was 2015 with my son, Brian and Mariam.

So much has changed there. New buildings, forests that were planted in the last ten years. It was all so different. And it was wholly different from when my father was there in the early 1970s. Joan and I talked about my dad quite a lot that day. He is remembered by everyone. Some of the people I met in 1975 have passed away.

Joan stopped at a lay-by and said that this spot, overlooking the shallow valley and the distant meadows was where my father said, on more than one occasion, that he could see himself building a small cottage there…and spending summers listening to the wind in the gorse.

He sought the quiet in much the same way I do.

[A note from me: The above short story is just that. It’s fiction. There is one thing in the story that is true, however. It doesn’t really matter, though, what the one true thing is. It just a story. In the end, it’s just a story.]