What I learned at my mother’s funeral

Golf

I think what ‘saved’ my mother from the tedium of housework and gave her her own identity was golf. She took to it like a duck to water and captained two clubs, Westmanstown and Kilkenny. She was very giving of her time to inexperienced golfers, helping ladies come to love the game as she did.

I remember coming home from school to notes she’d written. “Gone golfing, tapioca in oven” was a favourite.

Unusually, my mam never took a swing before teeing off – she is the only person I’ve seen not to do this. 

On the day of Mam’s funeral, the ladies from Kilkenny golf club did a guard of honour outside the church, dressed in the Club’s blazers, a lovely tribute. Thank you, Kilkenny ladies.

Why today?

My sister’s daughter, Tara, shared an article this morning she wrote for substack, and I’ve taken an extract from it. This is what triggered the tears and decision to talk my mother’s death.

Words by Tara

In the church yesterday, golden beams of sunlight shone through the pink and blue stained-glass windows onto our dewy faces, like sunlight on a winter pond. It seemed to fall on us alone; your children, your grandchildren, your husband. Even before the funeral started, a red-breasted robin sat in the bushes, watching as your physical body was placed into the hearse. You always loved to say hello with a warm smile, and now you are waving us on, even when you are no longer here next to us. I know that this beautiful bird was a conduit.

I read a poem to the congregation, thanking you for all the love you gave us. As I saw the hundreds of faces looking up at the altar, I thought about the wake the night before, and each woman who bent down to kiss your head, their teardrops balancing on your now icy cheeks. You would have hated the attention, but the community of people who gathered together in that one small room would have made up for it.

You always loved talking to people. Whenever we would walk down the street, a ten-minute journey could easily be tripled in time, the impatient legs of my twelve-year-old self sliding alongside you as you said hello to everyone who passed us by. I remember when you visited us in England, you would be shocked at how unfriendly British people were, looking at you in bewilderment as you waved good morning.

I have rarely seen adults turn towards the world with the childish wonder and excitement that you always held onto. Now, I take a piece of it with me, turning my love for you into the world around me. I say hello to the sun, and I pray to every red-breasted robin I come across. Sometimes they remain in the bushes for a second longer, and I take that as a greeting in return.

After the funeral, we silently prepared to drive back to England. Mum packed a cactus from your kitchen, the one laid in a beautiful ceramic pot with painted leaves encircling its edges. It was placed carefully in the car boot, in between suitcases and pillows like a baby whose head needed support. Once we arrived back home, she went to place it in our kitchen window. But the cactus branch soon snapped. Her eyes followed it as it fell, begging it not to let go.

In Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer writes, “Iris had begun to feel overcome by a rare, precise chill. she would encounter it only a few times in her life. By the Thames bank, watching the shards of an unseen message blow quietly into the water, ink bleeding out from its wounds. On a pebble beach looking down at her own freckled knees, startled to find they had grown into Lia’s. But for now, as she turned her face towards the early sun and watched Harry move out into his garden, there it was – the relief of a sudden nearness. And it was as if a gentle breeze were dispersing all of life’s bleak, forgetful contents right out of its margins, leaving only the morning, the moment, a daughter – drenched – in her mother’s lasting light.”

Maybe your own delicate hand broke the cactus branch, reminding us that your memory is not confined to the physical. I now know that you exist in the piercing daylight that falls on my windowsill as I wake up, in the leaves that float delicately in the wind, falling at my feet as I sit in solitude, and in the soft wings of the red-breasted robin as it bounces through the morning grass. I see a piece of you in everything, and every time I feel relieved by a sudden nearness.

Tara Bell, my niece

My own memories of that weekend

• My Dad looking at her picture, the same one I’ve included here. They’d been married 62 years.
• The red-breast robin landing on her hearse and then moving to the wall beside it as her coffin was placed. Robins were her favourite.
• Strangers (to me) who told me how much Mam meant to them, remembering her with such fondness.
• Mary, my brother’s wife, directing us all on what to do at each turn. Funerals don’t just happen, they take planning and precision and Tom and Mary created a special ‘send off’. Their neighbour, Karen, making endless pots of tea in heels!
• My own friends from the past who travelled to be at the church from afar. One said, “just wanted a moment with you to tell you we’re here.”
• Michael Devane (Dykie), a local publican, whose staff made 100 sandwiches for the wake, tapping me on the shoulder outside the church asking if he’d made enough.
• Bill Hutchinson (Hutch) standing beside Mam’s coffin at the wake with tears rolling down his face. Bill is my age and takes my Dad to poker on Monday nights. Good folk!
• My heartbroken sister, Grainne, how delicate and frail she looked.

Kindness

The whole experience was strangely comforting. People travelled from all corners of Ireland to pay their respects, some only stopping for 20 minutes to have a cup of tea before signing the book of condolences and leaving, including first cousins from the West of Ireland we hadn’t seen in years.

The generosity shown to my father, Tom senior, was heart-warming.

What Impacted was the amount of people who told me they were the better for having spent time with my Mam, that she generated laughs and good conversation. It showed me that someone doesn’t have to be a big shot in life to be liked and respected, because in the end, those things aren’t the most important.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou