Some Easter enlightenment

We used to sit in the duskish of the evening fornenth the little stove in the living room that looked out on the hedge laden with hawthorn berries that separated the Charlaois heifers from Heaslips' donkeys. The slow approaching darkness of the winter evenings crept up on us with only the light of the gentle flames to illuminate our faces, talking, as in a confessional of the happenings of the day - the daily call from Bassie less than a mile away with news from the townlands beyond Denmore that gave rise to several trains of thought as we sat holding our mugs of tea and eating a slice of her soda bread with the greasy bottom Dan Brady used to slag her about as he passed on his way from Clarke’s shop on his 135.

I first met her as I called with nervousness in my heart the day after her daughter died in Cavan General, the lovely Christine, who used to pull up on the back street, the boot laden with groceries, ‘take from there’ she would say to her mother ‘whatever you like’, dying in her forties from a rare lung disease, leaving Rita completely bereft and her two little girls without their mother. It was not the first time she had suffered the heartache of losing one she loved; her husband had died forty years previous leaving her with four little children and another on the way, after a simple operation for a slipped disc, losing too her little baby in the months that were to come. She had to scrimp and scrape to eek out a living for them, running the small farm by herself with the help of her children and neighbours like Dan Brady who threw his leg over the gate, pitchfork in hand, come the saving of the hay. She had suffered much but as a result had much to give, so much wisdom garnered over her many years, she in her late eighties and I, fifty years and more her junior.

‘Where the tree falls it lies, that’s what Paddy Reilly used to say’ as we looked at the ancient ash tree that lay uprooted in the bottoms under the road and there, we would talk on whether Paddy Reilly was right or not, whether there was a Heaven or a God at all or perhaps like the tree we merely returned to the dust from which we came. Neither of us could disprove the others’ arguments living only in the hope that, when we would part company in the years to come, we might meet in the way up yonder.

Oft times when I would go to doze in the chair in the quiet of the room as she crocheted, caps and tea cosies, the handle of the back door would be pressed down and one of a host of neighbours stepped in of the back street. ‘Yez are fond of the dark’ Michael Nulty might say as he sat himself down on the sofa and the chairs would be pushed back to invite him in. The chat would take on a formality as it was ‘Father’ this and ‘Father’ that and such fundamental discussions on faith and the reason for our being were set aside to listen to pleasant tales of bygone years around Clarke’s corner. In fact, in those evenings I spent at her fire over ten years and more, I came to meet a host of characters like herself from Drumbarry and Drumeagle and in the Larigan lane; people who had time to sit and talk, for stepping into her living room they knew all things would be set aside and their stories would be listened to.

Over the years as I ran in from my work at school, I shared with her all my trials and tribulations, all that which occupied my mind and though a half a century separated us in age I could truly say she became my best friend, I never thought on her as a woman approaching her tenth decade for she had a heart that was young and a mind that was continually questioning all things, high up and low down. When she died, I felt a great loss without the one with whom I had shared so much, with whom I had journeyed over the early years of priesthood, knowing that she now held the answer to our questioning as I continued to hope and trust that we might meet in the longed for Resurrection from the dead, as the old tree lay forlorn in the bottoms below the road.

On Easter Sunday the first to reach the tomb and the first to believe in the Resurrection was the disciple Jesus loved, the one we hear little or nothing about in the gospels but the one who is there at the foot of the cross sharing in Christ’s sufferings. It is to him that Jesus first reveals His Resurrection from the dead, for it is he who truly loves. We too reveal that which is most precious to those whom we love, friends, family, those who have hearts that will listen, listen beyond our words. Christ reveals the reason for His becoming incarnate to the one who has journeyed with Him, albeit quietly over time, the one who has shared in His sufferings, who was at his side when all others had gone.

Over Easter let us remember that Christ too reveals Himself to those who have hearts that will listen, those who will journey with Him over time, those who will share in His sufferings for as with John they will be first to recognise Him when the stone that thwarts our vision will be rolled away.