Letting go of almost a century of Gerry

Fr Jason Murphy

The cars came to a halt at McConnell’s, before taking the road to Sunday Mass. Neighbours, each in their turn, bowing their heads, knowing the old man was nearing his last. Not one of them recalled a time that he was not there, for nigh on a century a touchstone for all who passed by, in the townland of Creeny.

A candle flickered fornent his bedside, a burning light for this man of deep faith; a pair of shoes sat lonesome without in the kitchen beside the stove beneath the place where he recited his prayers religiously.

There Gerry spent his years of nigh on five score. His friends had gone on before him, the men with whom he shed sweat - the McDonalds of Tunker and Grilly, their cattle now need foddering no more. A decade of the Rosary his wife Regina whispers, her hand on his hand it rests, to comfort the man she married, forever in sickness and health.

‘So farewell to you, neighbour and kinfolk and all that I have known, ‘tis time to take leave of this, my townland, for the best part of one hundred years. How I loved this corner of my homeland, oh to while away the moments again, just to lean over the gate and gaze on a cut meadow and to smell the grass piled high in square bales. To cut turf again in the bottoms and drink again, Maggie McDonald’s strong tea or to stand along the road in conversation on the price of bullocks, heifers and meal.

‘Oh the years have gone by in a hurry despite the many I have known, it seems no time since I was young and the years held plenty in store. But alas it is you my Regina, that I’ll miss above all other things, you were there with me come hell or red water and but I know that one day we’ll be together again. So it is here in this place of my father that I take leave of all I have known and pray that there’s a corner of Heaven just like the townland of Creeny I have known.’

She first laid eyes on him, the tall dark haired man of sallow complexion, as she cycled the road for her aunty Kathleen Grogan’s in Killylea of an April evening in the Springtime of the year.

The young nurse home from Glasgow noticed him in a striped shirt setting potatoes all along the straight ridges he had dug. She cycled on without his ever noticing, thinking of him as she heard the cuckoo’s call for the first time in Derrycark.

Indeed excitement filled her heart at the thought of meeting him that evening after she had taken the tea in Grogan’s and, after she passed the turn for Rehill’s, she could see that he would be facing towards her as she passed on her way and, not taking any chances, she flicked the bell on her bike as she neared the garden of straight ridges.

On hearing the ring, he stood upright, soothing the ache in his back with the heel of his mud covered hand. There he spoke of the warm spring evening and how the spuds wouldn’t take long in sprouting. She kept her right foot on the pedal of the bicycle not to seem over keen though she could have lingered all the evening there.

As she cycled on the road over to Drumalee chapel, the sweet arona of blossom on blackthorn filling the air, she prayed that she might stand out from the sea of faces the next time he crossed the floor in t he townhall for a dance. Indeed, in the nights thereafter, come the very first set, he crossed the floor and asked her out to dance, dancing the whole of that night and manys the night thereafter until Gerry and Regina married in the September of 1964.

Theirs was a simple life in the years to come but a most contented life, a life lived and worked in the place that his father before him called home, gathering family of five around them, who too, followed a rhythm with the turn of the days and seasons; a most precious life, living in the midst of the ordinary in the company of neighbours and friends.

He was one of the last of a generation of small farmers who made their living from the land, carrying milk to the creamery each morning to stand and talk with other men about the day’s affairs. He loved his animals and knew each one by name, he knew their temperaments, their isms, which of them led the herd each morning for the milking.

Gerry loved to take a stroll across the road as the cat sometimes jumped up onto his shoulder and accompanied him to stand at the gate, his stick in hand, a cap on his head, his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, just to dawdle and watch his Freisen cows chew contentedly on their cud in the meadows below.

He was a constant for all who passed by on their way, the door always open for anyone who called, giving a sense of continuity from one generation to the next.

And so it was, this man of 99 years let go of his living on a bright spring morning in the weeks that have passed. His neighbours realised that they were letting go, not just of another neighbour, but a time of greater ease when people followed the natural flow and seasons; and the rhythm that was wrought by each and every day.