December Daily Post, No. 15

Today we attended Aunt Sadie's funeral in Cargin Chapel. The proper name is the Sacred Heart Church but, like our own wee Tannaghmore Chapel, it is always called Cargin Chapel. It's an interesting site as the old chapel stands beside the new. The old chapel (built 1821) is a listed building and cannot be knocked down. Unfortunately it is in poor repair and cannot be used. The old chapel is where my mother and all her family worshipped when they were young.

It occurred to me today as I sat in the packed chapel that Sadie, who never left her home parish, would have been baptised in that old chapel, made her First Communion there and then her Confirmation. She married in Cargin, had her children baptised there and thus the cycle began again.

I remember Matty telling the story of the September day when war with Germany was declared. It was a Sunday and she and some of her sisters, one of whom might have been Sadie, were coming from Mass. The heavens opened bringing torrential rain, Matty said she had never experienced rain like it. Two elderly women came down their lane through this downpour and announced to the girls that war had been declared. Matty would have been 13, Sadie 15.

It was dry and not too cold in the graveyard today. The last two family funerals were bleak, cold days. I remember when Uncle Desmond was being buried looking at Matty, Sadie and the youngest Clare, standing arm-in-arm, stoic, brave, freezing at his graveside. Aunt Josephine was alive then but too infirm to attend the funeral. She died that same year and now all we have left is Clare.

Sadie's son told me this story of a conversation between his late father and a friend. His friend said,

Y'know Charlie, there's very few old people about the place these days.

And Charlie said,

There's still plenty of us around Pat. We're the old people now.

 Old Cargin Chapel