I Go To A Funeral

 It was the first funeral of the year, Aunt Maud in her 91st year. Bert said,

You must be running low on aunts by now. Have you any left at all?

I had to think,

There's just the one left in Australia but I don't know her at all.

In my younger days, I had heaps of Aunts.

On my mother's side, Aunt Kathleen, Aunt Josephine, Aunt Sadie, Aunt Bernadette and Aunt Clare.

And on my father's side, Aunt Roisin and  Aunt Mary

Then there were the aunts by marriage, all on dad's side, Mary, Bernie, May, Marian, Maud, Peggy, Maureen and Eileen.

Maureen is, as far as I know, the only one still living.

Maud was the last of the Irish aunts and we buried her today. 

This was the beautiful young woman that Uncle Brendan met and fell in love with. 

Brendan was murdered when she was in her early forties and today, almost half a century later, she was laid beside him in St Comgall's burying ground.

Maud never had children of her own yet the gathering today was full of children she had cared for and helped look after, the oldest of them in the mid-sixties, the youngest about five years old. 

She was a feisty woman, widowed twice, adored children, was incredibly kind, had a sharp tongue, loved hard, held grudges, was easily hurt, a grafter, sensitive, and fiercely loyal. The thing that I've been thinking about the most these past few days is the terrible grief, the despair she suffered in the days after Brendan's death. He was everything to her.

Maud and two of her godchildren, my brother Joe and my daughter Zoe.

Zoe was born three months after Shaun and Brendan were shot during the 1974 UWC strike In my naivety I thought that asking Maud to be her godmother would cheer her. Wrong reasons, the right choice. She spent the following Christmas with us which is when the picture was taken. When I look at it now I see her brave spirit. Even with a broken heart she still could raise a smile for little children.