My neighbour from my homeplace in Mill Lane died yesterday. She saw my parents grow up, she saw all of us grow up, and she was like an aunt/granny to me.
I was the kind of kid who hung around adults and I loved this woman's stories and songs, so I spent a lot of time in her house. I also loved all the goodies she used to give me and my sisters and friends: chocolate, Fox's mints, biscuits and lemonade.
She lived in a long, typically Irish 3-room cottage, with no running water and no flush loo, even in the 21st Century. She loved B&W TV, B&W photos, sugared jellies and wildflowers; she rarely left our hometown - all she wanted was within a one mile radius of her house.
I wrote this poem, which appeared in Crannóg Autumn 2009 about her house after she left it to go to hospital long term. She won the virgin statue at a fairground stall many years ago. Her name was May.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh sí. Rest in peace.
The Virgin Statue
And she will still be there, tall as a toddler,
static in her wooden cave, table-bound,
queening it over the piano where mice tinker,
over an empty, many-coverleted bed,
the clock, hollowed out of chimes,
over a sea of mats, the black-and-white TV
– conduit to this century – blank-screened, silent.
Her eyes mad with sorrow, she misses, maybe,
the mingle of fried spuds and Coty, the ghosts of dogs,
the May-long worship at her shrine.
