Gilroy
There were seventy-five of us, by my count. Maybe I was out by a few. It was hard to keep track. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, spouses, and partners. Seventy-six if you include Nana, in the middle of us all, in her coffin.
The undertaker had asked us to assemble in Gilroy at 12:45. And now here we were, Nana in her coffin in front of the unlit turf-burning stove, and the rest of us packed together like sardines in the living room and in the narrow kitchen beyond. Most of us had been gathered here five and a half years earlier, for her 90th birthday party. On that warm July day we had been spread out in the sun over her long back garden, colorful and loud, balancing wine glasses and plates of food, as children knocked against us in their exuberance. Nana, brightly dressed and beaming, sat in the shade on a garden chair, as we buzzed around her, friends and neighbors dropping in to wish her a happy birthday and complement her on her vast assembled family.
“How are your girls?” Angela asked me. A gang of us stood shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen, the long garden framed by the kitchen window now soaked in November drizzle.
“Put that in the fridge,” Louise said, passing me a two-litre plastic container of milk.
“They’re doing great,” I said to Angela over my shoulder, as I put the milk in the fridge. “Friends are taking care of them. It cost too much for us all to fly over at such short notice.”
I’d only closed the fridge door when Conor walked in. “Did anyone get milk?” he asked.
I took the milk back out of the fridge.
“I’m making tea for Dad,” Conor said. “Anyone else want anything?”
“I’ll have a coffee,” Antoinette said, taking an impossibly huge mug, the only one left, out of the press. I didn’t fancy her chances of getting through the funeral if she drank the fill of that.
“When did you get home?” one of the twins asked as she hugged me.
“One o’clock this morning,” I replied. “Declan Farrell picked me up from the airport.” I asked when she’d flown in, careful not to say her name until her sister arrived. It’s been like this since they were babies, forty years ago — I have to see Lisa and Joanne together to work out who is who.
“Is this a queue for the loo?” David asked, as he walked into the kitchen from the living room, ushering his two young bewildered sons ahead of him and explaining to them that all of us chattering women were his cousins and aunts. He hugged us each in turn as he directed the boys towards the toilet after their long car journey from West Cork to Offaly.
“Oh my God,” Antoinette said. “Stuart looks like Ryan Reynolds.” Through the open kitchen door, I saw my cousin making his way through the crowd in the living room.
“Don’t tell him!” laughed Lisa or Joanne. “His head will explode.”
When he reached the kitchen Antoinette told him anyway and he beamed and gave her an extra big hug.
I squeezed my way back into the living room. The other twin was there. She hugged me and told me what time her flight from England had landed. She mentioned Joanne’s name, so now I knew that this was Lisa. I noted what she was wearing, so I could distinguish between them throughout the day. I hugged the cousins, aunts, and uncles who were standing around me and who I hadn’t already seen when I’d first arrived or earlier in the morning when I’d been into Gilroy for a quieter moment with Nana. Martina’s three boys — all six foot something of them, and John’s girls, and James, looking surprisingly fresh-faced despite having just arrived in on a flight from Hong Kong. There were cousins and aunts on the chairs and the arms of chairs, precariously holding mugs of coffee or tea that threatened to spill on their best clothes, and more standing squashed together like a Tokyo subway train at rush hour, except we were comfortable in our familiarity, unable to remember a time when we didn’t all know each other. We were loud and laughing, delighted to be together, despite the circumstances.
I wondered would this be the last time that we would all be together in Gilroy?
Gilroy, the centre of our family universe. An unassuming terrace house on an unassuming street that was the beating heart of our family. And, at the centre of that universe was Nana, always with a smile on her face, coming to the door when we knocked on the living room window, accepting us in at any time of the day or night, occasionally grudgingly, if we threatened to interrupt a programme or a football or hurling match on the telly or radio.
There was always sure to be someone else already there or about to show up. One or other of us always dropping in ‘just for a minute’ but nevertheless having time for a mug of tea or coffee, a couple of biscuits, maybe a sweet or jelly from a bag or bowl on the coffee table in the middle of the living room. I often wondered how much money Nana spent each week on the tea, coffee, biscuits, and sweets that we devoured.
It was the rare day that we went into town and didn’t drop up to Gilroy. When we went grocery shopping, to Mass, a trip to the doctor or dentist. Always up to Gilroy, before or after. We lived out in the country and I took the bus to school. So, every day of my 13 years in school, I walked over to Gilroy at lunchtime for a huge middle of the day dinner and a glass of milk, followed by a couple of biscuits or a slice of Nana’s homemade tart (her rhubarb tart was legendary). In my 20s, she occasionally cooked dinner for me if I was working in town. I didn’t really like her food when I was a kid. In my 20s, I loved it. And always, there were aunts, uncles, cousins. Always some of us dropping in.
I’d phone Mammy for a chat from some faraway place — Japan, Nunavut, Spain. “I’m in Gilroy,” she’d say.
“Jim and Marian are up,” she’d say. “Up” meaning up from Cork…and in Gilroy.
“Phil’s home,” meaning home from England…and in Gilroy.
“Liz is down,” meaning down from Dublin…and in Gilroy.
“Jim is over,” meaning over from Navan…and in Gilroy.
Up, down, over, home — our family shorthand that simply meant we were in Gilroy. Nana lived alone but was never alone. We’d drop in to visit her but also to visit whoever else might also be visiting her.
In the middle of all the chatter there was always Nana, in her chair by the fire, smiling and laughing, sharing the latest gossip from the street, the latest soap opera plotline, the visit she’d had from the priest, or a phone call to one of her brothers in Co. Laois or her sisters in England. We carried on around her, at home and at ease, sometimes the noise of our chatter so loud that we couldn’t hear each other. So, it was fitting that, on this day, most of us were here, and we were loud, and she was in the middle of us all one last time.
At 1.30, word spread through the house that the undertaker wanted us to start moving out. We slowly moved from the warmth of the house into the cold, wet, and windy late November day, donning woolly hats, buttoning up our good coats, and leaning into each other for warmth and comfort. We formed two deep lines from the front of the house, out along the path, to the street. We stood, seventy-odd of us, joined now by neighbors and friends, as six of my uncles carried Nana out of her house on Gilroy for the last time.
