Happy birthday, Mam. Yes, it’s my mother’s birthday. She died in June 2021 but hasn’t gone away, you know. There I am, way past bedtime, gripped by yet another episode in the latest streaming series, and I hear her say “Patsy, go to bed.” And I do.
We remain great friends. We were always great friends, much more than your traditional Irish-mother-eldest-son relationship. In my younger days I imagined myself as co-parent in our house, with her and, if necessary, my grandfather – also called Patsy. My father’s work meant he was away a lot and his presence I considered a disruptive influence in our domain.
Like most Irish marriages, theirs was not made in heaven. It was made in Castlerea. What did they expect? They first met in that town.
When there were rows, I came into my own, her principal ally, her knight in short trousers, with my father the enemy. Sigmund Freud would have loved it.
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I once asked Mam why she married him at all. She said: “I took pity on him.” I thought highly of my mother but found that answer pathetic. You can imagine my confusion then when I came across the Yeats line “A pity beyond all telling/is hid in the heart of love.”
And I remembered those occasions when my father, bolstered with gin, would lapse into tearful sentimentality as he talked about how he fell in love with her. It was embarrassing. I have never drunk gin.
Where he and I were concerned, our relationship greatly improved as we both grew up, despite hiccups. Still, when he died on Mam’s birthday in 1999 – 27 years ago today – I did wonder whether the timing was deliberate. On reflection, and for all his great powers, it seems unlikely.
RIP Mac [what we called our father in the family. Most times!].
Mam was lucky. Hers was a Covid funeral. She would have wanted it that way. She did not die of the disease but had one dread when it came to her own removal: “the whole lot of them standing there looking at me” as she lay in the coffin.
As it was, only ourselves and close friends did so. That would have pleased her.
Happy birthday, Mam. Rest In Peace.
Birthday, from Old English byrddæg, “anniversary of one’s birth.”
