Dalkey bids farewell to author who is probably 'talking to Almighty'

THE PRIEST at Maeve Binchy’s funeral Mass in Dalkey yesterday suspected that “when she got her bearings in heaven she began talking to the Almighty and she is still talking to the Almighty and will go on talking to the Almighty for a very long time.”

Fr William Stuart remonstrated: “Well, Lord, you called her, you’ll have to listen to her.”

She was, he said, “a very generous woman, and while not a churchgoer she contributed several times a year to Dalkey Church”.

A former parish priest there, Fr John McDonagh, had told her she was too generous. She dismissed this, saying she didn’t mind what he did with the money “as long as it wasn’t spent on ‘statues or holy pictures’”.

She also told Fr McDonagh, “I know that if you are around when I die then you will dispatch me with dignity and without hypocrisy in a faith which I envy and would love to share.”

Fr Stuart continued, “She died not having come to know God but I would like to think that when she closed her eyes on this world last Monday evening, shortly thereafter she opened them and was surprised to see the face of God. But I suspect, Maeve being Maeve, she didn’t stay surprised for too long . . .”

Afterwards, outside the Church of the Assumption, as the rain poured down on all the living and the dead, a woman spoke of the very special Mass card she had got at (St Teresa’s) on Clarendon St in Dublin for Maeve’s husband Gordon Snell. She was very pleased.

“It has this small Jesus and a big Virgin Mary,” she said.

She had a yellow rose in her lapel, “not one of those roses Maeve had created for Gordon”.

A spray of Gordon’s roses rested on Maeve’s coffin in the hearse as mourners sympathised with Gordon himself and Maeve’s brother and sister, William and Joan, all struggling with umbrellas.

The only flowers at the funeral were the roses on the coffin. The woman in the flower shop said she had prepared the spray.

“It’s 99 per cent Gordon’s rose. There was freesia in it as well. It has a beautiful perfume,” she said, and it had.

At the heritage centre people paid their respects by signing the book of condolences beside a smiling photograph of Maeve and a big vase of flowers.

“She was a great lady. I’m sure she had her dark moments,” said one woman. “Phil” had written in the book: “I was up til 3am last night reading some articles of Maeve’s and laughing and crying at the same time.”

At Mugs coffee shop a large candle was drawn in chalk with the message “Maeve Binchy. Thank you.”