AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY

WE buried him on New Year's Day, as the sun sank russet behind our town in the west. At his grave many eyes were cast down as the prayers ascended in quickly dissipated clouds. Some gazed deep into the darkening sky, looking for some clue to the unfathomable mystery of it all.

The man we buried was 48. He had died in Galway the previous Sunday, after a brief illness. He left Eileen, their two children Aideen and Sean, his brothers, his sisters, his extended family, and us. He had asked to be buried in Ballaghaderreen. His name was Martin Coleman, and we knew him as "Auld Stock".

We had little in common, he and I. There was an age difference, which counts for a lot when you are growing up. He was a devoted Mayo man where my allegiances would be to Roscommon. He was a dedicated follower of Fine Gael. My background is Fianna Fail. He was from one of the oldest families in Ballaghaderreen. We are only in the town 34 years. Not a lot to go on there. But we were united in one thing, a deeply felt attachment to our own place. It was enough.

Broken allegiances

We met there frequently. In recent years he would make a point of telling me how much he appreciated pieces I had written, particularly about the town. What had been a point scoring relationship, based on broken allegiances, gave way to something altogether more at ease. Because both of us realised that, whatever the differences, we were closer in our loyalty than we were apart in our enmities.

How proud he would be just now. What pleasure he would have taken in the announcement by the Taoiseach, John Bruton, last Thursday that Dillon House on the Square is to be the headquarters of the Western Development Commission. Home to the former Fine Gael leader James Dillon, home also to his father John Dillon, leader of the Irish Parliamentary party at Westminster after John Redmond, and home to John Blake Dillon founder of the Young Ireland Movement and the Nation newspaper, it has been empty and in decline for more than a decade.

Wouldn't Martin Coleman have just loved to be able to rub it in to the local Fianna Failer about how it took a Fine Gael Taoiseach to give new life to the town, and through the home of a former Fine Gael party leader. Then those such as my own father, (in whom I am occasionally pleased, and who is never slow in claiming credit where it might be due. Bless him), a retired Fianna Fail county councillor, would not be slow to tell him that it was on his proposal the house was bought by Roscommon County Council. And other Fianna Failers would point to the party allegiance of been Ian O Callaghan, chairman of the local development group which did such great work in bringing this about. But, it's Ballagh that matters, not this often hilarious political sectarianism.

Ballagh is what we call the town at home. "Ballagh" is what Martin Coleman called his house in Galway. At home he was often given to talking proudly about the older families in the town. "The old stock" he called them. It's how he got the name, "Auld Stock". And if there was an inference that we blow ins were somewhat lacking in the purity of local descent, well we learned to live with that. But old stock or blow in, what mattered to him above all was your regard for the town. It was the leveller.

No words of comfort

It was why I winced outside the cathedral, after his funeral Mass. A college friend commented to me negatively about the town. He had not been in Ballaghaderreen before, and had arrived early for the funeral Mass, which was held back to 2.30 p.m. He walked around to kill time, and was not impressed.

I was off guard when he made his remarks, about dereliction and decay. Minutes beforehand, as the Mayo flag was being draped over Martin's coffin, I had gone to sympathise with his widow and found myself struggling for words which might convey some comfort. I couldn't find any. "Death is hardest on the spirit," Father Tommy Towey had said in his homily. But what it does to young widows is devastating.

It was on returning to refuge in the crowd, I met my old acquaintance. I said something about the town having improved over recent years, but hadn't the stomach for a debate just then. Or to say it didn't really matter to me. That if he could see Ballagh through my eyes, it wouldn't look shabby at all.

Martin Coleman would have understood. How it is not so much the closed shop fronts we see, as the thriving businesses they once were. Or how those blinded, broken windows, those peeling walls and distended jambs, greet us always with old stories of which we never tire. How we would of course like their tale to move on too, as may now happen thanks to the Taoiseach, but how none of that is a condition of our affection.

Last Journey

On that last journey, as young men from the town carried his coffin in turns, six at a time, there were so many resonances he would have appreciated so much. The pungent smell of burning coal in the air, a reminder of those childhood nights sliding up and down those iced streets. The backways off Pound Street leading to "the plots" where we ferociously fought out our bonfire, with Clarke's pub, where he liked to drink and banter. And the walk through the graveyard itself, past all those names. So many of our giants now laid, Brendan McBrien led the way. One of "Auld Stock's", good friends, he guided each change over among the coffin bearers en route, as one team of six replaced another. His house, in Galway too, is called "Bealach a Doirin", the name of our town in Irish, translating as "the way through the little oak wood". He brought us to Martin's freshly dug plot.

John O'Mahony (Johnno) was one of the men in the town Martin most admired. Once Mayo's football manager, it fell to him to speak those last words for us all. Directly and simply he thanked the man leaving us, for his great loyalty. Then the flag was folded, handed to Eileen, and Martin was lowered into his beloved home ground.

Among the mourners there for that frosty moment was another of Martin's heroes, Mattie Towey. They were neighbours. On summer Sundays as a child, Martin, too, would sit outside Towey's shop on Main Street, listening, while Micheal O'Hehir relayed Mayo's fate in the championship of that year. And it was Mattie's son, Father Tommy, who said the funeral Mass.

Mattie stood at the grave side, that hat poised steady against all winds, the chin fixed solid against the chill, as it has been before fortune for more than 80 years. In his silent presence he was more eloquent about matters of the spirit, life, and death, than any of the well meant words of ritual.

Returning home, my brother Declan said. "Well, he set two records it must have been the longest it has ever taken for a funeral to get to the graveyard (from the cathedral), and he must be the first man in Ballagh to be buried in the dark." It had been a long goodbye, surely. So long, Auld Stock. But you should be living at this hour.