‘I’d hate to be seen searching for a grave in case people might think I wasn’t a regular visitor’

I have a hat someone bought me 10 years ago. It’s a black fedora they purchased for Father’s Day. And when I first put it on I felt ridiculous. My head was big enough even without a hat, but the fedora sat like a crude affectation, and I looked like a cross between my father and Humphrey Bogart. Not exactly the look I would want at the Drumshanbo Horse Mart. So it ended up on top of a wardrobe. Every so often I gave it an outing but eventually, it vanished into the boot of the car and was forgotten.

Recently I was in Cavan to pay a visit to my parents’ grave and as I arrived at the cemetery it began to rain. It being June I had no raincoat with me, but the fedora did the job.

It’s not easy to find anything in a graveyard. There are too many dead people underneath monuments that all look the same. And I’d hate to be seen searching for a grave, in case people might think I wasn’t a regular visitor.

After trying a few aisles without success she hissed at her dead husband under her breath: ‘George!’ she whined. ‘You’re always doing this on me! Where the hell are you?’

I remember walking into a cemetery in Florida in the early 1980s with a lady who had buried her husband the previous year. They had not enjoyed their marriage much and apparently bickered like cantankerous hens for 40 years. She told me this in the back of a taxi as we headed for the cemetery.

‘I’d hate to be seen searching for a grave in case people might think I wasn’t a regular visitor’

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I felt Travellers were strange and different until I befriended them. Then their similarity astonished me

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A teacher in school convinced me I was a useless lump of dung

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Michael Harding: At one time, having a pair of binoculars on the back seat of your car in Fermanagh was unwise

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After trying a few aisles without success she hissed at her dead husband under her breath: “George!” she whined. “You’re always doing this on me! Where the hell are you?”

I eventually found my parents’ plot but it was still raining and the grave looked different. There were three little porcelain angels at the base of the headstone, none of which I had seen before.

[ Michael Harding: At one time, having a pair of binoculars on the back seat of your car in Fermanagh was unwise ]

And I guessed that they didn’t appear by divine intervention; someone may have been tidying up their own family plot and wanted to dispose of some ornaments. Rather than walk to a bin at the far end of the cemetery or just take them away, they decided to leave the ornaments on another grave.

That’s the beauty of life. The present is impermanent; no more than a brief moment in the long continuum of passing time

It was an endearing gesture. I liked it not because of any theological significance that might be attached to porcelain angels, but someone had expressed a prayer for my parents when they placed those little gaudy figures on the grave.

Yet I would never know who it was.

That’s the beauty of life. The present is impermanent; no more than a brief moment in the long continuum of passing time. It’s a feeling I often get in historic locations: in Kilmainham Gaol; or the GPO; or where some great politician lived.

In fact, I felt it one time in the back of a car when I realised that Henry Kissinger had rested his bum on the very same seat that I was sitting on.

There was a television programme called Questions and Answers on RTÉ in the 1990s and for some reason, I was invited to be on the panel. Initially, I said I couldn’t accept because I was on stage in Carlow that evening with a one-man show about Jonathan Swift. But the producers asked me what time the show finished and I replied 9pm. They said they could get me to the studio for 10.30pm in a fast car.

I swaggered through the foyer hoping that the punters realised it was me getting into the car, and later, as we neared Donnybrook I couldn’t resist declaring to the driver: ‘You can’t bate the ould Merc!’

Those were the days when RTÉ programmes could hire the most elite executive limos to transport guests to and from studios. So I agreed and after the show, an enormous Mercedes was purring outside the theatre. I swaggered through the foyer hoping that the punters realised it was me getting into the car, and later, as we neared Donnybrook I couldn’t resist declaring to the driver: “You can’t bate the ould Merc!” The executive chauffeur with understated pride agreed and revealed that his last commission the previous day had been Henry Kissinger. I was overwhelmed with awe, fingering the soft leather seat and thinking how me and Dr Kissinger had gazed at the world through the same car window.

And standing at my father’s grave I had a similar thought: That only time separated me from whatever stranger had placed the angels on the grave. The rain was lashing the angels and the clay, and spilling from the rim of my fedora, and I knew how much I resembled my father as I had aged. And how the only thing that separates me from him, or indeed anyone else in that graveyard, is that I still have a little more time.

[ I felt Travellers were strange and different until I befriended them. Then their similarity astonished me ]