ABOUT 35 years ago, when I was living in Maoinis, near Carna, Connemara, I bought a plot in the local graveyard or, more properly, reilig. Rather than “buying” it, my feeling was then, and has been since, that I had booked it for future use. When the thought struck me recently that I could be using it in the foreseeable future, it seemed a good idea to check it out.
A daughter of the Ó Clochartaighs in their nearby house had written my name, with the plot number, in the island’s Leabhar na Reilige. I remembered it was 40-something. And I had a vague memory of having inspected it and of finding its location in the cemetery satisfactory, and its view over coastline and ocean – insofar as a grave can have a view – splendid. But in all those years I had not checked that the booking held good. Perhaps some seismic or incendiary disaster had occurred and a call for me been broadcast to which I had not responded.
But I had a more pressing motive for making the journey west from Maynooth. I wanted to familiarise myself attentively with the spot and the surroundings where I would be spending many years and possibly centuries. I wanted
to equip myself to take awareness of all of that with me underground.
My daughter Kate supplied her car and brought along her Turkish fiancé so that he could see where her life had begun. Passing through Carna, we followed the narrow road over two bridges that leads to Maoinis and, turning left there, mounted Bóthar an Chartúir to where the scoil came into view with the high reilig wall on a height beyond it.
Bean Uí Chlochartaigh did not have the book to hand: her son had it and he was away. But although she scarcely recognised my bearded face, she gave us from memory plot number, precise location, and instructions on how to get there. What a memory, what a lesson in ancient record-keeping from before there was writing or paper! It was in the reilig nua section, she had said, and its number was 46. Following instructions, we skirted the long wall until we came, on the seaward side, to a concrete block that served as a step for climbing over the wall, which was lower at that point. That feat accomplished, we found ourselves standing on the grassy plot in question. We could hear the waves breaking a short distance away The day was cold with low clouds.
The location was not as I had vaguely remembered it, but who was I to argue? It was adequate, though I noted that my neighbour-to-be – from his headstone, Máirtín Ó hÉighnigh – had a double plot; a possibility I had not been aware of. We surveyed the surrounding graves and headstone inscriptions in Irish and English, and were fascinated by the variety of ornaments that relatives had placed on the gravelled surfaces. “Make it garden dwarfs for me,” I said. We took pictures of it all.
We returned to examining my grass plot. I stood on it. Kate joined me. I stood tall and, raising my arm, flexed my muscles. Kate did likewise. It was our way of declaring that death shall have no dominion. Sinan the Turk took photographs of us to frame as a record for future generations. I was enjoying myself mightily. All three of us thought it was a lark. It is to be recommended. Death, where is thy sting?
It was time for wider viewing and pictorial recording. Fine grass and then rocks descended to the Trá Mhór, the beach from which we all had bathed in our Maoinis years, and the two parallel juts of rock from which we had dived. Sea washed continuously over and around two large rocks inshore, Carraig na mBan and Carraig an Iarainn. Out there, beyond the end of Maoinis, lay deserted Mason Island, where my friend Ray Carroll had had a house and where you could look in through still-curtained windows at kitchen furniture long abandoned.
Beyond that again we could dimly see low MacDara’s Island, where that saint of the local fishermen had left his elegant chapel. I had persuaded the Office of Public Works to re-roof it with its fallen stones, and a postage stamp
had carried an image of it to the world.
Left finally to record was the fact that from my plot you could see our one-time house on its height. But after climbing over the wall again, there was also the fat cow munching the fine grass, and the scoil.
Shivering, but mission accomplished, we returned to the car, which carried all those garnered images home along with me.