My mother and I were just sitting and talking of time past.  I happened to mention to her about the Newry Journal and the story about the 1957 curfew. She remembered about my brother David and him having got himself caught on the wrong side of the Linenhall Square barricade.

“You and your brothers were good children,” she said, “though full of mischief - always getting yourselves into some bother or other.”

My mother then proceeded to tell once again about the old days when my brothers and I were children.  I had heard it all so many times before but I let her recount her memories to me once again.

Mum, with tears in her eyes told me about my father and that terrible time in her life when the doctors told her that dad had only a few months to live.

“Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,” she said, “was a malignant cancer, a dreadful illness: though the doctors tried their best there was nothing anyone could do for him.  Your daddy was still a young man, only thirty-one when he died and there I was with three young children to bring up on just the basic widow’s pension. Your brother Davy was just seven and John was only ten months old, and do you know that your Father died only a month after your sixth birthday? Your great aunt also lived with us but she was an old lady in her late eighties and was very ill herself.”

I sadly observed the tears filling my mother’s eyes and realised that it must still hurt even after all those years.  Three mischievous children and an ailing old aunt to look after and all on your own: it must have been hard for mum! Yes hard times indeed.

I raised my eyes and looked over my mother’s shoulder and studied the picture hanging on the wall behind her.  The subject of that picture was a beautiful young woman in her early twenties and a handsome young sailor in his Royal Navy uniform.  My mum and dad in happier days, long before the news of dad’s terminal illness.  The tears were beginning to mist over in my eyes now.

“You know I remember my dad’s funeral,” I said.  “I was just turned six but I remember it well - that big black hearse moving off from the door with Davy and me walking directly behind: I remember the black armbands we wore and uncle Jim keeping us together as we moved along the street.  Did you know that when the hearse moved off David and I tried to get a ride by kneeling on the hearse’s back bumper? Someone, I don’t remember who, pulled us off and said,

“Show some respect! Don’t you realise it’s your father’s funeral?”

I remember Uncle Jim saying back to that person,

“ Leave them be! After all they are only children! They have a hard world in front of them yet.”

My mother was smiling at me now almost as if I had said something funny;  the tears had gone to be replaced by a look of pride. She clearly had something to tell me about that funeral.

“ Wait and I’ll show you something!”  Mum said, and with that she ambled off into the kitchen, returning a few moments later with an old china teapot clutched in her hands. Mother rummaged around inside that old teapot until she found what she was looking for.  From the depths of that container she extracted an aged piece of paper and showed it to me.  It was an old receipt from the undertaker who arranged my dad’s funeral.

“Look at that!”  said my Mother, “Look what that says!”  and with a trembling finger she pointed to the wording at the bottom of the receipt. It said, “£50 paid in full”.

“Look,” said my Mother proudly,  “All paid for.”  And with that she proceeded to extract a multitude of other old receipts, all marked paid.

“You see,” said Mum with pride, “even when you haven’t got much to live on, you always have to pay your bills.”

You know people from that generation of my mother are an inspiration to us all. No matter what hardships they had to face, no matter what the trials and tribulations they had to overcome, those indomitable folk always managed to raise their families and take pride in the fact that they would always pay their way.

I took the receipt from her outstretched hand and carefully studied it.  It was the first time I had ever seen this old receipt. The heading on the receipt said McArdle Funeral Undertakers.

“McArdle funeral undertakers! I have never heard of them.”  I mused.

“Ah, that was Gerry McArdle,” answered my Mum.

“He used to own an undertaker’s business. His shop was in Water Street.  A nice man was Gerry; he always used to keep the hearse parked in a yard down beside the old bus garage near the Back of the Dam.”

I reflected to myself.

“An old hearse in a yard beside the UTA garage in Water Street!” Now that got me thinking. My mind went back to a story that I had previously submitted to the Newry Journal entailed:  In the Hearse.

To quote from it:

“That yard was a strange sort of place, sandwiched between Boden’s yard and the old UTA bus garage.  It was very ramshackle, full of old beer crates and bottles;  there were clumps of nettles and weeds growing in between the rocks and rough stone that formed the surface of the yard”.

Further quote:

“It was an old Austin motor hearse, a relic from a previous generation.  Probably at one time it was the pride of some undertaker but now, badly neglected, it stood sad and forlorn, resting on its four flat tyres amid a clump of weeds and nettles.”

I wondered could this possibly be the same big shiny hearse that carried my father off to his final resting place that day many years ago.  I suppose it’s conceivable that it could have been. I remembered myself once again lying prone along the back of that vehicle and thinking.

“As I slid face down along the rear of the hearse I couldn’t help but wonder who might the last passengers carried in here have been.”

My father might not have been the last person carried in this intriguing old vehicle but the possibility remained, that he could have been one of the earlier passengers of this hearse.

This indeed could have been the same big black, shiny motor hearse, on whose bumper my brother and I tried to hitch a ride, on that sad occasion so many years ago.

“Show some respect! Don’t you realise it’s your father’s funeral.”

I remember Uncle Jim saying back to that person,

“Leave them be! After all they are only children;  they have a hard world in front of them yet.”
 

Life can be full of strange coincidences, can’t it?