Cemetery Sunday
Jacqui Wiley
“Here we go again the row over going to Cemetery Sunday. Only now, it wasn’t with me mother. It was with me sister,” Seamus thought.
“You have to go. What would Mammy say?” his sister Mary pleaded.
“Not much?” he replied, “she’s dead.”
“God, forgive you Seamus Mac. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Mary blessed herself in front of the Sacred Heart.
“And why should I go and pay for the privilege of visiting the grave of me mother and father? Don’t I visit them all year round, and on my terms too! Tossie O’Brien and all his cronies standing at the gate, shaking their buckets with their faces the length of today and tomorrow. You’d swear all in the graveyard were related to them and they needed to pay for their transport to Heaven. ‘Save the damned’ should be on their buckets. Or maybe ‘€10 a soul, three for €20’.”
“Please go, Seamus,” Mary pleaded. “I’ll give you the money for the bucket. For Mammy’s sake.”
“I didn’t go when Mammy was here and I’ll not go now. All the locals arriving an hour beforehand to walk through the graveyard sneezing from the pollen on the overdressed graves. Gawking. Every one of them only there to see who is standing at what graveside, who’s come home and who’s talking to who. And they looking at them all from head to toe to see what they have on them. Gossiping then out of the side of their mouths while the blessings are going on so no one will hear them. They’ll rim it for the next week or two, talking about who’s who and what’s what.
“They are not there to pray, let me tell you. They are there to prey on others. On their fortunes and misfortunes and to fill in the missing pieces of the stories since last year. They will weed out who’s had affairs and who’s had babies. They are like squirrels gathering up their nuts, idle gossips, the lot of them.
“And that collection, Mary Mac, I tell you, that’s fraud. Upkeep the graves, when have you ever seen the graves looked after? Larry Jessop’s headstone is falling apart, the kerb crumbling away, the grave falling asunder. No family left to look after it. Three years it’s been like that and that Fr Ted has done nothing about it. Too busy counting his bucketfuls of cash and warming his arse with under-floor heating. A sham, I tell you now, Mary, a pure sham. I’ll stick to going under my own steam. I’ll not be dictated to.”
Seamus lay back into his chair satisfied with his analysis.
“Please Seamus,” Mary pleaded; she would have to walk if he didn’t go.
Seamus was on a roll. “Not even a sandwich and a cuppa tae going for the money you give. If it were a funeral, you would be fed, and what’s more, devil the bit it would cost you.”
“I’ll buy you a feed in the Roma on the way home,” Mary offered.
Seamus jumped up, standing up as straight as a die.
“Right so, ya got a deal,” he banged his two hands together, lifting Mary out of it with the noise they made.
“Let’s get going. If we leave now, we should get a good parking space.”
As they pulled the door behind them Seamus said: “I wonder, will Francey McGrath be there with her new fella?”
Jacqui Wiley is a member of Inklings Writing Group. Next meeting: Tuesday 11am at Annebrook House Hotel. Mullingar. Aspiring writers welcome.