Heaps of Trouble by Emelyn Heaps

Author:Emelyn Heaps
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784627430
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

Chapter 8 – a Taste of ‘Compo’

I was told that almost everyone in Inchicore turned out for Catherine’s funeral. Her small, white coffin was taken from St Vincent’s hospital to St Michael’s church. They packed the aisles and the pews; they lined the streets on both sides from our shop to the church, and every business on Emmett Road closed that day as a mark of respect. It was said that her’s was one of the saddest funerals ever to be held at St Michael’s. Her little coffin was carried from the church to the hearse by the father and his brother Stan, to the slow rhythm of the bells beating out their mournful tattoo. The day was drizzling rain, which (it was suggested afterwards) was not rain, but the angels crying; all that could be heard in the street was the subdued weeping of the people waiting to wish her a final farewell.

As the cortège wound its way through the streets of Dublin they blocked roads and halted traffic. They transported Catherine’s remains to her final resting-place in Deans Grange cemetery, where she was placed in a new plot over by the eastern wall of the graveyard. By the time I was shown her grave a statue of a kneeling angel had been erected, with her photograph inserted into its base. Engraved on a small and simple marble slab were the words ‘Catherine, aged 4, tragically taken from her parents and brother, returned to the angels, 7th October 1966.’

My mother was present at her birth, my parents were there for her death and burial; I had missed it all, I had been saved pain and grief that probably only a mother could put into words. I have no idea how long I was in hospital after the funeral – a day, a week, a month – all I know is that one morning the specialist examined me and, turning to the sister who was hovering at his elbow, said, ‘Sister, he can go home now, why is he still here?’

He repeated his words to me as if it was my fault that I was still occupying a bed, until I reminded him of my feet, which he had forgotten to examine. On checking them, he decided that perhaps I should stay on in the hospital for a bit longer. Getting my legs readjusted to walking again turned out to be a bigger problem than I had anticipated. I spent as long as I could bear banging up and down the corridor with the aid of what they called a ‘walker’, which I thought was a strange name for a gadget that you had to hump up and down in front of you. The pain that attacked me as soon I stood up was almost unbearable, pain caused by the rush of blood pumping down through unused and damaged leg muscle. Especially when the blood came to the ankles and rounded the corner towards the toes, setting the skin on fire, as if I had just stepped into a tub of boiling water.

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