Despite the fact that I hadn’t spoken to mother
number one for at least two years I still felt a duty towards her. You sort of forgot about all the nasty stuff,
well; you didn’t really, but it was placed at the back of your mind. All I could see now was a frail old woman and
I had a duty to care for her. It was also
strange that my good friends in Warrenpoint knew that none of my family would have
bothered contacting me to inform me that mother number one was in hospital. It meant that you constantly wondered what on
earth you could have said, or done, that had been so wrong. Well; I knew what I had done, I had married a
non-Catholic.
I wonder how many of you feel embarrassed when
you watch the news. I do, almost every
night, Catholics versus Protestants, us and them, them and us. Even the greatest antagonist of them all Ian Paisley
has now stepped forward and said that perhaps he had been wrong. I can’t wait until I take control of Ireland,
I’ll give them religion. Of course my
sister, the almost genius, the one who had the monks and priests with her Uber
Catholic wedding in five languages in the oldest monastery in Northern Italy
and the two choirs was now divorced. I,
on the other hand, the heretic who got married in a registry office was still
happily married with four beautiful children.
This would never be acceptable in Ireland often called the land of
saints and scholars, the land of backward feckers would be more like it.
I had immediately telephoned Daisy Hill
hospital in Newry and managed to get through to the ward where mother number
one was being cared for. I even managed
to speak to her. She told me that she
was being released the following day and would be returning home. I knew that she already had a home help come
in once a day, which we were not very impressed with. It was the wife of an old school friend of
mine and on our last visit we dusted away the cobwebs in the hallway which was
more like curtains of ivy. What
concerned me the most was that I had been told that my cousin’s two children had
been at the service where mother number one had collapsed, so why they hadn’t
bothered to contact me really worried me, it was an insult beyond belief. Knowing that mother number one was to be home
the following day Irene told me that I was to call her every evening and I was
to get Pat involved, to make sure that someone was keeping an eye on the
situation.
As luck would have it there was no response
from mother number one on the Friday. No
response on the Saturday either. On the Sunday
Pat was dispatched to the house, formally known as home, to find it empty. The only thing I could think of was that
mother number one had gone to my aunt Margaret’s, her sisters, where they would
have looked after each other and been safe and sound. On the Monday I had had enough and telephoned
my aunt’s house. Jimmy answered. Jimmy had married my cousin and was a lovely fellow. He was one of the most popular men in the
county having captained the county football team then led the all-stars on a
tour of America before returning and becoming the voice of senior Gaelic
football as a reporter for the BBC. Not
only was he one of the nicest men you could ever hope to meet he was always helping
other people, cutting lawns, trimming hedges and fetching and carrying for the elderly
in the community. So I found it strange
that he was shouting at me.
“Where have you been? Everyone’s been trying to
contact you.” Next thing I know is that
the pervert priest has taken the telephone from Jimmy and is speaking to
me. Well; he was speaking, but it really
felt that he was speaking to everyone else in the house and I was purely incidental. “Your auntie Margaret is dead and we buried
her today.” I suddenly realised that the
house would have been full of mourners and he was speaking to them, not
me. Having Jimmy shout at me was bad
enough but to learn that my favourite aunty was dead was all a bit much. And not only was she dead but she was now
dead and buried and my family had decided not to include me in that
process. Never being invited to any of
the weddings, or christenings, or standard family get-togethers was almost a
fact of life for me but this was taking things to an extreme.
I managed to keep myself together and asked
about mother number one. The pervert
priest crowed at me down the telephone that mother number one was now in an old
peoples home in Newry, she was too infirm to be looking after herself at the
house in Warrenpoint. I have to admit
that it took a few moments to pull myself together; I couldn’t believe what was
happening or what I was hearing. So much
for the Christian values of forgiveness and unconditional love, especially from
a priest. Perhaps the double top secret
cabal preparing me for the throne of Ireland had put me into these difficult situations
in Liverpool and Manchester to prepare me for this. I promise you, I often thought that there was
something strange about me as I had two families who didn’t want to have any
contact with me and I hadn’t even met one of them.
It didn’t take me long to find the contact
details for the old peoples home in Newry and I was able to speak not just to
the ward sister but mother number one. She
was adamant that she was going home the following week something the ward
sister wasn’t too sure about. At least I
now knew what was happening and could now sit down with Irene and discuss what
we were going to do about it. We both
thought that I should get myself over to Ireland and make sure mother number one
was getting the proper care and attention she deserved. I rang social services in Newry and was pleased
to find that the fellow in charge of the elderly was an old school friend. That certainly eased our conversation so I was
able to explain to him that I was the Deputy Director of Operations for a large
firm involved in learning disabilities and mental health covering Manchester
and Liverpool with a specialty in the more extreme end of the business.
I should have known that old school friend or
not, this fellow was a social worker, so it didn’t matter what position I had
achieved, I needed a qualification in social work before he would even consider
me for any available position. Oh and by
the way the employment laws were now so stringent in Northern Ireland there was
no way the old boy system could be brought in to play. The next time I spoke to the matron at the
old people’s home where mother number one was impounded I enquired about the
private companies in the area. The matron
informed me that they actually had men at their establishment who turned violent
every evening and they were desperate for experienced people to help them control
the situation. If I wanted I could have
a job, there and then, with them.
It was tempting but I would have to take such a
huge drop in wages I don’t know if I could have afforded to live back in Ireland. Sure there was the house in Warrenpoint, but
would I be allowed to stay in it? Of
course the one big question remained. I may
have been fulfilling the role of the decent Irish son and was willing to go to
the ends of the earth to look after mother number one, but was I wanted there? Not one member of my family in Ireland had
contacted me and in a way I was fine with that.
I had my own support network of friends who were helping me out, but it
still niggled away at the back of my mind why they were treating me like
this. And then one evening I telephoned
the old peoples home in Newry to be told that mother number one had been
released. She had gone back home.
I could tell from the conversations that we had
had with mother number one that she was losing it. Her mind would wander and I would change from
being her son to her brother, or father, or friend. Being in the industry myself I knew that she
would need an awful lot of support. Pat was
put on standby and kept an eye on what was happening, she would call me
regularly to tell me who was looking after mother number one and in her opinion
how she was doing. Pat was calling in
now and again for a friendly cup of tea.
That’s when I got the first telephone call from
a member of my family, it was the pervert priest. He didn’t engage in a normal human
conversation, instead he was factual and to the point. I think I can remember our conversation word
for word. I don’t think he even used my
name. He just said, ”Your mother’s going
in to a home in Warrenpoint. We’re
selling the house to pay for her care.
If there’s anything you want from the house you’ve got two weeks to get
here and take it.” That was the end of
the conversation between myself and a Christian priest, someone who I once had
thought was my father, but who I now knew, through the newspaper reports I was receiving,
was about to be declared as the biggest pervert in all of Ireland. Well; at least he was keeping the family tradition
alive and well, by being the best at whatever it was you chose to do in life.
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