Gerry's Funeral "Service"
On Friday night last, an old Grumpy passed But by that I mean no disrespect The curmudgeon act, just hiding the fact Of the warmth we all could detect With friends and his kin, he'd get under your skin But you knew it was all a big show He might grump or scold but his heart was pure gold As dacent a man as you'd know. I first met Gerry when I came in from Derry A culchie to Belfast's Big Smoke We were coortin’ a pair of sisters so rare The daughters of them Hegarty folk So we had to compete for the best snoggin seat In that welcoming Brookhill abode We both liked our jars, he knew all the bars From the Docks to Cave Hill Road. Things came to a head and we got double wed On the same day in troubled Belfast In the Brookvale Hotel which was blown to hell By an IRA's later bomb blast With shootings at night, in sectarian strife He told what life was like there He had stories to tell and he told them well Of himself a near-victim ... a scare. I marveled the way he could tell of a day When a black taxi pulled up behind At night on his own, walking home not knowin' If the Butchers had him in mind Through it all, good cheer, despite any fear That working for the Irish News Could mean homicide and torture beside His fate, no matter his views. Both he and Anne knew, like her folks had to Get the hell out, right then and there So off over here, where Scarborough fear Was fear that a family could bear Our families unite, on an Ellesmere height Within walking distance for years Our kids often played, in a woodland glade Where Highland Creek's beauty appears. There were wild nights too when both of us knew We had so much drink, it was tarra Who wheeled who is a time-dimmed view But someone went home in a barra The wheeler was blind, the wheelee in kind From the cops the escape it was narrow If we had been caught, the charge to be brought Might have read, "Drunk while driving a barrow." (continued at top of right-hand column) | Back of our house then, was a steep hill glen Where our kids and theirs would toboggan Near a New Year's Day, Gerry went for a sleigh But the hill was icy speed-hoggin' He took off on a bump and landed a thump Crushing four vertebrae tight Propped up at a pole, to agony thole Till we got our car near the site. To 'emerg' right quick? No! God, he was thick He first wanted home for a shower The pain was intense but so was his sense He must look and smell like a flower In his hospital room there was never gloom He charmed other patients and staff Around Gerry's bed, the craic he led Giving visitors many a laugh. This wee country hick and the city boy slick Got on rightly most of our days He was honest and blunt, might hit ye a dunt He couldn't stand disheveled ways Like that time last year when this wild beard here Made him say with his fatherly frown "Yer Rosaleen's hubby ... ye look like a rubby That ye might see beggin' downtown!" There are strange things done under a Norland sun By the men who cast for trout On Spar Lake afloat, in ice hut or boat You'd see Gerry hauling them out With a son and heir there, like an Inuit pair Patient at an augured ice hole He was happiest there in the land of the bear Scooping them out with his pole. I caught a huge bass where he said to cast Right close to the Spar rock shallows I heard my first loon with its lonesome tune Up there in his spiritual hallows From now on, I think, I'll a whiskey drink When the loon cries over White Lake I'll toast Gerry then and see him again Will you join me now and partake ... ... in a parting glass to a man with class A genuine sort of a friend Who when times were rough and the going tough On him we all could depend You can see him still there, in his male heirs' hair Or his daughters' eyes when they smile Or in Jose's head where he'll never be dead Or in Hailey's and Kyla's style. (“Jose” is Jamieson, Anne's name for their grandson. Hailey and Kyla are grandaughters.) |