[Leica] Taking him home

[jbcollier at shaw.ca (John Collier)]

A few years ago my father passed away. I photographed his wake and 
posted a few photographs to the LUG:

http://leica-users.org/v21/msg11330.html

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My mother decided that he would have wanted to be closer to his own 
mother: Sarah Emily Collier, nee Cole; or, as I always knew her, Gran. 
My father had spend two thirds of his life in Canada so it was decided 
that one third of his ashes would journey back home to Gran. The other 
two thirds would stay in Canada with Mum. A practical Irish rural 
upbringing bought out the measuring spoons and my father's remains were 
soon in three parts on the kitchen counter.

Separation is a bit of a running theme in my family. In all families I 
guess.

Gran had four children in quick succession before her beloved husband 
Thomas passed away from an infected ferret bite. The ferrets were used 
against the rabbits and, when the ferret's blood lust was up, they 
sometimes bit their handlers. It took him a year and a half to die and 
Gran always felt that the doctor did not bleed Thomas often enough. She 
never remarried and waited sixty years to join him. She raised her 
children, expanded the farm, raised her sister's children when she 
passed away and helped raise her grandchildren as well

My father left when he was in his twenties. He and his bride to be, my 
mother, came to Canada because they could not afford to marry in 
Ireland even with them both them working. My father missed and loved 
his mother and it always pained him to be so far away.

Gran's youngest loved and took over the farm as Gran grew older. In her 
last few years Alzheimers set in and she mentally abandoned her home of 
sixty years in Ballybannon and would occasionally be found trying to 
make her way back to where she was born in Tinrylan. Finally she had to 
be put in a home and it was not long before her body followed where her 
mind had long gone.

As in all families where absent parents are loved and missed, the 
children are filled with stories of distant home and hearth. It is hard 
not to love a son who loves his mother so we children followed that 
path as well. Now we tell stories to our children of our parents and 
our parent's parents. Setting the stage so to speak for our children's 
part.

Our family, but for a brother-in-law and a sister -in-law, made the 
journey home. He was interred after a regular Sunday service in his 
home parish in Cloidh. Friends and relations came from all across 
Ireland to stand by us and him that day.


Before the Sunday service:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_1

Preparations for the Sunday service:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_2

Gathered around:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_3

And the sky wept:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_4

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_5

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_6

Fare-thee-well:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/Interment/Interment_7

I will post other photos from Ireland when I can get the raw scans 
processed.

John Collier