I didn’t understand about half of what you said or why you hung your suit in the barn. After I asked three times without understanding the answer I figured I’d let it drop. Didn’t want to be rude. And I didn’t get your explanation when I almost tripped over a big rock that appeared outside our back door one morning. Later, Mary said it was a “fairy stone” you put there to ward off whatever the little people might have in store for a couple of Yanks.
But I understood you just fine when you pestered the musicians in the Lighthouse Pub to “play an IRA song.” Or when you wouldn’t let me order a Bushmills because it was “Protestant whiskey.” No point in mentioning that Bushmills was owned by the same multinational that owns Guinness. This was a conflict that, though always much discussed as I was growing up, I was never a party to.
You wore that same barn suit at the Pierre when we all went to the huge wedding in New York a few years later. You looked a little out of sorts. You were a long way from your rocky little farm in Fanad. We asked the waiter to bring you a Guinness and I think they had to run down the street somewhere to find one. We always wondered what they charged for that can of beer.
The last time we saw you was in the rearview mirror, waving and walking after our tiny rented car down the lane on our way to Derry. (Wouldn’t call it Londonderry, especially around you.) We’d spent the day -- a “soft” November morning to you, cold and wet to us -- on your farm drinking tea and later a Guinness. You showed us old family photos and your buildings and your animals and your assorted rusted farm stuff. I don’t think anything I saw there had a motor. It always amazed me that you worked those hilly acres by hand.
We ran to close your gate as an army of sheep advanced down the lane. Ringo, the dog, couldn’t contain himself. As we got into the car you mumbled something about how we had to leave so that we could come back again.
It never occurred to us that that would be the last time we’d see you.
You were a devoted son, caring for your mother until her death. To us, you were friend, a guide, a willing caretaker for our family’s property and a first cousin once removed. We were, as you put it, your people and you were ours.
Rest in peace, James Friel.
