Country Days Read Free

and egg production. We still kept in contact as I was working in a town not far from where she lived. I sometimes stayed with her for weekends in the family home. It was a big farmhouse with high ceilings and a wide front hall from whichdouble glass doors opened into a glass porch, so that the front of the house always seemed to be filled with light. There was no mother in the home as she had died when they were children, which maybe made Eileen more mature than I was, even though we were about the same age. It was an old house and in the spacious bedrooms upstairs the beds were also old; in the room we shared, our bed had a sag in the middle. First into the bed slept in the sag and the other one slept on the surrounding hillside. Because we were young and flexible, the bed with the built-in dip in the middle was the cause of amusement rather than insomnia.
    When we came in late at night from dates and dances, we chatted and laughed at all the things that are funny when you are footloose and fancy free, and when we closed our eyes in the small hours of the morning, the humpy mattress was no barrier to sleep. When I married a few years later I got buried in the baby bucket, as sometimes happens to young mothers, and we lost contact. I heard that she had got married, and then one day out of the blue she called with a quiet-voiced, smiling man and two little girls. It was great to see her and you had only to look at her to know that she was happy. The next time she called, there was a little boy with the two girls in the back of the car. We did not write to each other or even send each other Christmas cards, but still I would have considered her one of my dearest friends.
    Then one day I met a man from her parish who told me that her husband had cancer. At the time he was in remission and the whole parish were praying for a miracle. Eileen’s husband was, he told me, a man around whom their whole parish revolved, involved in the GAA, in farming organisations, in race meetings and in everything that went on in the local area. The neighbour said to me, “If you had a problem in the morning, John would be the first man in your door.”
    That night I rang Eileen and we talked for a long time. She was hopeful and fearful. It had gone on for almost a year, and when John took a step forward it was sometimes counteracted by two steps backwards. Just then he was going through a good patch, so hope was beginning to kindle in her heart. Shortly after that a nun from our old school died and we met at the funeral. I was delighted to meet them, and John looked so well that you would have given him a certificate of good health. It did not continue like that, however, and treatment became necessary again. From then on it was an up-and-down process with regular stays in hospital. Through it all, prayer was a great comfort to Eileen and John, and the neighbours sat with John in the hospital and called to see Eileen regularly. They had a very good friend in Fr Tom, who often said mass in John’s room in the hospital and prayed with Eileen and the children at home.
    During those weeks I never called to Eileen’s home or visited John in the hospital. I had not beenpart of their life before this illness and becoming part of it now would be an intrusion. My bond of friendship had been with Eileen herself, and our telephone conversations during those long, pain-filled days made me realise that our thinking was still in harmony. I regretted that we had lost contact over the years, that her children were now stran-gers to me and her much-loved husband somebody whom I had only met on a few occasions. I could be of no comfort to them now. Only close friends can help you in times of great pain.
    The weekend before Christmas I was away from home, returning late on Saturday night. On the Sunday morning the phone rang and a young voice said, “I’m Eileen’s daughter; Daddy is being buried today.” The soft young voice was full of controlled pain, and