Susan McGahern’s Celtic-style gravestone

Susan McGahern’s Celtic-style gravestone is a memorial shaped as much by family grief and practical conflict as by its imposing design. Francis (Frank) McGahern selected an expensive limestone cross and planned its position with exacting care, but the dimensions of the grave structure encroached on neighboring rights and required changes. When John McGahern later visited the grave, the cross had not yet been erected: the fresh clay, scattered flowers, and small rosemary bush marked a loss he could approach but could not fully imagine.

Selection and Design

Francis (Frank) McGahern chose the headstone himself and took John McGahern with him to Smith’s. He spent a long time walking among the monuments before settling on a large limestone cross in a Celtic design, with a thin Italian Jesus in white marble fixed at its centre. It was the most expensive headstone on display. The choice gave the memorial a conspicuous physical presence, joining a local limestone form to a separately made white marble figure.

The cross was only one element of a larger design. Sitting at a table in front of a large mirror, Francis (Frank) McGahern spent several nights drawing up a plan for the grave, using his aptitude for mathematics and measurement as well as his ability to write. Although he had bought a family plot in a favoured position close to the church, the finished arrangement could not be contained within it. The monument thus began as a carefully measured act of commemoration whose dimensions exceeded the space assigned to it.

Disputes over the Plot

The plan led to trouble with the foundation. John McGahern was sent with a letter to Patrick Callaghan, the Aughawillan contractor and stonemason. His memory of the errand was vague; he thought he probably cycled to Drumshanbo, then took the train to Ballinamore and stayed overnight with Maggie. A surviving letter dated 24 November 1945 records Patrick Callaghan’s response: he enclosed the plan and described the cross base as measuring 2 feet by 10 inches and 1 foot by 10 inches, with the base required to be at the centre of the plot. He said he had built it according to the plan and did not believe he was to blame.

The layout also intruded on a private path belonging to the Dolans, a relatively wealthy family whose house stood among trees beside the church. Their family had given the field for the church and, in return, had been granted a path through the churchyard. It ran from their house to a small gate in the church wall, then between graves to the gravel path around the church. The Dolans threatened legal action over the encroachment. John McGahern was uncertain how that dispute was resolved, but thought Maggie or Uncle Pat may have approached Father McGrail and that the Dolans ultimately allowed the wall to remain because their access was not significantly affected.

A separate encroachment into the McBrien plot was more serious: that part of the plan had to be removed at Francis (Frank) McGahern’s expense, and the plan redrawn. John McGahern thought the private-path intrusion may have been corrected at the same time. These disputes made the grave’s footprint more than a private family matter. Its construction had to negotiate the boundaries and privileges of the churchyard, where the Dolans’ separate entrance marked a right not shared by the congregation at large.

The Unfinished Memorial and the Visit

When John McGahern returned to the grave with Uncle Pat, the large cross had not yet been erected. They went to the church to pray, then walked around by the sacristy door. Fresh clay lay at an angle between the path along the church wall and the footpath leading to the Dolans’ gate. Wilted flowers had been left on the clay, and Maggie had planted a small rosemary bush in one corner. Those temporary traces stood in place of the substantial stone memorial still to come.

John McGahern tried to picture Susan McGahern lying in her coffin beneath the clay, but could not. Kneeling to pray with Uncle Pat, he noticed the plot’s size in relation to his mother’s small hands and feet. Uncle Pat remarked that the man who had secured so much space would want plenty for himself when his own turn came. The observation linked the grave’s disproportionate dimensions to Francis (Frank) McGahern’s place within the family, without resolving the narrator’s inability to imagine the body beneath the earth.

The visit did not end with the first prayer. The next day John McGahern cycled out to the grave alone. The fresh clay offered no access to the scene he was trying to recover; what came to him was its dull light. He put his fingers into it as if into water, brought them to his mouth, and tasted only clay. He then knelt and tried to make himself pray in the empty church. The physical ground, rather than the absent headstone, became the immediate object of attention.

Weathering and Meaning

In a later description, the cross is in place, but time has altered its appearance: the thin white Italian Jesus has turned green and looks forlorn, while rain has eaten away the lettering on the limestone. The memorial’s intended permanence is therefore visible alongside its erosion. The elaborate design, expensive materials, and carefully drawn plan could establish a lasting marker, but they could not keep its surface untouched by weather or make grief readily imaginable to the bereaved son.

The gravestone gathers several scales of remembrance into one object: a husband’s planned memorial, a family grave whose dimensions provoked disputes, and a place where John McGahern returned to pray. Its story moves from selection and measurement, through encroachment and revision, to a later encounter with weathered stone. Yet its most intimate image comes before the cross is raised, when the fresh clay and rosemary mark the grave more immediately than the monument. The completed headstone names and occupies a place; the narrator’s visits show that the loss it commemorates remains difficult to grasp.