Susan McGahern’s funeral

Susan McGahern’s funeral is both a public parish rite and a private ordeal for her son Sean. Unable to bear the congregation’s prayers and the sight of mourners gathering, he stays away from the church and burial; with the Blue Clock in his hands, however, he follows the funeral’s progress minute by minute. The parallel between the community’s visible farewell and Sean’s solitary vigil makes his absence a form of anguished witnessing rather than indifference.

Announcement and avoidance

On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Katie insists that Sean attend Mass and receive Communion for his mother. The day is a holy day, she explains, and his absence would be noticed. Sean tries not to go, but Katie warns that she will tell his father when he returns. Her insistence brings him into the church just as the priest announces Susan’s death and gives the arrangements: her body will be taken to Aughawillan Church that evening, and burial will follow the eleven o’clock Mass the next day.

The announcement transforms what might still have seemed reversible into public fact. Sean had tried to avoid facing people at Mass; now they are praying for his mother. The congregation’s prayers had previously concerned other people, but this time the loss is immediate and personal. Hemmed in on the bench, he cannot escape until the service ends. Then he runs back to the barracks along Henry’s street, past Jimmy Shivnan’s forge and Gilligan’s shop, over a stone wall and through Gilligan’s field. The route ends in a place where he feels safe, before the stream of mourners begins moving towards the bridge.

A vigil at a distance

Sean’s account follows the funeral first through anticipation. He imagines people arriving at the house to offer condolences, climbing the stairs to look at Susan’s face, and kneeling beside the bed. In this imagined vigil, visitors share tea, wine, or whiskey after paying their respects, while the woman keeping watch remains by the bed. Sean dwells on the hour he had once had to look at his mother’s living face and believes he has wasted it. His thoughts return repeatedly to the fact that she will not move or smile again.

As six o’clock approaches, the clock becomes a measure of what he cannot bring himself to witness. He pictures the hearse stopping at the little iron gate, the coffin being carried down the cinder path, and the household emptied of most of its furniture. In his reconstruction, the Rosary is said outside in the open day while Susan’s close family remains inside. The coffin is placed beside the bed; then the lid is fixed in place, hiding her face for the last time. The detailed imagined sequence does not erase his absence. It shows how he stays with the ritual in thought even as he cannot join it in person.

The Mass and burial

The next morning Sean takes the Blue Clock from the sideboard and slips out before anyone sees him. He carries it along the avenue, past the elder tree and beneath the evergreens, then climbs towards the Bawn and hides in the thick laurels. From there, with a wren for company, he watches the minutes left before eleven pass. The church is full, the altar boys and priests are at the altar, and four candles burn around the coffin beneath the sanctuary lamp. He follows the Mass’s movements while clutching the clock and weeping.

After Mass, mourners leave offerings of money on a table before Sean’s father and uncle Jimmy. The two men count the contributions into small blue bags and give the priest a note of the sum, which proves unusually large. Father McGrail speaks of Susan’s life as a teacher and of her devotion, modesty, gentleness, and care for those entrusted to her. The public account of her character reaches Sean in his hiding place; listening to it, he cries out and fears the clock’s hands are about to stop.

The funeral proceeds through familiar Catholic rites: the coffin is blessed with holy water and incense, the cross leads the procession, and the bearers carry Susan from the church into the sunlight. Sean’s account holds together the ceremony he follows and the solitude from which he follows it. The coffin moves around the sacristy towards the grave, whose fresh clay is lined with moss so that it can be lowered gently on ropes. The priest’s clay falls on the boards; then the shovelfuls strike the hollow coffin. The grave is filled, its green sods put back, and the crowd disperses towards the graves of their own dead or out through the gate.

Grief after the burial

Sean remains among the laurels through the burial. He comes out nearly blind, although the long avenue is shaded, and reaches the archway just as two men with fishing rods approach the barracks. They have apparently been lent a boat. Sean runs to meet them and asks whether they are going out on the water. The account gives no answer about what follows; its final movement is the sudden turn from the grave to the prospect of the river.

That turn does not make the funeral complete or resolve Sean’s grief. It places the public ending of the burial beside his immediate need to leave the place where he has silently followed it. Throughout the sequence, the clock gives shape to an experience otherwise marked by helplessness: Sean cannot alter the service, prevent the coffin from being closed, or accompany his mother to the grave. He can only keep time with the rites, weep as they unfold, and emerge after the burial to seek the company of the men and their boat.