Uncle Pat

Uncle Pat, the narrator’s uncle and Susan McGahern’s brother, is presented through acts of practical help and repeated visits rather than extended description. His presence links ordinary family responsibilities to the long illness and death of Susan McGahern: he helps when money is needed, keeps watch at her bedside, and later shares the narrator’s first visit to her grave.

Family and Practical Help

When the narrator anxiously asks whether Eddie will be paid, Uncle Pat laughs at the pair’s earlier association but reassures the child that Eddie can come to him when he needs money. The exchange makes Pat a point of recourse for someone in need, while the narrator’s concern shows how seriously a child takes the question of whether Eddie’s work will be rewarded.

Uncle Pat’s help is also embedded in the household’s daily work. He keeps two white bullocks on the hill: one is thriving, the other failing. The narrator is assigned to feed the weaker animal crushed oats each morning before school and again in the evening. The detail places Pat within the practical economy of the family, where an animal’s condition creates a continuing task for a child.

Contact and Visits During Susan’s Illness

Because Uncle Pat cannot read or write, Francis (Frank) McGahern regularly contacts the guards in Ballinamore and asks them to arrange for Pat to telephone. The arrangement makes Pat’s literacy a concrete condition shaping how the family keeps in touch. The narrator also observes that the calls give Francis (Frank) McGahern drama and attention, a qualification that complicates the picture of contact as purely urgent or practical.

During Susan McGahern’s illness, Uncle Pat comes to the house almost every day and climbs the stairs to her room. He coughs loudly as he crosses the narrow wooden corridor, stops at the bedroom door, and asks after the patient. Susan usually says she is a little better; her optimism heartens him, and he points to the coming summer, fine weather, and the time recovery may take.

Only once does Susan tell him that she is not doing well and fears she may never leave the room. Pat is shaken and falls silent, clearing his throat several times before urging her not to give in to that way of thinking. His usual reassurances cannot erase her admission, and the pause that follows exposes the strain beneath their familiar exchange.

Grief and the Visit to the Grave

After Susan’s death, Uncle Pat accompanies the narrator to her grave. He cycles with the narrator on Maggie’s bicycle, explaining that he is tired of sitting in the car. They pray in the church before going around by the sacristy door to the grave, where the large limestone cross has not yet been erected and fresh clay lies beside the paths.

The narrator cannot imagine Susan lying beneath the clay and kneels to pray with Pat. Wilted flowers are scattered over the grave, beside a small rosemary bush planted in one corner. When the narrator remarks on the plot’s size in relation to Susan’s small hands and feet, Pat answers with a dry observation about the space her husband will need when his own turn comes. His presence at the grave gives the narrator company in an encounter that remains difficult to comprehend, while his remark brings the family’s grief into contact with the inevitability of another death.