After making our way successfully through the “hairy roundabout”, we started to see signs, finally, for Kinsale. Our destination. We had time constraints … Jimmy needed to go somewhere at 7, and so we needed to reach the B&B before then. I assumed he was meeting friends for pints, or whatever, but this ended up NOT being the case, and in light of what he actually needed to do, I am tremendously glad that we made it there in time.
Allison drove us to Kinsale, after we left our new best friends at the gas station in Cork. The road was a two-way road, and yet … by US standards, the road was only big enough to be a one-way road. Thankfully, everyone still pretty much drives teeny cars over there, an SUV on this road would be an utter disaster. The headlights shrieked up at us through the dark, the road was winding, it was night-time … we were a bit stressed.
But then, at last, Kinsale. I could smell the salt air when I rolled down the window, so I knew we were very close. We still needed to find our way to Jimmy’s B&B, but from our street map of Kinsale the Town, it seemed like a pretty wee place, not too difficult to navigate.
It was now 6:50.
We immediately found ourselves in the middle of town, which … I mean, we had heard about the quaintness and the beauty of Kinsale … but the reports of its beauty were almost under-played. It is one of the sweetest prettiest places I have ever seen. However, we could not ogle the sights, or the harbor, because we had to find Jimmy. Time was running out.
Randomly, we took a left-hand turn, and as we both glanced to our right, we saw an odd sight. We saw a line of people stretching down the sidewalk, there had to be hundreds of people (not an exaggeration) clustered along the street, all standing in line. But for what?
Allison wondered, “Is that a night-club or something?”
But … it was only 6:51? A line into a nightclub at 6:51? In Kinsale?
We left that mystery behind us, drove around for a bit, on streets that are teeny, lined with shops, sudden curves, sudden hills, all adorable, but confusing … no street signs.
At last, we asked a couple of people for directions. True to form, they gave us AWESOME directions. Directly to Jimmy’s door. They knew Jimmy. Of course they did.
And then, there we were. The B&B was right next to a massive Catholic church, and we parked in the church parking lot. It was 7:01. I could see a man standing in the golden glow of lamplight coming out of the open door of the B&B … “That’s Jimmy!” There was a wintry breath in the air, the bite of the nearby water … a different feeling in the air than the windy mountainous energy of Wicklow. The moon was high, and waxing. Beautiful. Soaring above the church.
Allison and I left our bags in the car and ran up the steps of the B&B, apologizing. “I am so sorry – we truly thought we would be here at 7!”
Jimmy, of course, was lovely, kind, understanding. “I know how it is … time when you’re traveling and all that …”
He said to us, “There’s a funeral next door tonight at 7 … A local guy died, so I’m going to go over to go to the funeral, and I’ll be back in about half an hour…”
Good Lord, I felt like an ass. I had assumed he was maybe going out with friends. Instead, he had to go to a funeral. Jesus.
I said, “God, I am so sorry.”
“Oh, no problem, Sheila, no problem … You’re fine parked where you are. Why don’t you bring your bags in now, so that you won’t have to walk through the procession …”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but Allison and I went back to our car, shivering in the night-cold, to grab our bags.
And then came the procession.
The “procession” was the huge crowd of people we had seen in the center of town.
We found out later that what happened was: they all gathered at the funeral home, down on Market Street, and then walked, as a group (and we are talking about 300 people … the procession went on forever) up to the church.
Allison and I didn’t feel right walking through the funeral procession with our bags, so we stood back, in the shadows, and just watched.
It was cold enough to see everyone’s breaths. The hearse had led the way, and then stopped outside the church. The procession, which filled the street in front of the B&B, and then curved away out of sight and down the hill, the procession must have been half-a-mile long, stood quietly, stamping in the cold, hands in pockets, clouds of frosty breath in the air. There were old people, little children, there were couples holding hands, there were teenagers with their parents … Everyone was there.
The coffin was lifted out of the hearse, and the pall-bearers lifted it up over their heads, so that it appeared to float through the air, and then they walked it up the long ramp into the lit-up brick church.
The procession didn’t move. Neither did Allison and I.
We had come across a private moment. The private moment of this small community. The inner life of this small town revealed to us, outsiders. A rarity indeed. We didn’t want to intrude, or break it up, or ignore it. We just watched.
When the gleaming coffin had floated its way into the church, the procession started to move. And that’s when we really saw how many people there were. The line just kept coming from around the corner, as everyone walked up the steps and into the church for the funeral. More people just kept coming, silently, respectfully, maybe you would hear the chatter of a child here and there, but for the most part … just silence.
Obviously a well-loved man. Jimmy told me all about him later. He was only 62, he was a musician, and played with a number of local bands. He hadn’t even been sick, but apparently he fell down over the summer, and X-rays revealed that he was riddled with cancer. Nothing to be done at that point, really … and he died in November. Sad.
But to watch this small town slowly walk into that church …
Allison and I kept coming back to it, over the rest of our journey. “Member the funeral in Kinsale?” We felt that we had witnessed something very special, very private. I felt honored to be there, but also a little bit like … it wasn’t something for us to witness. All we could do was stand back, and not intrude. Be respectful, quiet, and watch. It was a town mourning its dead. With throngs and throngs and throngs of quiet chilly people coming up the hill, around the corner, up the hill, around the corner, up the hill, into the church … in an endless flood.
