An island tradition; the beauty of saying farewell

I was nine years old when my granny died, but I vividly recall her funeral on Rathlin Island. My dad and, his brothers, carried Granny’s coffin from the chapel down church brae to the cemetery at the church at the bottom of the hill, facing the sea. Back then, that journey was referred to as every islanders’ last walk and it was a beautiful, if not taxing tradition. It’s a very steep walk downhill and incredibly difficult for the coffin bearers.

Unsurprisingly, the tradition has been adapted over the years, but it is still just as powerful and emotional. Sadly, we mapped the final steps of a much loved islander yesterday, my dad’s wee brother, Loughie. Loughlin John McCuaig to give him his full title, or LJ as we often called him.

LJ was an integral part of the island community and he was a brilliant storyteller. In fact, he would have loved this story I am about to tell. He would have retained every single detail and orated the narrative for many years to come. He would have utilised his skills so prolifically, and with such intricate detail, that anyone listening would have felt they were there, witnessing the event for themself.

This is not Loughie’s life story, this is just a tiny part of it. But it’s an important part of it. After a short illness on the mainland, where he was lovingly cared for by family, Loughie died on Monday. Myself, my sister and my uncle and aunt were privileged to be by his side. He came home yesterday, to the island where he was born, and lived all his days. Home to where his heart was firmly lodged.

All funerals are sad, haunting even, and yet in their own way they can be quite special. Island funerals, however, or maybe just specifically Rathlin Island funerals, are extraordinarily beautiful.

I was on the island side for LJ coming home. There had been a storm the previous day, and the sky was so soaked in the sea’s rage that all the boats had been cancelled. But the morning Loughie was due to arrive home, it was calm. Still. The sea had swallowed up its own grief and covered its gaping wound in a fresher, calmer tide. It wanted to carry home the little boy who’d once scribbled on stone walls and smoked cigarettes behind the chapel wall.

When the ferry was a little more than half way across the water, the island’s residents began to gather on the slipway. The island’s love was pulsing like a drifting dream as we stood solemnly on the slip. Interwoven and overlapping, the community connected like the bough of a boat and waited. Although the harbour was busy with people it was as though the world was empty, with nothing in it other than the sun splitting the sky. And then in a moment of awakening, before Loughie left the Spirit of Rathlin, tourists quietly disembarked the ferry, tentatively walking past his hearse, their heads tilting up towards the luminescent life on land, waiting to embrace one of their own.

Finally, we watched as the hearse very carefully made the transition from sea to land. At the edge of the slip, a lone accordion player accompanied Loughie’s return to the island with melancholiac music that carried him softly ashore.

Instead of taking the quickest route, by turning left and travelling past the cemetery and up church brae to the chapel, the tradition now is for the family and island community to walk behind the hearse, the cortege making its way slowly along a longer route to the chapel for the funeral mass. With spring in full blossom, shards of light peered through hawthorn, birds eye trefoil and campion, creating memory markers to line the edges of the journey. This route was particularly special for us as it meant walking past Loughie’s hill, and his home at Mount Grand, where he lived for his entire life.

At one point I glanced back and took a sharp intake of breath when I saw the thrumming line of mourners behind us, all swaying as one, ensuring Loughie was protected on his second but last walk.

After the requiem mass, another beautiful island tradition came into its own. To get to the cemetery, we didn’t go down the brae as we had done with Granny all those years before, we walked back down the long route we had come just an hour before. But this time, as is the tradition on the island, the family and the islanders took it in turn to respectfully carry one of their own along the road. It is the gentlest of gestures, both caring and loving and wonderfully empowering. It is all done without words, the only sound is heels clacking over loose stones underfoot.

Incense still penetrated the air, its intensity like leaves falling with the same weightlessness that comes with death.

At the graveside, Loughie was carried by family along a grassy path of carved stones that separate the stories of other islanders, and led directly to my granny’s grave. For it is there, alongside his mother, that Loughie was laid to rest. After the priest said his final words, the singer Frances Black, who was a friend of LJ’s, (and whose family also hail from Rathlin) sang, ‘Here’s to You‘. It was beautiful, and with the mourners joining in and singing the chorus, it was a fitting squeeze of comfort, a nudge to a soul to settle peacefully in hallowed ground.

An island farewell.

The chorus of the song goes like this:

So here’s to you, and our time together. I will share with you a parting glass, And bid adieu with some smile and laughter, Our time apart will be short, and pass.

We will always treasure our memories of LJ, but his funeral, so often a day that people want to forget and just get through as best they can, will be an event I will look back on and find strength in.

Thank you, Rathlin, for being so generous in the giving of your love and respect, and for reminding me that when we fall the island will quite literally carry us in its arms.