In memorium – February 2024

When we were discussing the funeral arrangements the other night, our Brian said to me, “You need to say something … something from Seamus Heaney.”

So, I suppose for my Da there can only be one Heaney poem, and that is “Whatever you say, say nothing.”

It’s not just that, as our Geraldine and Eilis will tell you, his mantra through life was “tell them nothing”, a habit developed, no doubt, growing up in mid-Armagh during some of the vilest years of this statelet, “besieged within the siege,” as Heaney put it. 

And, it’s not just because that poem is about the Troubles which overshadowed so many of our lives and shaped his politics. 

It is more that, I think, my father’s philosophy was to let your deeds, your life, speak for itself. 

We’ve gotten all sorts of very kind messages over the past couple of days from people my Da taught, telling us how much he affected their lives, how he gave them the confidence to become the people they are today. 

That was his politics: it was practical non-violence. In the face of state and paramilitary atrocities his response was not to meet like with like, but to teach kids to work hard, to do their sums and become in themselves the new Ireland for which we all hope and strive. 

Our father could barely speak English towards the end there. As the poem says, that voice of sanity really had grown hoarse. But it doesn’t matter now. Because we still have his life. 

His deeds live on in the kids he taught and in others who teach children to read even in these bleakest of days. 

And, no matter how little he would ever say about himself, or could say towards the end, those are things that truly do speak for themselves.