One of the loneliest places in the world to be is at a deathbed where the one who is departing is haunted by regret for their unlived life. One of the greatest sins is the unlived life. If my own death were to occur tomorrow, what would be the peaks of my existence? The faces of my beloved, and of others I love and those who love me. The dark valleys of devastation; mountains; the ocean; the numinous music of words; the endless festival of the senses; the excitement and beauty of woman; the joy of music; memories of hard but satisfying days of work on the bog, in the meadows, building walls; conversations that still sing in the mind; the harp cello of the Irish language; the Eucharist, and the celebration of the body in love; being listened to when words were frail and suffering was sore; the return of the swallows to the shed; my uncle’s companionship; my father’s mystical sense; and my mother’s love and trust in my being.
AFTERWORD
On Saturday, January 12, 2008, John O’Donohue was laid to rest in his beloved Co. Clare. It was a day of celebration of a life, of lament for the loss of a loved one and of wild Atlantic weather. That evening I wrote the following words.
The Journey
FOR JOHN O’DONOHUE
We were promised a hard frost
But overnight a milder wind
Blew in from Fanore
And so we drove down ice-free roads
Through Kinvara and Bellharbour
A golden Burren sunrise
Heralded what you called
The wonder of the arriving day.
In Ballyvaughan a huge red sign
Pointed our way with just one word
FUNERAL
Around Black Head
The Atlantic’s mighty sweep
Welcomed the growing line of cars
All with a single destination.
We parked amid the caravans
And walked along the singing river
Remembering how you envied it
Carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding
We gathered in the marquee
And delighted in greeting friends
With laughter and embrace
As you would wish
And no—none of us could take in
The reason we were here.
The obsequies began
Eucharistic mystery
Music and memory
And laughter, always laughter.
Des Forde invited us
To pay our respects
There would be no hurry
We would lay you to rest
When we were ready
And so we filed past your coffin
And laid hands on it.
And no—we couldn’t take it in
We held your loved ones’ hands
Wishing we could especially mind Josie
Proud and frail and broken.
And then the final, final stage
To Creggagh
A great caravan
Snaking along that wild
And surf-tossed shore
That thrilled you so
A vicious south-easterly
Whipped us with icy rain
And stung us to tears
As we lowered you to lie
Face to face with rock
In a limestone valley
Your soul already freed
Face to face with God
On the eternal mountain.
Charlie Piggott played
Éamonn an Chnoic
As we huddled
Báite fuar fliuch
For the last farewell.
Home now
Through the dying day
Down flooding roads
Past sodden fields
With one more stop to make
At Corcomroe
To remember Easter dawns
When you blessed the elements
And sang the risen Christ.
A silence
And then past
Weeping Burren flags
And through the shroud of mist
Descending
Into the dark.
John Quinn
Envoi
Sometimes
A voice is sent
To calm our deepest fears
Sometimes
A hearty laugh
Will banish all our tears
Sometimes
Words will wing
Our dreaming ever higher
And sometimes
A mind will set
Our imagining afire
John Quinn
IN MEMORIAM
The story is silent until the word is spoken and witnessed, and becomes flesh so that it can be touched, felt and lived. The word germinates in the seductiveness of the dark until conversation tempts it towards the dawn where the sun illuminates and gives witness and seeing. Then, we, the human participants in the ongoing act of creation, can enable it to become flesh and live amongst us. As this journey escalates, the arms of the outstretching Word embrace the entire world.
John O’Donohue’s life cannot be encompassed within the one act of birth, life and death. He was not a finite act that existed and is now lost for evermore. He is a story that is written and spoken and lives amongst us. Just as we are and continue to be.
His themes of echo as the response of continuity, imagination as the ability to still see the mountain behind the mist, and absence as the transformed presence of the vanished awaken our thinking and provide food for our spiritual journey in an increasingly hungry world.
One of the questions that John loved to pose was: “When was your last great conversation with someone?” Good conversation is the enemy of falsity, facade and shallowness. It chases the truth of things, it demolishes the flimsy foundation of facade and it penetrates the depths so as to soar into unfolding possibility. When things stay separate and isolated they stiffen into the act of surviving, whereas when they have a conversation with each other they begin to live as the artists of their own destiny.
The moment that two questioning minds and hearts meet in really great conversation, a portal opens into immensely exciting possibility.
So it is with this beautiful presentation by John Quinn: he tempts the reader to join him in a really great conversation with John O’Donohue. He introduces the conversation with a wonderful memory and weaves together some of John’s favorite themes into a beautiful flow of mystical unfolding. The two Johns shared a wonderful thirst to sup from the chalice of imagination, which allows a different lens with which we can view all that is given. Whether in a bar, a radio station or an office or up a mountain, all these places were made sacred because of their meeting; “For where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them” (Matthew 18:20).
There is a wonderful freshness of spontaneity and chance about these encounters, yet John Quinn skillfully interlaces these conversations into a beautiful pattern.
On a personal note I must say that when not up a mountain, if you could sit my brother in a dimly lit pub with a pint and a cigar and inadvertently present the well-sculpted question, then you would be carried into the surprise of the unfolding, unstemmable flow.
John used to always advise me to write down or record all the wonderful statements made by my children when they were discovering language as a means of expression. He would explain how they had come from the other world into our dimension and how their memory of that world had not yet faded, so the color of their statements was an echo of memory of the place from which they were given to us!
Because I am here,
Where is it that I am absent from?
—John O’Donohue
Not alone should I have recorded them, I should also have recorded him!
As I look at my desk I see that I have the dictionary, the Bible and Benedictus open for help, yet my eye is drawn out the window to the landscape, which was such a profound inspiration for John. It led him to the wonderful recognition of the “inner landscape,” and so the magic began.