The Wedding Girls

“Is that the wedding girl?” little 6-year-old Anna asked, looking at the photo of my Mum’s wedding. My Aunt Monie and I laughed at her granddaughter’s use of the word girl, even though I suppose Mum was younger than I was then - in her early thirties.  It was just that the 1950’s hairdos were so severe with hair pulled up sharply into a bun or a roll, that everybody seemed older than their age then and very un-girl like.

Aunty Monie and I had just been looking through a whole pile of photographs from the 1950’s of her wedding to my mother’s cousin Aidan Ryan, and my mum’s wedding to Monie’s brother Joe Eustace, my father. My mum Alice had met my dad at their wedding, and we were laughing about the serendipity of it all. The entire extended family had gathered together to celebrate Monie’s 83^rd Birthday, but I must admit that it was a bit surreal to be sitting in the quietness of my cousin’s kitchen as preparations for the great event were proceeding in the next room, with someone who was such a large part of my childhood and hear her acknowledge so calmly that she was in the last few weeks of her life. She was such a slight figure sitting in the rocking chair, the growth on her head turned away from me, as she clutched her black handbag that held the pills around which her life now depended. She picked up the photo of her wedding day and tenderly touched the face of her beloved husband Aidan, recently passed, whom she had met in medical school in the late 1940’s before placeing the photo back on the table surface.

Later on, at the celebration dinner I was trying to get all the muddled genealogical facts in my head straight, horribly aware that yet another fount of all that was familiar to me would soon be lost, and any further questions I might have would never then be answered. Aunty Monie was the last of Dad’s family. Dad (Joe) was born in 1917, his brother Austin in 1919, Mary in 1923 and Monie in 1925, the same year as Mum. My dad’s family the Eustace’s were all from Drogheda, Co Louth, the smallest county in Ireland which straddled the Northern Ireland border with Co Down. My mum’s family the Ryans were prosperous and very politically active farmers from the sunny southeast in Co Wexford about 125 miles to the south. Both my mothers’ parents had died shortly before her marriage, and I never knew them. My dad’s father Tom Eustace was also dead before I was born, but his wife Granny Eustace, I do remember as she only passed away when I was in my teens, and she was a force to be reckoned with, in the local lingo she was a right weapon, a street angel/ house devil that ruled the roost wherever she landed.

Monie told me that granddad Tom Eustace met my granny Nancy Callan on a boat trip in Dublin, Ireland’s capital city, and was instantly smitten. Granny whose parents ran the general store in Ardee, 20 miles north of Drogheda, was being romantically pursued by the son and heir of the prosperous town bakery at the time. Consequently, despite Grandad’s ardent declarations of devotion, she was not sure about the offer from a painter and decorator, although a very prestigious trade at the time and with an illustrious history of that trade in the family dating back to the 1700’s. As with most things in Ireland back then at the turn of the twentieth century, advice was sought from the priest in the confessional and on hearing that Tom Eustace was a daily communicant from a good family and a teetotaller, Nancy agreed to his proposal.

 It is of great debate in the family as to whether Grandad was already an alcoholic at the time of his engagement to Nancy or whether his marriage to her drove him to drink! There is a great story of him working on a job down the country and drinking all his wage money and having to live off wild gooseberries for the week. Another story tells of how the local women were commenting on how holy Tom Eustace was, as they had seen him go into the church five times that day. What they did not know is that he was painting the church and had come out five times to go to the pub! Not so funny are the stories Dad tells of having to sit with his father in a locked room when he was in the horrors, screaming and climbing up the wall to get away from the imaginary rats that were trying to eat him.

Granny was an extraordinary woman though, she and her mother before her. One of that breed of strong women of generations past. Not easy to live with perhaps but matriarchs that guided and worked endlessly for their families in good times and bad. It was the ambition of every Irish parent at the time to have at least one doctor or priest/religious in the family. Through granny’s exceptional business acumen in running a pub called The Railway Arms that her brother left her on the Dublin Road on the outskirts of Drogheda, and her refreshment franchise at the Drogheda railway station close by, she managed the hat trick. Two doctors: my dad and Monie an ophthalmologist, and a priest Fr. Austin and a nun Sr. Mary Alacoque. Because she was such a excellent businesswoman, she had a good reputation with the bank and had a penchant for taking to the bed to plan her next property purchase. At one stage when Dad was in college, he got a letter from Grandad asking him to pray that Granny would get out of the bed soon or she would have them all up in Gormonston Castle.

Thankfully Nancy settled for a holiday home by the sea, a lovely, corrugated iron house in the small village of Termonfeckin and then later sold the Railway Arms Pub and moved to my own childhood home in a beautiful red brick two story house in the centre of the town. My auntie Monie had also lived in the same house when in college and we both left to get married from the same bedroom, the lilac room (now green!) in the same church, Monie in 1955 and myself in 1996. “So, you weren’t the first bride to leave from that house,” she quipped as she picked at her favourite desert of bread-and-butter pudding and custard. But seemingly she was one of the first brides in the family to have a white wedding. Before that, as a lovey old lady called Mrs King, who I used to visit in St Johns cottages for the elderly told me, you just got into your best dress, went to the church and then came home to your husband’s family rather than your own. In Mrs Kings case, she came home changed out of her finery and went out to do the milking!

Granny was a hard woman to live with and prone to wild rages. A well regaled story tells of one time when she lost the plot altogether and had mum hiding under the table as she flung saucepans at her and then threw her out the door of the house in Termonfeckin, when she was 6 months pregnant with my older sister. The source of her rage was mum’s understandable objection to having to make endless pots of tea for all the priests Granny had invited to the house, when she was supposed to be there resting during a difficult pregnancy. But even though she had her moments, Dad admitted she was incredibly generous to her children. He and Monie never went back to college without money in their pockets. She funded their digs and did everything she could to make their professional lives successful. She bought a property on the main street in Drogheda intending for it to be used as a shoe shop for Mary and Monie to run. But then Mary entered the convent and Monie decided to do medicine, so she gave it to Dad instead when he qualified, and that building supported him financially to the day he died, firstly as a business premises and then as a source of rental income when he retired. She also bought a property for Monie and Aidan in Wexford when they qualified as eye doctors, as well as an aga range that almost took over the entire kitchen of the small upstairs’ flat where they lived when they were first married.

Mum also lived over the shop (a chemist shop and doctors’ surgery) for the first three years of her marriage before they moved into granny’s red brick home and granny retired to her house by the sea in Termonfeckin.. My mum was devoted to dad. She used to commemorate so many dates that were special to their relationship. There was the day she first set eyes on him - as she peeped out the window of An Grianan, the Irish Country women’s association building in Termonfeckin to spy on him at Monie and Aidan’s wedding breakfast celebration. Later on, when her brother Pierce, a friend of Aidan’s, introduced her to the dashing Dr Eustace the brother of the bride, it was love at first sight. As for Dad, well yes, he had sown his wild oats and had heard all the “Oh Joe’s!” from his sister Mary a Holy Faith nun as yet another ‘unsuitable’ girl was introduced to her. So, as he once told us, when he met Mum, who was definitely the marrying kind, the timing was right to settle down. But it was more than just that, as the letters we found when we were clearing out the house were testimony to, as were his regular declarations that marrying Mum was the best thing he had ever done in his life. Then in addition to that milestone day, there was also the anniversary sometime in November of when they shared their first kiss, she always made him something special on that day, and finally of course the engagement and wedding anniversaries.

The downside of such devotion however was that she continued to believe that Dad was such a catch that he was still easy prey to unscrupulous women everywhere. So, the only crises I ever remember in their marriage was when Mum found a letter from a very old beau of Dads who had since entered the convent in his pocket and accused him of seeing her behind her back, when all it was, was an old friend hoping to catch up!

Monie and I were sitting in the conservatory then, recovering from the large meal, looking out at the grand children and grand nieces and nephews playing in the stable yard. She started to talk about how wonderful all the children and grandchildren were and how lucky we were to belong to such a closeknit family. She was telling me of the time a friend was counting out the number of grandchildren she had. The comment was “imagine you have nine grandchildren”. But Louise the oldest was there and she interjected “No, you are wrong, it’s ten, you forgot Justin, he is one of us too.” We were sober for a minute thinking of the untimely death from leukaemia of the little boy aged seven who was pageboy at my wedding when Monie said to me “You know, all that matters in the end, when you are shortly to meet your maker is how much good you did for others in your life and how much love you gave.” I responded that surely in that case she had nothing to worry about. She shook her head and said you could always have done more. But we agreed sensibly that if we were all perfect the world would be a very boring place, so to do the best you can is as much as you can hope for in life.

She started talking about Granny’s faithful housekeeper and retainer Mary Sweeney who we all loved and feared in equal measure when we were small, shaking her head sadly as she did so. “She must have longed for her baby so much,” she said, “and Alice was born within a few days of your uncle Austin, it must have been so hard for her to give her up.” I was wondering how it happened that Mary came to stay with Granny. It was a very broadminded thing to do given the times to take in a “fallen woman” when back then it meant that both mother and child were supposed to be outcasts for the rest of their lives.

Seemingly Mary Sweeney was reared by her distant relatives who lived in Ardee. Monie said Nancy’s parents, the Callans, were an important family in the town and were asked to help when it was discovered that Mary was pregnant out of wedlock. However, although granny’s mum wanted to do something for Mary, her husband Lar being a man of his time would have nothing to do with her, so she asked Nancy if she would take her on. Granny did and when Mary’s child Alice was born, she asked the Daughters of Charity who had an orphanage in the town to take the baby in. They refused as only boys were allowed into the orphanage at the time. If you were a girl, you were expected to go with your shamed mother to a Magdalene Laundry sort of hellhole for the rest of your life. But Granny waited and kept on trying and eventually they relented and allowed Alice in. When she grew up Alice stayed with the nuns and spent her whole life there in the role of a helper, as given her “sinful” background she was not allowed to be professed as a nun herself. I was curious as to whether Mary got to visit Alice as she was growing up, but as Monie was completely unaware of what was considered a scandal at the time, and only learned about Mary’s situation when she herself was a grown woman, she had no idea. She just kept on saying quite fretfully that she wished she had known about it, that maybe she could have done something.

In an attempt to change the subject, I started to tell the story that Granny used to terrify us with as children about her brother Joe who had come back from the dead and put a fiery handprint on her bed to warn her to be good in this life as there was terrible torment for sinners in the next. My mum was a very religious woman, and I went on to recount the time I had gone up to visit her after I was married, and we were coming back from a shopping trip. Her key was in the lock of the hall door ready to open it when she stopped suddenly and said to me. “You know I wonder what really happens to you when you are dead” and I joked that regardless of what she found out she wasn’t to come back like great uncle Joe and tell me about it!

I was so surprised when Monie, rather than laughing, turned to me instead and said wistfully that she wished that Aidan would have had come back to her from beyond the grave. That one night after he died the door opened and she looked up and saw him standing at the door and she jumped out of bed and ran over to him and hugged him and said, “Aidan, my darling thank you for coming back to me”, but all that was there was his dressing gown hanging on the door that had been opened by the breeze.  It was heartbreaking to think of it. 

My eyes strayed to a plaque on the wall that was probably received as a wedding gift which eulogised the power of love. I pondered its veracity. I saw Monie hugging her beloved husband’s empty dressing gown and Mummy and the bone crushing sadness she exuded as she walked away from Dad’s grave on the last Cemetery Sunday mass we attended together before she passed away, the memory of a true and loving marriage no longer any comfort in her loneliness. But counterbalancing that was the experience of my grandad and his rather thorny marriage to my matriarch of a grandmother, and Mary Sweeney, her life ruined by the promise of a commitment that soon after crumpled into dust. My final thought on the matter though, was that of the funny story my dad told me once about how when he diffidently enquired of a patient in the 1940’s after attending the birth of her 15^th child if maybe enough was enough, and she answered, “Sure Doctor isn’t that all we have and a cup of taa!”

 Love is risky and not always wise, but in the end, human contact and the memories of whom we have loved is all we retain. So, it is worth plucking a ticket in the love lottery of life because, to borrow their slogan “If you are not in you can’t win” and despite the odds, if you are truly blessed and all your stars align, you may win the biggest prize of all… the shared euphoria of looking into the eyes of someone you truly love and shouting out exuberantly those fateful words…“I do.”