Rosemary McCloskey

All school holidays and occasional weekends were spent in my grandmother’s house on Main Street Dungiven. When I was only a small baby, my parents agreed to leave me with my grandparents and Aunt Rosalin, for a week, to give my mother a bit of a break. Unfortunately it began to snow shortly after they returned to Belfast, and that snow lasted for more than six weeks. It was the “BIG Snow” of 1947. My father tried a few times to get over Glenshane Pass, but failed, and so they had to content themselves to leave me to the McMackens where, no doubt, I was being treated royally, being their only grand-child in Ireland.

I loved Dungiven, and often cried bitter tears after holidays there, when I had to return to Belfast. I loved the regime in the house there. It was always more relaxed than home. My Grandmother used to get up very early in the morning to clear out the range and light it, and then she made tea for everyone and I took it upstairs on trays, to all in bed. Water was put on to boil and we were washed and then she might begin a day’s baking! How I loved that! The smell of newly baked cakes and bread always bring back this memory to me. I can still visualise my Granny up to her elbows in flour. She was a small white haired lady (something like Cecilia, except her hair is not yet white). She was very fair-skinned and a great woman for the prayers. The Rosary would be said, morning and evening, with us kneeling on newspapers on the tiled floor in front of the range, facing the little shrine she had on top of the press, with the statue of Our Lady and the little silver vases on it. I used to gather wild flowers for this altar and she would always put them up for me. She was not content with the Rosary, but had loads of "trimmings" after it, and that is how I know so many of the prayers today. I never had to learn them but picked them up from those who said the Rosary etc. in Dungiven, every evening.

I used to share Granny’s bed room and again there would be a lot of prayers said in bed when she would wake up and before we would go to sleep. It was a lovely, peace filled house. My Granny loved to sew and alter her clothes. She used to make sheets out of flour bags and my greatest ambition one time, was to be allowed to use the Singer treadle sewing machine in her room. It was forbidden to us to touch it, in case we caught our fingers in it. The day she sat me down and showed me what to do, I thought I was in heaven! She showed me how to make a run and fell seam and how to make the flour bag sheets. She was great at patching sheets as well.

My Grandfather had a shoe shop and behind it a work shop, where he sat and made and mended shoes and boots. Men travelled great distances to have their boots made by James McMacken. He wore a leather apron and had a pot of wax which he would run the thread through when he was stitching. He also had a mouthful of little tacks when he was mending the shoes. He, too, was a man of prayer and of peace. He never had to raise his voice nor did he ever complain when Granny would have the kitchen in a mess with the baking. He would just say a few words and disappear again into his workshop. He had been ill for a while and bed ridden, with Aunt Rosalin looking after him. She really loved her father. He went to God on 12th July 1954 and I was there when he left.Poor Granny was in Roe Valley hospital at the time and missed the funeral.

Granny outlived her husband by about ten years. After Aunt Rosalin got married to Eugene Burke from Claudy, on 23rd January 1962 (ten days after Aidan O’Kane was born), Uncle Vincent and Aunt Maura came from Mitchell Park, to live with her and later they all moved to Priory Road while the house was being renovated. Granny died in the kitchen, after having a cup of tea and piece of cake on 22nd March 1965. Uncle Vincent and Aunt Maura had been down at the wake of Eddie Stewart who had been at school with Granny. When they returned, Aunt Maura made a cup of tea and gave it to Granny. She finished it, and as she was putting the cup back on the saucer, they heard it rattle and Granny just slipped away. Wasn’t that a lovely way to die? She was no trouble to anyone, although she had not been feeling very well. She was eighty three when God took her.

Dungiven and the McMackens, who were my mother’s people, had a tremendous influence on my life and that is why I have included this excerpt at this point. The religious formation and standards and values I absorbed from them are still with me. I am very close to my extended family, especially Aunt Rosalin, who is now almost  ninety years old and I pray that the Lord will spare her to us for a few more years. She is the Matriarch, with an interest in every one of her nieces and nephews and their progeny. There are now so many, that I find it hard to remember them all, but she knows all birthdays and sends them all cards and often presents. I telephone her regularly, as do the others and call to visit her as often as I can, for the day will come when she will no longer be physically there for us. She had no children of her own, but she had a big hand in rearing most of us. She was the lady our mothers called on when they were pregnant or ill and often she came to Belfast and took Cecilia and Margaret and me to Dungiven on the UTA bus, which took us three hours and went via Magherafelt where we had to change buses.

Dungiven was my Mecca.

I doubt if it will be the same when she goes.