Jeannie Crotty
Kilrush, Ireland, 1946. When a man died in town, the wake was a communal affair — the house open, neighbors coming and going, tea and biscuits laid out for all who came to pay their respects. My mother and her sisters and their friends understood this perfectly. They were about nine years old, and they were there for the lemonade and biscuits.
They made their way to the house and went inside, looking for the room where the body lay. At the top of the stairs, a door stood open on a room with a lovely white bedspread — fresh, carefully made up. Clearly, this was it. The girls knelt around the edges of the bed and began their prayers.
The person in the bed raised her head. "What are ye doing, little girls?"
They had the life frightened out of them. Racing for the door, they hit the top of the stairs just as my mother's twin fainted — and every last one of them went over the top of her, ass over tea kettle.
The wife of the deceased, when she heard what happened, laughed until she could barely stand — even though it was her husband's wake. The woman in the bed was her mother-in-law, Mrs. Susan Crotty (O’Dea). The lovely white bedspread had been put out fresh for her, knowing there would be many visitors. Whether Mr. Crotty ever got his prayers is another matter entirely.
At the graveside, every time the widow caught the children's eyes, she broke out laughing all over again.
My mother always called her "Ginny Crotty" — but I think she meant Jeannie. Jeannie's husband John died in 1946, which puts my mother at about nine. His mother Susan survived him by a year, living to ninety-one. Jeannie herself lived until 1980 — long enough that she may well have been one of the women we were introduced to on our many trips to Kilrush as children.
It turns out our family has at least one DNA connection to John Crotty's line. Go back two generations and there are fourteen.
The widow who laughed at her husband's funeral — and kept laughing — was someone my mother knew her whole life. I like to think we met her as children.