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This Fr. Gerry Creedon eulogy was delivered at the Church of St. Finbarr and the Holy Angels in Inchigeela, County Cork, Ireland on August 23, 2002
My mother was called Gretta by Himself, our father. The rest used mother, mammy, granny or ma. I have come not to mourn our mother, but to celebrate her. God knows over the last month our family has wept enough. She was a valiant woman who saw a solution to every problem, a light at the end of every tunnel. She was a woman of resurrection.
Yet before I canonize her I must acknowledge a limitation: she could not wait. She hated waiting.
When my sister Teresa and I went with her to Lourdes, I recall a place where the Blessed Virgin had placed her feet. Ma wanted to touch that stone. Unfortunately, 450 French people were already waiting in line from an early hour, watched by a gendarme with a square red hat. Ma sized up the situation in a glance. There was an altar for candles close by. When Teresa balked, I was shoved forward with her in my collar. As soon as the guard turned his head she was in front of the queue communing with Mary at the stone. Let's get out of here I whispered before we end up in the Bastille. No patience, and I will not even mention her competitive edge. Her virtues were many:
- faith
- courage
- determination, and
- love.
Faith.
In recent years Ma Creedon's horizons expanded with time for TV. I'd call home and hear about politics, GAA, rugby and the world cup. Recently she gave me a blow by blow account of the Ireland- Germany game. Germany scored. The Irish dominate play, but they were kicking the ball everywhere except into the net. Finally she observed the coach, in her words, "that tall, lanky libe McCarthy with his hands over his head in desperation and his knobby knees, no inspiration to anybody! So I went down to the room and prayed to St. Teresa. They still kicked wide. She was useless. No sooner had I lit a candle to Padre Pio than Liz shouted, 'a goal for Ireland'! He has great power and that is why they canonized him". There were other saints she called on too. When Galway beat Meath, she planked down a statue on the table, "there is the man who beat Meath, St. Martin de Porres of Lima!"These stories demonstrate her faith: if one saint does not work, try another. Never give up. Her song was, "Keep right on to the end of the road. Though you are tired and weary, still journey on, till you come to your happy abode."
Courage.
Her faith expressed itself in courage and risk-taking. When Miriam and I went with her to the Red Sea, she wanted to float. She does not swim. Da would not let her try on a previous visit. I too doubted the buoyancy of the Red Sea. I led her tentatively by the hand. She stretched out on the surface of the sea in her bathing suit and says, "Let go!" She floated on with great glee.Determination.
Faith became determination. She believed in 150% effort, whether it was 200 plates of turkey she carved single-handedly for a function in Creedon's Hotel, or stamping envelopes in the Post Office she managed with a great thump!Love.
"But the greatest of these is love." Despite her work and her shyness she always had time for friends. She had no time for people who weren't "sticky and plucky". There must be a lot of loyal and generous people here today.
Her glory was her 45 grandchildren who could do no wrong, and her in-laws. She had 14 children: Teresa, Michael, Con Don, Gerard, Nora Mary, Oliver, Bernard, Thomas, Richard, Joseph, Dominic, Willie John, Miriam and Margaret. She loved each one uniquely. Some were tall and silent like grandfather, Mike White, others were stocky and blocky and good- natured like the Creedons. Some she loved for they shared her passion for antiques or willingness to motor. Some share her love for fashion and style, others like Himself were well-handed, could fix things and light on their feet when they danced, others could sing like the thrush, though she could not. One shared her love of poetry, one could make her laugh, one was her first, another her last. One could find things, another like herself could lose things. One she loved because he was a Rock of Gibraltar another because she appreciated her opinions and one because, if she had not been her daughter, would have been her best friend.I have named no one yet! Now let me name two.
A brother who has schizophrenia, Bernard, could not attend her funeral. She died on August 20, the Feast of St. Bernard. She baked brown cakes for Bernard. He has a special touch with children and babies. She always remembered her sister Nan with tears and special affection. She died young in England while ma was in nursing school in Margate. Bernard's sensitive nature reminded her of Nan.
I will name the love of her life: himself, Johnny Creedon, whom she only called John. He always played the role of Santa Claus at Christmas. He had a special room in the house, his Sanctum, not the bathroom, which he called his throne.. In the weeks after his death, she would touch the door of the Sanctum and say, "No more Santy!" She knew him as the most generous man she had ever known, Santa Claus all year long.
The day before her stroke, I took her for a drive, "Where will we go?" I said I'd love to go north to Ballyvourney. I knew she and Joe and Miriam brought all her major problems to St. Gobnait. She did the rounds, a spiritual marathon. I just wanted to say hello. I was heading east to Toonsbridge, when I heard the order, "Turn South!" South we went to the land of the O'Donovans and the Whites, her family of origin her own people; Kilnadur school, where she peddled from Ardcahane; Togher church where they came in their trap, Coolmountain and Tooreen, the spot where she was born. She named every field; pairc ban, pairc na cabhaili, the bridge field, where Ritchie and Willie dragged Cathy and herself down the hill in a boxcar, her first locomotion. The road is closing in with fuchsia like a tunnel. Her parents planted it, promising, "it will be there after us". We drove up Cnocan na Piopai, that divides north and south, her own people and those she would join through marriage. I said we will say the rosary. No she said, wait till the top of Pipe Hill. We said the decades surveying Ballingeary the land of the Creedons, the grotto built by Timmy and John at Gotnahochtee where she remembered the Cotters, and back to the village of Inchigeela, her own home and before long her resting place… I did not know we had done "cursa roimh bhais", (gaelic for visit before death)
Ma showed us how to live and die. With death she was familiar. She never missed a funeral, "Tom, are you going or will I hire Jacky Carthy?" That put him moving.
After Mass each morning she stood on Da's grave, drawing power from him. Recently she said there's a fall on this side. They are shifting over to make room for me. The day before she fell, she hummed a song and said "They've found the right spot!" "Do you mean the right grave?" I asked. "No, the right spot above…at least the Creedons and the Cotters, wasn't Jeremiah a saint?"
Then competitive to the last she looked at the neighbors' graves and concluded, "I do not know about the rest of them!"
Three weeks later, deprived by a stroke of two of her favorite gifts, her ability to eat and to speak, she struggled to draw breath. Suddenly she raised her body, lifted up her arms, looked to the Heavens as if seeing those who had gone before and broke into a big smile. Then she laid back her head in the sleep of death.
May her faith and love raise up all who grieve her passing to the glory of Easter faith.
* * *
or 2002
Homilies
Revised/reviewed December 7,
2002