Barry and Cinnie

Easter Sunday, 7th April 1985

It’s Easter Sunday in Enniskerry Village. It’s a beautiful spring morning, and the Easter Mass in the Catholic church has just ended. My parents and I are lingering on pews bathed in sunlight, about to take our leave. We rarely attend the church in Enniskerry – it’s usually Bray – but for whatever reason my parents have chosen this one today. I have long, shiny, light red hair, and it’s glorious, but it’s wasted on me at seventeen. At the end of the service I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around.

“You have the most beautiful hair,” says a woman.

My mother thanks her. She has noticed something unusual about one of the men beside the woman in the pew.

“Excuse me for asking,” says my mother, “but is your friend deaf?’

My mother worked with deaf children before she was married. She loved it. The woman, Tess, says her friend is indeed deaf, and she says he is called Barry, and he’s her husband’s brother.

Barry has been deaf since birth, and he has gradually lost his sight over the years. By the time my mother waltzes into his life, he can barely see at all. His vision is reduced to tiny pinpricks of light, and he gets around with the aid of a red and white striped stick, which signifies someone who is deaf and blind. Tess and Barry’s brother Declan live in England, and Barry lives alone in the beautiful Victorian house on a steep hill in Enniskerry Village where he and Declan grew up.

My mother and Barry are the same age. In Enniskerry church on that Easter Sunday, my mother tries to sign to Barry, but he’s uncomfortable, and it soon transpires that Barry was taught Irish Sign Language, different from the British Sign Language that my mother knows. Besides, he appears to have forgotten what he’s learned. Afterwards, Tess and Declan return to their home in the UK, but my mother starts to visit Barry, and little by little she helps him remember the sign language he’s forgotten.

Some time afterwards, I’m not sure when, she receives a clear message. She feels it is from the Almighty.

“If you take Barry,” says the message, “know that it is for life.”

My mother reflects on this, and decides she is up for the challenge. And so, from then on, Barry is a regular guest at our table, he’s always with us at Christmas, he’s with us on walks in the Wicklow Mountains: he’s astonishingly agile and sure-footed for a man who has neither sight nor sound. My mother or my father take his arm as he forges on in the sensible shoes he always wears.

Barry has light grey hair, a strong nose and very smooth skin. He is a powerfully-built man and is strong from gardening and chopping wood. He does not have speech, and his mother has just died when Barry meets my mother, meaning he’s now unable to have a social life of any sort. Soon, Barry and my mother communicate fluently in sign language, in their own way. She forms the letters with her hands and he puts his hands over hers to feel the letter. To see this in action is quite something: my mother’s elegant, nimble hands flying through the shapes, Barry’s great big hands delicately hovering over hers, both of them grimacing expressively, my mother whispering the sentence word by word, Barry exclaiming wordlessly but extremely emotionally and expressively in tiny grunts and cries. Often there is laughter. My mother teaches her eight children some basic Sign Language but I barely get past the alphabet and a few fundamental signs (“good”, “bad” “lovely”).

Perched on the side of a mountain high above the village of Enniskerry, our TV signal is poor to non-existent. One evening, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is on. I am about eighteen at the time, and my cousins are over from Canada. Barry invites us to his beautiful Victorian house to watch the movie. First he gives us a tour of the garden, pointing out an exposed root in the path to make sure we don’t trip. I cannot understand how his house can be so clean, much cleaner than any house of which I have been steward. We watch the film. Barry beams. I cry because it’s a sad story. The movie ends and my cousins and I get up to leave the immaculate living room, but my vision is a little blurry. In the dark night air, Barry waves us off from his door, looking over our shoulders slightly because he can’t see, but his face is radiant, a perfect picture of happiness and pride and I can’t stop crying.

My mother organises trips to a day centre where Barry can meet people and have a social life. He is taught to read Moon (a system like Braille) and he reads books and a newlsetter. By this stage I am gambolling around Europe making an eejit of myself, so I don’t see much of Barry, but I hear how he’s doing. It’s all good. In later years he moves into a house of his own, shared with his best friend Eddie, who’s deaf and blind too. Barry and Eddie are inseparable. They laugh together, go to the pub for pints and chips and generally have a fantastic time. But Eddie goes to bed one night and doesn’t wake up, a devastating blow for Barry. He has lost his dear friend. However, he has wonderful carers, all deaf people, who are also his good friends. Throughout it all, my mother visits him in his home and they talk about things. They joke about getting old – they’re neck and neck – and they make the deaf sign for old, which is where you stroke an imaginary long beard. They look dreadfully sorrowful as they do this, then laugh uproariously. Barry’s face remains pure, unlined and smooth into his seventies, and into his eighties, different from the rest of us. He doesn’t even have laughter lines, which is odd because he laughs a lot and always seems to be wearing a sunny smile (except when he’s telling a story, when his face expresses everything the words cannot).

In the two homes where Barry lives for the last quarter of his life, he’s engaged in lots of activities. He loves gardens, and flowers, and the natural world. He lives close to the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, and he loves to visit, and feel and smell the flowers. He loves nature and all things natural. He goes on visits to the zoo. He goes on a cruise to France, Spain and Italy with two of his carers. He loves using the jacuzzi on board the ship, and swimming in the sea, and he goes fishing in Sicily, but he’s disappointed not to catch anything. He loves the news – all of the news, good, bad or indifferent. Barry discovers Lego and loves building things. He does pottery, he goes bowling and he paints.

One bright day in April this year I take the wheel to drive to Barry’s home in Glasnevin, because my mother’s eyesight isn’t what it once was. Barry’s home is very peaceful and the atmosphere is gentle. There is a wonderful framed photo of Barry and Eddie on the windowsill. Barry is starting to fade away. We spend an hour at his bedside and he knows we are there, but he doesn’t have the energy to communicate. My mother holds his hand throughout the visit. There are daffodils and tulips on every surface, and in the little garden around the house.

On Tuesday last week, I arrive at my mother’s house. She has been told by the staff in the care home that she must come in haste, that Barry doesn’t have long to live. She makes her way across the city alone – I am teaching in Enniskerry this afternoon – and spends time with Barry. She tells me he is very peaceful and that his breathing is even. She is home by about four o’clock. The next morning we’re both in the litchen when my mother receives a call from a number she doesn’t recognise: it’s one of the staff from Barry’s house, to say that at half past seven the night before, just three hours after Mum left him, Barry has died, peacefully, at the age of 85.

The message was clear: this is for life. And it was.

Barry’s funeral, 1st July 2025

I accompany my mother to Barry’s last goodbye, his funeral, which takes place in the Deaf Village in Cabra. It’s quiet there, apart from a few isolated cries from deaf people who (obviously) aren’t aware of their own volume. The hub has a café, staffed by deaf people, and there’s a really nice chapel as part of it. Mum and I have worn black, but we’re almost the only ones who have done so, and the chapel is full to capacity with people in brightly coloured clothes. I cannot imagine a more Irish vibe than the atmosphere in the place: relaxed, organised, warm, friendly, the vaguest of regard for queueing for the tea and patisserie afterwards, whilst still allowing the more permanently-chagrined amongst us to keep our cool. The priest is warm and friendly, the second priest is warm and friendly, and nearly everyone is using sign language fluently and fluidly. I notice two women signing to each other from across the aisle – they don’t need any volume, just good eyesight. There are hymns, signed, and all the signing – the entire service – is simultaneously translated into audible speech by a calm woman who must have neurons of fire to put the signing she’s reading into words so eloquently. My mother has been asked to do a reading, and share her story of Barry. She talks about the first time she met him in church that Easter Sunday back in 1985 – her daughter’s shiny golden hair that was the original spark does not get a mention – and other than that notable omission, it tallies with my own recollection. Mum tells how she had to gently nudge Barry into picking up sign language again, and she tells the congregation how he became part of our family life, but I am not sure anyone understands just how much Barry became part of our family life. But I know, and so do my brothers and sisters. In the ten years that followed, Barry’s world opened up, thanks to my mother. Braille. Day centre. Friendships…and ultimately Eddie, and that cruise.

Mum tells me how deaf people whisper: they cover their signing hand with the other. Because deaf people lip-read, you have to watch what you say, even when you’re on the other side of the room. I wish I could lip-read.

Afterwards I ask my mother if she thinks Barry’s life might have been different if she hadn’t run into him that day.

“I was only a channel,” she says, “a willing channel, and the work was the Spirit’s, who opened Barry up to be receptive. I was only too happy to have the world opened up to him and to learn. It’s an amazing story…what an honour to be invited to take part in it.”

Over the years I often thought about Barry, who did not have the blessing of the senses that most of us have. He was rarely without a smile, except when lost in thought, or telling a sad story in his extremely expressive way. It has always been humbling to me, and reminds me never to take for granted my beautiful eyesight and my perfect hearing, and to stop complaining about trivialities. And I have often thought about my saintly mother, who feels she was privileged to have shared her life with Barry’s.

Ní fheicfimid a leithéid arís choíche. Rest in peace Barry.