Martin Barry: 20th Anniversary
Last week was the 20th anniversary of the passing of my great friend Martin Barry.
Martin passed away on 28 April, 2005. While travelling in Japan in 2002 he was diagnosed with MS. He had a particularly virulent strain of the disease and died in Switzerland assisted by the organisation Dignitas.
Martin Barry. Photograph © Paul McDermott.
I delivered the eulogy at his Memorial Mass on Saturday, 14 May 2005. Irish Jack then asked if he could publish my eulogy in Issue 3 of Where’s Me Culture?, the magazine of the DIY arts movement, established to offer an alternative platform to the official Cork European Capital Of Culture 2005 programme. Introducing my piece, Jack wrote a lovely obituary.
My eulogy and Jack’s obituary are below, bookended by two new pieces.
RIP Martin.
The Urn by Paul McDermott
Friday, 13 May 2005
The phone rang. I apologised to the students and left it ring out. A minute later it rang again, I picked it up.
“Paul you need to come down here and sign for a package,” said the porter. He was unusually soft and quiet, where was our gruff porter gone?
“Just sign for it please.”
“No I can’t, you have to sign for it yourself.”
For Christ’s sake, why couldn’t he just fucking sign for it.
When I got to the porter’s desk he told me that the principal had the package. I knocked on her door and went in. She was sitting at her desk pointing to a brown cardboard box in the middle of the boardroom table. She told me to sit down.
I looked at the side of the box and below a big Swiss flag on a customs declaration docket were the handwritten words “human remains”.
I couldn’t breathe. The bollocks had sent me his urn.
“Is this to do with your friend?”
“Yeah,” the tears started to well up.
“Take the box and head to Cork.”
“Thanks.”
A Memorial Mass had been arranged for the following day at the Lough church in Cork. We were going down anyway but now that Martin’s urn had arrived I could bring it with me. I rang Martin’s aunt and explained that I had his urn. I’d bring it to Cork but only on the condition that I could bring it back up to Dublin again the following day. Myself and Laura were going to complete Martin’s wish and scatter his ashes in his chosen location. His aunt agreed.
We made our way to Heuston to get the train. Kevin, a friend, happened to be travelling to Cork for the Green Party ardfheis so we shared a taxi from Rathmines. Friday afternoon traffic - this was going to be a nightmare. At Portobello Kevin announced that he had to collect business cards on North Circular Road. For fuck’s sake I thought. We eventually made it to the printers and Kevin ran in to get his parcel. In the taxi on the way through town I had been given the whole story about how he was running for election to the Green Party National Executive and how he needed the cards to network at the conference. I nodded away, feigning interest but hugely thankful for the distraction. I left him talk away, I think Kevin knew exactly what he was doing. At Heuston Aoife met us on the platform with coffee.
The three of us sat at a table with the cardboard box on the fourth seat. The train was jammers as always and within minutes I was asked by a woman if she could have the spare seat.
“Of course, let me just get this out of the way for you.”
I stood and moved the box onto the overhead rack. I sat and glanced across at Aoife and Kevin. I started to smile. The smile became a grin and turned into a giddy laugh. I looked out of the window and couldn’t stop laughing. Tears started rolling down my face. I was laughing and crying and my chest was heaving with the pain.
Seán was waiting for us in Cork. Kevin’s conference was in the Silver Springs Hotel so we offered him a lift. Seán was great as always.
“What time is your conference?”
“What are you going to do until then?”
“Sure, why don’t you come out for dinner?”
We arrived home and mam gave me a huge hug and then hugged Aoife. I looked at the box and looked back at mam.
“I suppose you could put it in the wardrobe down in the back bedroom.”
Mam looked at Seán. “Poor Martin,” she sighed.
We sat in the kitchen and mam prepared dinner, herself and Kevin began chatting about food.
“What kind of cheese are you mixing with the sunblushed tomatoes Siún?”
I was so happy that I didn’t have to talk. Within minutes Kevin and mam were swapping recipes. Ten minutes later mam was putting on her glasses and writing in one of her recipe books as Kevin talked her through “Rosemary Plums”.
Laura’s plane was due in so myself and Seán headed off to collect her. We pulled up and Laura ran over to the car. Laura, ever the star, was holding a huge bouquet of flowers for mam. Driving home, we chatted about everything and anything to avoid mentioning the obvious.
Back home I had a closer look at the cardboard box. I peeled open the tape and beneath a load of packing wool was a red clay urn. I lifted it carefully out of the box and examined it. The lid was sealed tight. How was I going to get the bloody thing open?
Minutes later Seán and I were standing in his shed looking at the urn.
“Have you ever opened an urn before?”
Seán gave me a look.
“I can’t get the bloody thing open.”
“Let me try.”
I held it in my hands as Seán tried to open the lid. It wouldn’t budge.
“What if I give it a tap with a chisel?”
Seán gave me another one of those looks.
I grabbed a hammer and small chisel from his tools and carefully tapped against the underside of the lid. The seal broke and I lifted the lid. The two of us starred at Martin’s ashes.
“I never thought I’d be doing this Seán.”
Where’s Me Culture? - Issue 3, 2005.
Beautiful Person by Irish Jack
Martin Barry, writer, journalist, wheel-chair philosopher on the contradictions of life, could be irascible, sometimes irritatingly correct about what he might mouth off about...is no longer all of those admirable things. I’m his mother’s postman, I should know. Martin from the Model Farm Road found himself in Japan for the 2002 World Cup. It was some time close to then that he discovered he had Multiple Sclerosis (if Martin was writing this he would probably say the motherfucker of a disease doesn’t even deserve capital letters...that’s what he was like, most days.)
Prior to then he had worked in Dublin as a freelance journalist and also filed copy for RTÉ, and every paper in Dublin that could put up with him. He was nobody’s fool yet portrayed a passion for life and a common decency towards his fellow man. Half of Ireland heard Martin tell Marian Finucane what he thought of assisted euthanasia. That was the trouble with Martin, he had iron will power and resolve. When Martin chose the time it was his time and nobody else’s. Having quietly informing his mother and family and a small circle of friends of his intentions he took a flight to the Zurich clinic and did what most of us might be too scared to do.
Martin the wheelchair philosopher, only happy when he was pillorying the apology for a health service, writer and wit, and the first to laugh at his own predicament, drew his last beautiful breath on 28 April this year in what medicine now refers to with p.c. ease as ‘assisted euthanasia’. On Saturday, 14 May over a hundred people turned up at the Lough Church to remember him and we listened to a brilliant tribute from his friend Paul McDermott. After that we all went back to the Hawthorne to remember him better and every one of us had a story about Martin Barry. He is survived by his proud mother Sheila and his equally proud brother Robert, relatives and many friends. May he rest in peace.
The Lough Church by Paul McDermott
Saturday, 14 May 2005
I’d like to thank you all for coming here today, it has been a very traumatic 16 days for Sheila, Robert and the rest of Martin’s family and it’s great that we have finally come together to offer them our support and condolences. I’d like to say a few words about Martin. I know that right now he’s going “Hurry up and don’t embarrass me boi!”
A few months ago I got a call from Martin. He was eating take-away Pizza upstairs in the Crawford Gallery. Now I’m quite sure that Martin’s the only person who has ever ordered Pizza to be delivered to the Crawford Gallery. The reasons, though un-important now, involve a broken lift and a restaurant without any food. But that wonderful picture, of Martin eating Pizza in the Crawford will stay with me because it’s a great metaphor. It’s that brilliant clash of high art and pop culture. He was an intellectual, whenever you met him there was a bag of books and discussions about politics, current affairs, history, music, film. But he was also rough, ready, pushy, a bit of a chancer and the funniest person I’ve ever met. There was no such thing as a few quiet pints. A few quiet pints on a Tuesday evening meant if you were lucky, you might get home on Friday.
Being Martin’s friend was like being the passenger in the car of a fast driver. It was exciting, dangerous, stimulating and always lots of fun. When he got back from Japan, I went up to the Regional, Laura and Aidan were there, and even though he wasn’t back in the country 24 hours, he was holding court in the ward, after staging a coup. Suddenly docile patients had been informed of their rights and the place was buzzing. We went down to the lobby and there was this extraordinary occurrence. Martin’s wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the door of the wheelchair accessible toilet.
So there we were in the main corridor of the biggest hospital in Cork and the wheelchair was stuck. So Martin was shouting at complete strangers going - “Com’ere this is a joke, they’re all havin’ us on, wake up people, this is emblematic of the failings of the health service in the country” - as I was trying to push the chair into the toilet and shut him up. I remember thinking then that things would be OK. He had a new fight. And indeed some of his best journalism was in the following year when he highlighted different issues around the health service. He had a painful three years but he had fully accepted his lot and talked about looking forward to meeting God and debating and arguing with him.
In his own words he told me recently:
“When it comes down to it we all want to live for as long as we can because we realise how precious life is. Nobody knows how long they’ve got anyway, so I’m living in the present rather than thinking about a dire future, and the present brings me lots of joys, thrills, surprises and treats. I’ve done quite a bit, and I’ve been privileged enough to achieve all my dreams, I’ve loved, I’ve travelled, I wrote, I’m proud of the stories I wrote and I didn’t sell out or simply write to pay the bills – To thine own self be true.”
In the last 16 days, and indeed for the last three years, I’ve heard people mention the word “tragic” quite a lot. Martin, himself would have stopped us all right there. Because, while of course, it is indeed tragic to witness a loved one cut down in the prime of their life it is very important for us all to remember that Martin lived more than people twice and three times his age have done. It was a short 30 years, but he packed a whole lot in. And we should all be proud and feel extremely privileged that we shared some of those experiences with him along the road. May he rest in peace.
The Rosary by Paul McDermott
Saturday, 04 June 2005
A few weeks later, I was back in Cork visiting mam and Seán.
Mam was acting a bit strange, and eventually she came out with it.
“Don’t be cross with me, but I’ve something to tell you,” she said.
It poured out of her.
The night before Martin’s Memorial Mass once myself, Aoife and Laura had gone into town, she rang Fr. Liam and asked him to come over. Fr. Liam was a close family friend, he had officiated at their wedding down in Gougane Barra a few years previously, he was a gentle, quiet man. He sat and listened as Mam told him all about Martin and how his ashes were at the bottom of the wardrobe in the back bedroom. There was only one thing for it.
Fr. Liam, mam and Seán stood in front of the wardrobe. Mam opened the doors and the three of them knelt. Fr. Liam took out a little bottle of holy water and splashing a few drops over the urn blessed it. The three of them recited a decade of the rosary and mam cried.
“It was my thing, mine and Seán’s, this is our house,” she said.
“Don’t be cross with me, I loved Martin too.”
“I’m not cross with you mam.”
Laura held Martin’s hand as he died at the Dignitas Clinic. In 2022, 17 years later, she set out to fulfil a promise she had made to Martin, turning her search into the award winning 6-part BBC Assume Nothing podcast series, “The Last Request”. Listen here.
Below is a piece written by Martin for Zeitgeist (December 1997).
