Putting My Father to Rest in Massachusetts, 14 Months After His Passing

On Saturday morning June 13, at 9 AM, in Fall River, Massachusetts, we buried my father's ashes at the O'Riordan/Johnston cemetery plot.  Some thirty people came, family and old friends, as did the crisp New England morning sunshine.  My Grandmother Anita and my Aunt Karen organized the brief, soulful, and touching ceremony.  Speakers included my Grandmother, Karen, my cousin Kate, and Sister Barbara.  I took a few moments to share the following summary of my father's life, with a focus on why we brought him home to Fall River.

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On February 13, 1955 my father was born to Anita Johnston and Eoghan O’Riordan on an English military base in Munster, Germany.  He was an Irishman born to Scottish and Irish parents.  However, more importantly, he was a New Englander.  He emigrated to Boston with his parents a fin 1958, and after working a residency at Boston City Hospital, his father Eoghan signed on as an anesthesiologist at the Fall River Hospital.

My dad’s formative and some of his most cherished years were spent here, in this town, in Fall River.  He lived on Highland Ave with his parents, his four siblings- Stephen, Karen, Brian, and Sean.  His beloved grandfather, Bob Johnston, worked in Boston, but unfailingly Bob drove down to Fall River to spend time with my dad, to cheer at my dad’s baseball games, and to be a part of my dad’s life.  Bob Johnston was a key paternal influence in my dad’s life, and one of his core role models for how a man should care for his children.

During these years, my dad attended the local private Christian school Bishop Connolly, and he roamed Greater New England with his rat pack of Vinny Faye, Kenny Boulanger, Mike Trainor, John Seguin, and others.  He made a lot of friends in his life, but his Fall River friends and their families were among his most cherished.

About every seven years my grandfather Eoghan would change jobs to a new town and a new hospital, and in my father’s late teenage years, Eoghan moved his family to Killington, Vermont.  Though the skiing was spectacular, this move marked an end to the Fall River chapter.  For many in the family, this era in Fall River had been one of the happiest.  The kids were young, the family was growing, Anita and Eoghan were ascendant in America, and the broader Fall River Community had embraced them.  

It is no accident that we are here today, remembering and celebrating the lives of my father Michael and my Uncle Stephen.  If the O’Riordan family has a piece of land in the world that is a home, it is here in Fall River, where Anita, Eoghan, and the five O'Riordan siblings firs established their roots in American soil.

My dad left the East Coast for California in the the mid seventies, and he stayed away for over two decades.  During that time he married my mother Holly, stopped drinking just as his father had done, had two children- me, Andrew, and my sister, Katelyn- and launched a career as an Insurance Agent with Prudential.  He put together his own version of the American Dream, as he worked hard for us, loved us, supported us, sent us to private Catholic schools, coached my baseball and soccer teams, took me to Padres Games, and played hooky from work and school so he and I could go skiing together in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Among my dad’s greatest accomplishments was being a great father.  During my most vital years, , he was present, supportive, positive, engaged, and loving.  With my mother he laid the foundation for a good life for me, giving me every opportunity I needed to make something of myself.  I am forever grateful to you, dad, for providing me with a happy, loving home and for being a good father.

My dad found his way back to New England around the turn of the century.  Before dropping me off at college at Princeton, he and I took a road trip together through Boston, the Cape, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and of course, Fall River.  He showed me his home, his schools, the park where he played basketball, the field where he played baseball.  He introduced me to his old friends.  He had returned

In the following years, he re-connected with his old buddies, he came back for Red Sox games, and he even purchased a second home in Swansea.  He said he was “coming home,” and he declared that he wanted to name his boat “Full Circle,” to describe his life path that had taken him away from Fall River, but had led him back again.  He always said that the people back here were “Salt of the Earth,” which I think meant that they had a connection with each other, a lack of pretense, and an authenticity he had found lacking in Southern California.

Sadly my father’s  life was cut short too early by Small Cell Cancer.  After some difficult weeks in hospital in San Diego, he died on April 19, 2014 at 59 years old.  A lot of us in the family felt like there was more living to be done, and we grieved the man we lost as much last the time that we felt he lost.

 However, one of my father’s later insights in life was that there are no guarantees.  He couldn’t expect, and really none of us can, to live the full term of his life.  He was lucky in so many ways, to have a mother and father who provided him with love, support, and opportunity; to create a happy, healthy, and cohesive family of his own; and to have people like all of you, “Salt of the Earth” people, in his life.  As I said in my eulogy for his father at a funeral service in San Diego a week after his passing, he had so many reasons to be happy.

Today we bring my father Michael and my Uncle Stephen home.  This is where they belong, in Fall River, Massachusetts, where they have truly come Full Circle, back to the place from where they came.  I know my dad wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

We miss you, dad.  Welcome back home.
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After I spoke these words, my Grandmother delivered the following blessing:

An Irish Funeral Prayer

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Everything remains as it was.
The old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no sorrow in your tone.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without  effort
Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting,  when we meet again.