Leitrim yesterday for the funeral of John McGahern, who died on Thursday. The remote and beautiful setting was fitting for the burial of a man who found acclaim by describing the simplest elements of Irish life and its landscape. McGahern died in the Mater Hospital in Dublin, and it was there that his journey back to Leitrim began early yesterday. Friends and family, amongst them the broadcaster Mike Murphy, Labour TD Joan Burton, actor Mick Lally and journalist Eddie Holt gathered in a small room in the basement of the private hospital. With the red eyes of morning and mourning, anecdotes were thrown around like coins in a well of remembrance. The hearse was followed out of the underground car park by a black car with tinted windows. It carried McGahern’s wife, Madeline Green, and the writer’s siblings. Beyond the N4 Motorway, the brown and beige fields of Leitrim, interrupted by gorse, pointed the way to where McGahern spent most of his life walking the countryside, taking pleasure in what it offered him.
