Sharing warm words and a birthday

Séamus Heaney was a great friend of my parents Robin and Dorothy Walker.

My first memories of him visiting us in Dublin were of a tall imposing man, with a great air of warmth, a very smiley face and a lovely deep northern accent. He was dressed in tweed, a little like my father, and later he would often wear the knitted tie that my mother made for her closest friends. I think his was in red mohair.

I see him always enjoying himself thoroughly, deep in conversation with my father — you could read the satisfaction of their shared time together — and bursting into laughter, arms folded, shoulders shaking, gleeful giggles with my mother. There was always the slight air of mischief around the table.

As well as all the dinner parties, the Heaneys were faithful visitors to our house on Christmas Day, when my parents had friends in all day before we sat down to our own family dinner in the evening. It wouldn’t have felt like Christmas without regulars such as the Heaneys, the Downes family, Paul Durcan, Patrick Scott, Felim Egan and John Meagher. At my wedding in Bothar Buí — our family holiday house on the Beara peninsula — I have a vivid image of Séamus delighting in the abundance of oysters being served.

Séamus and Marie visited Bothar Buí, about which he wrote the poem which opens: “Hazel stealth, a trickle in the culvert”. But the phrase that always sticks in my mind from that poem is “athletic sealight”, which gives such an accurate feel of the West Cork weather. He also wrote a poem about my father, An Architect, after he died, speaking of him walking through a corridor of drawing tables in another life.

My mother died almost 11 years ago. I remember leaving the hospital after visiting her when she was dying and meeting Séamus and Marie on the stairs coming up to see her. They were such a great comfort and Séamus, in the sense that he always responded to people around him, attended to the blubbering mess he met on the stairs and carefully comforted someone in need. Later, after she died, Séamus comforted family and friends with his heartfelt words when he spoke at my mother’s funeral mass.

For my first solo exhibition, Séamus gave a great opening speech. Since that first exhibition he continued to support my work as an artist and was always encouraging, a trait he was well known for.

After the Heaneys started to spend a lot more time in their cottage in Wicklow, he brought with him a small painting of bog cotton of mine, which he said fitted the purpose exactly.

The fact that we shared the same birthday (April 13) always made me feel in some way blessed as I’m sure he felt in also sharing it with Samuel Beckett.

I regularly dip back into the books of poetry he gave to my parents, each so touchingly inscribed. And also to poems he sent to myself and my husband Kieran, when we were married, and later to our children. After his stroke in 2006, he sent us Miracle with a note, “With love from Séamus, who took up his bed and walks, and Marie (who walks anyhow)”.

In one of his letters during a spell of fine weather, he wrote that “these days your Beara peninsula must be a sun-haven, a grianán entirely. But then you’ll have the soft showers to remind you of other things”.

His collection Seeing Things, which includes the poems Bothar Buí and An Architect, has always been an inspiration. I use the title as an instruction on life, to be aware of what you have and what’s around you.

The individual attention he gave to people was what gave him such warmth and made him so popular. He died at about the same age as my mother, much too young, with so much more to offer, which makes me feel such empathy with the Heaneys at this time.

* Sarah Walker is an artist based on the Beara peninsula