Planning for six years to be buried in style
And the song is very appropriate – as that’s how the Clare man planned his funeral, six years ago.
Not alone did he select songs, the funeral Mass and purchase a burial plot, Mr Barry also erected a headstone with an inscription.
His funeral takes place at Ballycannon cemetery near Ardnacrusha.
The headstone includes the words: ‘What! That time already?’
His wife Teresa said yesterday: “We will give him a good send off.” She revealed that as PJ never liked wearing suits, he was placed in his coffin last night wearing a cowboy outfit with a US marshal’s badge attached to it.
Teresa said: “My daughter Kerry got it and it has a cowboy buckle. It is like a cowboy outfit with a waist coat and a bandana around the neck. There’s no way he would want a conventional suit.”
And, in accordance with his detailed plans, Frank Sinatra’s rendition of My Way will be played today as his coffin is brought from Parteen church to Ballycummin cemetery.
At the graveside, his favourite poem, Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Jail will be recited.
PJ, 62, in an interview some years ago said: “I decided to take no chances with the grave and funeral arrangements because I have had a few health scares.”
He died on Friday last after a long illness.
He is survived by Teresa and their three adult children, Kerry, Antoinette and Paul.
PJ encountered some initial problems with the first plot he selected at Ballycannon six years ago.
Due to increased burials in the part of the cemetery where his original plot was located, PJ was forced to buy another plot and move his headstone which weighed two tons.
Some months later, PJ revealed that overcrowding had forced another change of plan.
“I am going to have to be relocated. There is no room for me in my current plot. A coffin will clearly not fit down there.
“You cannot put the coffin in diagonally or lengthways. At the moment my grave is as useful to me now as a knickers to a mermaid. Like William Butler Yeats, I am going to be buried twice.”
PJ had detailed the scale of the problem.
He said: “One grave is in front, alongside and behind me, but there is not enough room to lower me down. There is 70 inches from my headstone to the one in front of me. I am only 5’7 feet in my shoes and when you take a coffin into account, that goes well beyond 70 inches.”
However, after a further search of Ballycummin cemetery, PJ opted for an alternative plot.
And that’s where he is going today...
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