Two elderly women filled with fun and curiosity

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

While travelling to Heuston Station to take the train to Tralee last week I was on the upper deck of the S2, which brings me right to the door of the station, I noticed two elderly women. 

They had come out of the Lidl shop on Thomas Street, carrying their purchases and chatting away with each other. They were small, slim and talking non-stop, smiling too. I had a good view of them. 

How I would love to have been a fly on the wall. They must have been in their 80s. Think of it, 80 years of life’s experience inside their heads. What has made me think and write about them is that I noticed they both seemed so animated, their faces were alive and whatever they were talking about it was exciting and interesting to them. 

I immediately called a friend and with my usual sense of fun, mixed with cynicism and confusion, commented yet again, how this life of ours is one big mystery, or maybe even a joke. I heard it somewhere that we lurch from one distraction to the next and then in our older age hurtle towards oblivion. Wrong? No way were these two women anywhere close to hurtling to oblivion.

I’m wondering do they use social media, do they know anything about how Trump and Vance treated Zelenskyy in the White House? It’s unlikely they post nasty messages on social media.

I’m suddenly reminded of those lines from TS Eliot: ‘All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,/All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,/But nearness to death no nearer to God.’

We are in the first week of Lent with spring now bursting out in front of us. A good time to wonder more and ask ourselves what’s it all about. 

Has social media given us some hint of  how chaotic the lives of people can be. The anger, the inaccuracies, the stupidity that is spewed out on social media leaves me dumbstruck. On the other hand it makes me realise I have no idea under the sun what’s going on in the minds of other people. Anonymity is vile but it does give  us a hint of what ‘the anonymous’ are actually thinking.

These days I’m watching the US president saying outlandish things. During Keir Starmer’s visit to the White House when Trump was asked about his calling Vladimir Zelenskyy a dictator he replied: ‘Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that.’

Maybe those two women were making far more sense than Trump. And why not? It wouldn’t have been too difficult for them. Who’s Trump? Who is any of us?

Compare the simplicity and realness of those two elderly women with all the pomp and nonsense that surrounds the likes of Tump and his fellow travellers. I’m with the two women any day. I certainly hope I am.

Lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth scream out at me these days:

‘Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.’

Who are the idiots?