Billy Keane: Farewell to Uncle Teddy, the emigrant who was lonesome for his home place

The call came through late on that Saturday night, just over a month ago. I was working in the bar. We were busy. The Brownes were singing and could be heard lilting over the chat like bird song above bee buzz.

Life is good, I was saying to myself. This is how pubs should be and I'm thinking the worst of the recession is lifting a little, at last.

The bar phone rang, the landline. We were in the middle of the busiest hour of the week. I left it a while. But the phone kept ringing. I answered. It was my cousin Conor.

"Bad news, Billy. Uncle Teddy passed away just a short time ago in Florida." I froze.

Then I went back to pulling pints, as if nothing happened.

On went the shop face.

It was like a sun shower when the tears came and the bar was closed. I was smiling and crying at the same time. Crying for the loss and smiling for happy thoughts of Uncle Teddy meeting up with his wife Joan, my mam, my uncles Jim and Dan, my Auntie Norrie and his parents.

Uncle Teddy was a year younger than my mother. She passed away about a year ago. Mam was mad about him. In a way, I'm glad she went first. Uncle Teddy was her baby brother, her pet. My nana died in childbirth when Uncle Teddy was born and my mam mammied Uncle Teddy, small and all as she was.

My granddad died just a few years after Nana and Uncle Jim, who was the eldest, took over the farm. Auntie Norrie, who was a great people person, ran the shop for Jim. My mother served her time as a hairdresser in nearby Castleisland. Uncle Dan helped out until he left for America. They were a very united little family. There was no work at home back in the '50s and uncle Teddy followed Uncle Dan to New York.

The happy family was cut it two.

Teddy worked as a baggage handler in Kennedy. He married Auntie Joan and she was the kindest, most laid back woman who was ever born. Kids came along and they bought their first home.

All was going well until Uncle Teddy hit the bottle. He was a secret drinker. "The work was hard," uncle Teddy told me. There were late nights and early mornings. It was the tiredness that drove him to the drink. He would drink bottles left in the planes or sometimes he smuggled in his own to help him make it through the night.

The young emigrant was lonesome for his own place, his family here, and even though he never said it to me, I'm sure he was sad too for the mother he never knew.

Auntie Joan was a loyal Cork woman. She stood by him. Uncle Teddy's life changed forever and for the better on the day he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. My uncle found his faith again. Uncle Teddy was a devout Catholic and he was the oldest altar boy in Florida. He served Mass every day until he was 85.

My lovely uncle was conservative but he was non-judgemental. Never once did he utter a cross word when his liberal nephew was writing cross words about the Church in this very paper.

He really did live the life of Christ, as best he could anyway. When I was at my very worst, through no one's fault but my very own, I remember telling him that I woke up one night in a drenched sweat. In the nightmare, I was at the bottom of a dark, damp well and I was trying to climb out. Uncle Teddy had the bottom of the well dreams too, he told me. "Everyone has their bad days and their bad dreams," he said. And I thought it was just me.

It was like an awake meditation when he spoke. His words were "time, time". And he was right. In time I did pull myself out of the well with the help of family and friends. I pass on his words to those who are battling with addiction in honour of my uncle.

"Time, time." I think he meant this too shall pass. Toughen a while and you will be fine.

Teddy was promoted and he moved to Florida. He was very happy there in Clearwater, near the ocean, and he did very well for himself. His kids loved him, his wife loved him and he loved them.

Auntie Joan died a few years back and Teddy still kept going to his AA meetings. But like so many emigrants, Uncle Teddy was more Irish than American. He came home every year.

My uncle was missing Auntie Joan and as we drove through the hill country near Rockchapel, where she came from, he would talk away about old times. There was the story about the man who asked for a pack of cigarettes on tick from the shop and came back from Australia 40 years later to pay his bill with the question: "Is there something there in the book I might owe ye for?"

Uncle Teddy always warned me to watch out for the drink and the tiredness behind the bar which sends many bar men reaching to the top-shelf for a quick pick-me-up.

My cousin James, who was a mental health professional for 40 years, has the gift of summing up people in one line. "Uncle Teddy had no anger in him", he said.

I think AA was a huge help and taught him how to let go. The aura of calmness spread to those around him and even travelled thousands of miles over the phone. Every summer, we host the "Uncle Teddies", as my mother called his friends. Most were Irish-American and the drinking gene travelled over the Atlantic. They ask for a diet coke. The "Uncle Teddies" are nearly all quiet people and a little bit shy. I often think shy people drink too much to get up enough courage to talk and make friends.

"We know your uncle Tim in Florida." Tim was his US name.

And after the second diet coke they open up. Uncle Teddy helped so many to give up the drink. It was the Christianity in him and he really did do his best to live the life of Christ. Deeds of love and grace are sometimes hidden in the repetition of the heroic anonymity of day-to-day living.

So there I was on Saturday night, all alone upstairs over the bar, in the sitting room, where my mam and Uncle Teddy spent hours talking about dad and Con Houlihan reciting poetry in their kitchen and bachelor farmers in their '70s proposing to Mam and Auntie Norrie, provided the dowry was big enough.

There I was crying those sun shower tears when I felt this serenity come over me. There, upstairs, from somewhere, I don't know where, came the thought that tonight Uncle Teddy would meet his mother for the first time in 86 years.

Billy Keane's new book 'The Best of Billy Keane' is in all good bookshops