The Litter Picker

Thoughts on the return to Cork

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

Roy Butler’s mam would have been readying herself to take her place in the witness box when I passed him. The litter picker. On York Street, a practically vertical hill that links MacCurtain Street to Wellington Road on Cork’s north side. Down in the gutter he was, fishing crumpled plastic wrappers from a puddle nestled by the kerb. He was bent over but since the steep hill was rising to meet him, he had less of a distance to reach.

He looked up as I passed at a brisk pace, needing to make it across town to the courthouse for 10am. Our eyes met briefly and he offered this explanation, almost apologetically:

“I left my litter picker at home today.”

“Well God bless you,” I said, having not enough time to interrogate.

I’d gone a couple of steps further when I heard him call out

“Thank you!”

I don’t really know why this is my abiding memory of the three day trip to Cork. It was a little surreal to be back on the press bench in the courthouse alongside my former colleagues. With some new ones added into the mix.

Maybe it’s because the litter picker fishing in the gutter is a character I kind of admire. He hadn’t bothered returning home to collect the plastic picker, the mechanism that aids him in his job. He just got on with it. No theatrics. Just a soft gentle nature and a smile, elevated a little above the buzz of the city.

Each morning before entering the courthouse, I entered a church first. I call this; priorities. Right behind Washington Street Courthouse is St Francis Church, built in the Byzantine style but in red brick, the façade flanked on each side by octagonal bell towers. To get there from the steps of the courthouse, you need to navigate Cross Street and Liberty Street, then pass under one of the arches of what an architect might call ‘the entrance arcade.’

One Our Father offered for the Butler family, the coroner, the witnesses and the entire inquest process, pleading for guidance, truth and justice in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Saint Augustine’s Church is a few hundred yards north of the courthouse, back toward the Grand Parade. On Day Two at lunchtime I lit candles. One for Roy, one for the family. And they flickered there in front of Our Lady, beside a book for the faithful to pen their intentions.

Daily Mass is a morning ritual that anchors my day and I was missing it. On Day Three, the final day of evidence, I prayed a Rosary for proceedings and popped into St Augustine’s ahead of the inquest. There, morning Mass was underway. So well underway in fact that the priest was about to distribute Holy Communion. Would I wait, and be late? Or keep going?

Priorities popped into my mind so I waited and offered apologies for the disrespect of landing-in just long enough to receive.

So many times on this journey the Lord has propped up these efforts with purposeful prompts from Heaven. Little nudges of support.

Roy’s elder brother Aaron told me that their mother, Angela Butler prays the Rosary every day. That it has helped carry her through her suffering. And that grace was evident in how the family conducted themselves through their three day ordeal this week.

Later that final day in a coffee shop I met another relative, a lady who revealed the family’s suspicion of a link between Roy’s Janssen injection and his death, in an innocuous post on Facebook. Such was the immediate and massive worldwide response that she got a fright and deleted it.

She described what happened in the moment that prompted her to publish that all-important post as an intense pulsing of the blood through her veins that she could not ignore. The fall-out was somewhat monumental of course.

“But I don’t regret doing it,” she said. “I don’t regret it.”  

I was prompted once again, at 3am this morning, to get up and write. The litter picker was taking up inordinate space in my mind. I needed to acknowledge him, perhaps because we have something in common. He bent down into the gutter to pick up the shiny wrappers carelessly discarded by others. He was without his primary mechanism, the plastic rod with a gripper attached and a trigger in the handle. He did his job anyway.

In a way, this Substack was the mechanism that allowed me to do my job, without the aid of a newspaper or media outlet, to make an attempt to pick up the pieces of human lives that were discarded after the vaccine roll out.

So thank you, to all of you that sent messages and bought coffees and got in touch to reveal the details of your own individual sufferings this week.

I believe you are all following little promptings from heaven.

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Reflection on today’s Gospel

In our own lives, we will often tend to struggle in the same way that the Apostles struggled. When faced with some challenging cross in life, a cross that the Father calls us to embrace freely, we will often find that our affections resist. When this happens, we become confused and even fearful of the future. Thus, the only way to conquer fear is to work to surrender every emotion, every affection and every human attachment over to the will of the Father so that His will is all we desire with every power of our soul.

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