Two brothers have restored a cemetery memorial for men in the care of a homeless charity who died without any family.
Vincent and Thomas Mellon repaired the memorial which marks graves owned by the Talbot Association in Linn Cemetery in the Southside, as they felt it was "the right thing to do".
Vincent told the Glasgow Times: “Our mum and dad are buried just a wee bit down from the Talbot Association graves, and I have a friend who’s buried just across from it.
“Thomas and I had seen it and started talking about it and we were looking at it like ‘how do you clean it’?”
The Talbot Association, founded in 1970, is a Glasgow-based charity offering accommodation for people experiencing homelessness, addiction, mental ill-health, social isolation and long-term instability.
The charity owns a number of plots in Linn Cemetery where historically they have buried people who passed away with no family.
The area of the graves has a Celtic Cross in the middle, which is a memorial for founder Vincent Buchanan and deceased members of the Talbot Association, with the individual sites unmarked.
READ NEXT:
Shocking number of people forced to live in temporary accommodation revealed
Glasgow homeless charity's fresh bid to operate city centre shelter
Call for 'unprecedented' crisis meeting ahead of city budget
Vincent and Thomas, who were brought up in Govanhill before their parents moved to Castlemilk, first repaired the cross, which had lost one of its arms, using masonry glue.
They then set about cleaning it up using domestic products before doing some landscaping around the memorial.
The brothers carried out the work between April and September last year.
Vincent, 63, said: “We thought it was sad.
“The reason it's sitting there is obviously the Talbot Association can’t afford to keep it clean; they’ve got important things to do.
“We thought we’ll clean the base where the lettering is and Thomas can touch it up with some paint and then once we started, that was it, we just kept going.
“It was maybe a couple of times a week we were down there for a few hours.”
Explaining why they decided to do it, Vincent continued: “It just seemed like the right thing to do.
“All these people were kind of forgotten, and just to clean up the memorial and have some place that says they were here, we felt it was right.
“That’s the best we could do.”
READ NEXT:
Glasgow's homelessness crisis intensifies as latest figures revealed
Another rise in women in homeless hotel amid call for female only spaces
Big increase in homeless people in hotels in Glasgow this year
Huge jump in homeless people in hotels in Glasgow recorded this year
Vincent and Thomas, 64, who have not worked with the Talbot Association in the past, have since maintained the memorial and graves while also visiting their parents' graves.
Vincent added: “I put a wee wreath on it at Christmas.
“There are wee bits of matting we put over the weeds there that need tidied up so we just try and keep it tidy.”
Michael O’Neill, deputy CEO of the Talbot Association, says it was “quite emotional” when Vincent and Thomas got in touch with the charity to show them what they had done with the memorial.
He said: “They repaired the crucifix which is a marker for our founder, so that really hit home with us and it was really powerful.
“Their story is just lovely.
“That’s spurred us on and we’re actively reaching out to people saying we’d really like to do something with these plots.”
Michael also says it is an important part of the culture of the Talbot Association to remember those who have passed away and they are looking into having a service to remember members who have died.
He said: “There’s the idea that you have two deaths, once when you die and then once when you’re forgotten, so part of the culture within the organisation is to tell stories about the guys.”
The Talbot Association is named after Venerable Matt Talbot, who was born in Dublin in 1856.
By the age of 12 he began drinking heavily but at 28 years old, he made a quiet but life-changing vow to give up alcohol.
What started as a three-month pledge became a lifetime of sobriety. He died in 1925 and only after his death were the secret chains of penance he wore discovered.
Nearly a century later, people still come to pray at his tomb seeking healing, strength and hope and he is considered the patron saint of those struggling with alcoholism.
Share