...and what a week of moments they were.... There are times in life when you find yourself in the middle of a moment, and you knowingly acknowledge that you'll remember it for the rest of your life. Last week was...well...a week full of them. I'm not even sure where to begin, there were so many magical moments, in the school, at the gigs, watching 3 musicians attempting to practise hurling with malteasers as a sliotar-hell, even in the car en route from one place to another there were some magical moments! Where to start with the music...? It's probably best described with the little adage - music is the language we use when words don't work. There were so many breathtaking moments, so many funny moments, so many lovely moments, that it's hard to isolate just one.... Liane's version of God Bless The Child, The Impossible Gents tribute to JT, the kids jamming away throughout the week, and those lovely little moments of wandering into a class to find a beautiful jam or chord progression happening....just...bliss. I think it's pretty fair to say that music is one of the most important things in my life-when I was a kid, before I got guitar lessons, I would pick up my brother's guitar and try and write songs. (ok, they were usually crap and all played on one or two strings, but I enjoyed them!) As a teenager, it's fairly safe to say that music kept me going when I felt everything else was failing around me. In my 20s & 30s, there has been very little that has bet the buzz of live music, of witnessing a moment of magic between musicians and the crowd, when the right notes hit the heart at the right time and between the crowd, the stage, the gig, it somehow feels like the universe has created a moment of unity between all that can never be repeated....and yet it feels all the sweeter for that! Between everything recently, life's been pretty annoying. More surgery on the knee, more stomach problems, generally, a lot more pain. But I've to try and stay off the painkillers, as they exacerbate the stomach issues. Which isn't so fun. Last week was agony a lot of the time. And yet, sometimes, a series of notes, a voice, a face, a thoughtful lunch, would just lift my soul enough to get through to the next period of pain free time. The company was also rather brilliant, between the lovely Lieve, my co-conspirator in many a shooting scenario, and the talented Kris & Dominika, I was able to actually chill out and enjoy a lot of the music as it happened; unlike previous years. For those of you who have no idea of what I'm on about, it was the Sligo Jazz Project. While it is all about jazz in one respect, it's all about life in another. There's a love, a philosophy, a feeling from the week that I've not quite found elsewhere in life. Quote of the week from our guest of honour Chuck Rainey "it is, what it is...." ; something which I think many of us have stolen as a life adage. Everything was what it was-the non-stop musical madness, the fleeting moments of closeness and peace and quiet. The faculty, the returning students, the new students, all combined to leave a feeling of pure love-love of music, love of people, love of life.....just....love. Between watching the progress of the returning students, being majorly impressed by the new students and the fun with the faculty, (I know I've mentioned it before, but you've not seen fellas playing hurling until you've seen it being played with malteasers- a memory that will always make me smile when I'm over that side of town!) Despite the week finishing majorly sleep-deprived, with a dead laptop, banjaxed memory card, microphones & all round sheer exhaustion, it was still something rather wonderful and special....roll on next year!
Here is a tune for a Thursday And here are some words I've written because I needed to get them out of me.
Because it never really leaves your
mind. It's never really gone. Every time you see the word cancer, you
remember. You remember the sick to your gut feeling. You remember
staring at the boiling pasta in the water and calmly and surreally
taking it off the hob as your Mum tried to break news gently. You
remember pacing in the garden on a June evening as dusk falls with a
drizzle, the uncut grass soaking through your converse as your Mum keeps
talking without having the words to explain the unknown. You can't
accept that your biggest brother, the vegan, the clean-living,
never-smoking, country-living tee-totaller, probably has cancer.
You
remember the fucked biopsies, the talk of potential treatments and the
unknowns, the fact that it's cancer but one that's unknown to those
attempting to treat it. Without knowing it's identity, they can't fight
it. Echoes of a guerrilla war-how can you fight the enemy when you don't
know him from a friend?
You
remember him having to go through more surgery because of "human
error"; a biopsy taken from the wrong spot. He seems to get weaker every
day. You listen over the phone as another big brother's love radiates
through his swearing, his shouting, his sheer vehement rage at the
incompetency and the cancer, this all echoes down the phone as you sit
in your office, wishing he were there beside you-this brother doesn't
ever really do losing his temper.
Your
heart breaks when you get the texts from your Mum. "V.Weak today" "Not
sure abou wanting chemo" "We doing ok. Dad in garden. V. upset because
he can't fix this." "Bairbre v.quiet with us, but upstairs singing
now!"
You
lie in a hospital bed with a new kneecap on the same day your brother
starts his first chemo. Your Dad travels across the country by train and
luas to see his youngest kid in a hospital bed hours after leaving his
eldest in another hospital bed. Your Aunt, his little sister-in-law
reassures him that all will be ok, and despite the fact that he's gotten
weaker by the day since diagnosis, and despite that the fact that if
chemo doesn't work, he'll be gone in a few weeks, you all believe in her words, because you need to.
You
watch on crutches from the kitchen as he's carried from your parents
car by them both, he's barely strong enough to stand on a dry windy
August evening. It's his first time out of the hospital since that
evening in June and his wails and cries, your Mothers tears and your
fathers broken hearted face as the trio slowly make their way to the front door
ensure that this moment will never leave your soul. Your sister stands
beside you staring quietly and you've never hated the weakness in your
knee more because you can't help them carry him. His cries echo through
the house and you phone your little big brother to come out to the house
because you feel he needs to be there.
The
sorrow lifts a little later in the evening when he gets enough
strength to be helped into the kitchen. You sit as a family while Mum
makes tea, and his little sister makes a chicken sandwich. Then the
hitherto vegan suddenly feels like he could try some chicken. The only
problem is the last piece of chicken in the house is in his sister's
sandwich...and she doesn't do sharing. Eventually, she's persuaded to
give him a little and, slightly begrudgingly, she hands some over. You
all crack up with laughter and it's in this moment more than anything,
you realise how lucky you are with the family you got.
The
treatment progresses and while he seems to get weaker, you know it's
working. Friends and neighbours and strangers you don't know but who
know him stop and ask after him. Prayers are said, candles are lit,
stars and seas and waves are wished upon and the rest of life carries
on. Suddenly it's Christmas, chemo is kinda done and, although
weakened, you sit down to a Christmas dinner that has never been filled
with more strength, more thankfulness, more laughter, more love for one another.
His
treatment talks of moves from chemo to maintenance, he has long stents
placed inside to help his body to try and recover from the battering the
cancer and the chemo gave it that sometimes leave him in pain. But he's
smiling more. And walking outdoors more. And generally, being able to
look toward a little bit of life more. Yes, it's an incurable cancer,
but the first round is over and he's won it. He may not feel it, but he
has.
In
the midst of this, your Aunt, your Dad's little sister-in-law, your
Godmother gets a diagnosis that sickens everyone to the core again.
Another form of fast-moving unidentifable cancer. It's attacking her
faster than anyone could imagine, Doctors included and all of a sudden,
you're all talking again about tests and chemo, about markers and cells
and treatments and alternatives. You all call the cancer every name
under the sun, she occasionally calls it "the israeli army" , a
constantly attacking force with little regard for human life. Her
husband quips that she'll always support the underdog.
Her
chemo stops almost as soon as it starts-the cancer is everywhere, and
although one area responds a little, the rest don't. It's made harder by
the fact the Doctor is so excited by the result that he told her the
good news before he himself found out the bad news. One Monday in April,
she's told that they'll decide for definite about the chemo on Friday,
to see whether she's strong enough to continue with it or whether it
should stop and let her have some quality of life before she dies. Friday comes and she's the one comforting the
Doctor after he tells her there's no more that can be done for her;
telling him she appreciates how hard it must be for him to deal with it
too. She hopes to make it to June for a wedding.
It's
Good Friday, April 18 2014 and you spend all day with the phone glued
to you, waiting for the news, good or bad. The longer the day goes on,
the more sure you are of the news, so much so that when your brother
who's working near her that day calls you, you don't answer the
phone, you just watch it ring on your bed. You walk outside to a silent
dark garden listening to a voicemail that's full of half spoken
sentences and pauses and deep sighs and you sink to your knees and cry
and wail until you can't breathe. You call him, you call them, you call
home and you sit on the ground in the dark and wonder how much time
you'll have with her.
Enough
time to see her, to spend time with her, to laugh, to cry, to hug, to
be loved by her. Her last few days three weeks later take everyone by
surprise. There's no final official goodbye, instead almost every
conversation is peppered with subtle love, her quip to her big brother
about smelling the turf fire from him, her reassurance that she wasn't
dead yet when her breathing had shallowed and she had seemed to be
leaving us. She doesn't admit to how much in pain she is and so, when
she takes that last injection that she knows will ease the path across
for her, it still takes us by surprise
She
passes just after 9pm on a dry May Tuesday evening at home in her
bedroom with Leonard Cohen's voice a constant companion, in the arms of
her soulmate and with her big sisters beside her. Her siblings surround
her, her in-laws were her sisters & brothers too.....love emanates
from every corner of the room and
you watch as she opens her eyes and looks around before her eyes stop
moving. In an instant her face is at peace and your hearts are broken.
Her funeral is equally beautiful and heartbreaking, a wicker casket, so
light to lift you felt she might not be there, covered in flowers from
her garden. She turns heads everywhere as the hearse passes by, no
different in death as in life, two ladies in Dublin slow their walk as
they voice their appreciation of her flowers and her casket, unaware you can all hear their
every word.
Her
colleagues from the hospice help in every way they can, but this is a
different death for them too. Her memory and her love live on, in the
stories from strangers at the funeral home, in little gifts she had
given over the years before she passed and mostly, in the love and
support that is shared amongst all who loved her-and especially in her
husband, who holds and shares hers and their memories, so that even
though she is physically gone, her words, her kindness of spirit and
tales of her past are not lost to us. He is your link to her and you his
link to her, a link that even death that cannot break.
These
words, while intensely personal to me and my family, are just one story
of family dealing with cancer. My brother's cancer is "incurable but
manageable", so we know at some point, hopefully far off into the future, there will be more rounds with
it, with chemo, with everything that it entails, the hospital stays, the
texts, the calls, the constant worry and then either the relief or the
heartbreak of a round finishing for whatever reason.
In the meantime, it's never really gone away. Every time you
hear the word, every time there's a new diagnosis, every time you think
of the family and friends you've already lost to the fucker of a
disease, you're thinking of "incurable but manageable".
Every
time there's an ad urging people to "fight back against cancer " you
wonder what idiot thinks that the majority wouldn't "fight back". Even
though you find yourself saying it, you hate the phrase "fighting a
battle" or hearing that someone "lost the battle" because it implies
that if only someone had fought harder, they might have won. Which is
bull. When cancer decides it wants you done, you're done.
The
closest to a positive ending I can bring this is to say that cancer
reaffirms faith in family, in friends, in the kindness of strangers, in
life and in love. For me, it has reaffirmed my belief that sometimes
bad shit happens to good people for no reason. It
has made me appreciate every day I get with those I love, even though I
might not always show it. It has reminded me, that while cancer can
kill off those you love, it cannot kill off their love for you-that
remains even after they do not. It cannot kill the memories of the happy
times, of the bad times (for they are what make the good times seem so
good) and in the end, the life, the laughter, the love remains-that
love, like life itself, is incurable but manageable.
The problem with caring is that at some point, the loss of what of you care about will bring sorrow and pain. Yet despite that, we still form attachments to people, places, things, so often not realising the depth of our attachment until they're gone from us.
I never realised how much I loved Tony Fenton's genuine enthusiasm and pure love of music until today. There were times in the last few years driving for work and I'd catch his voice and instantly smile, because of his enthusiasm and love for his work....and also because of the instant nostalgia of years gone by. To hear him intro or outro a tune from the mid-90s, if you closed your eyes, it could have been that time, that year, that month it was released-his positivity shone through, and you could, quite literally, hear the smile in his voice as he spoke.
He was the voice of the Hotline for me as a teenager and I remember Babs and I being allowed to sit in the car to listen to the radio at Garden Hill Nursing Home while Mum went in to see Gran as I'd rang in a request before we left our house. It was the first time we heard our names on 2fm and we were both delighted with the shoutout to "ita and her big sister Babs in Sligo". It's funny, I can't remember what song we requested, but I do remember Tony's enthusiastic greeting.
In the latter years, I was always impressed by how, just when I decided I couldn't listen to more random new pop crap, he'd throw in some amazing new indie tune or an old classic. He knew his stuff, and his love for his work shone through every day. You couldn't fail but to smile when he was talking and the love that he showed in his work everyday is being shown right back today, judging by the amount of tributes that have appeared everywhere, from his former station to his current one and to those of us who listened in over the years. He'll be missed, I think, much more than he ever realised he could be.
And Terry Pratchett. Terry, Terry, Terry. That series of tweets in the pic below left me crying as I looked out at a rainy Dublin street this afternoon. Damn the embuggerance, dammit to hell and a little further beyond A'Tuin's vision. Terry was the Spike Milligan of fantasy writing to me. Just when you thought a piece of writing couldn't get any stranger, it did. And yet, it did so in the most hilarious and subtly philosophical way at times.
I loved his bio on his books, which was something like "Terry started work as a journalist and saw his first corpse three hours later-work experience actually meaning something in those days". I loved his characters, from the mad professors at the Unseen University to Granny Weatherwax to Vimes (and his dedication to that children's classic..."Where is my cow?") .... from Igor(s), Otto, the non-blood-drinking-vampire, Rincewind, Mort, and of course, almost everyone's favourite, Death (with his trusty steed, Binky.) I loved Ankh-Mopork, even if I could never really get my head round how to pronounce it. I imagined it to be a mix of Edinburgh's oldest streets and cellars with Dublin's village like-silly attitude and London's hecticness-somewhere I'd like to visit, but not stay for too long for fear of meeting Gaspode the wonder-dog and getting caught up in some scam!
I loved how as I got older, his older books became "classics" in the fantasy world, and reading his newer ones felt like stepping back into a room you'd not been into in years, yet somewhere that was instantly comfy and recognisable.
Yet while his writing had a comforting humor to it, at times, it could make you think. It could make you think about the concept of time, how life goes by so quickly, how the loss of someone changes your world, and how to sweep properly….! His documentary a few years ago on euthanasia was heartbreakingly moving piece of television. If you've not watched it, do.https://vimeo.com/105168003
I will miss seeing new books, new mad wizard or magic filled covers. I will treasure my copy of the Thief of Time which kept me laughing during an almost 48 hr journey from Carlisle to Sligo, due to landslides, floods and flight cancellations. My walkman died from the sheer volume of rain, I couldn't write, and so, reading was my only escape-the book remained, even though the cover came off and the pages are all curled up from the water damage. (I managed to dry it out under a hand-drier in Edinburgh airport...!) and I will finish with a typical Pratchett point of view...slightly silly, slightly philosophical and slightly wonderful.
"DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING,’ said Death. ‘JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
It's funny, I'm sitting on the bed listening to the radio in tears at the loss of Tony Fenton. Paul McLoone has been playing amazing tunes all night, and dealing so wonderfully with the loss of his friend, reading out tributes, and almost every one he read, sparked a memory of The Hotline, of Tony's voice, of my teenage years. Then, as he intro'd U2's The Unforgettable Fire, his voice lost it's composure somewhat and then my tears just started flowing.
That song to me as a teenager was one that I was listening to when I decided halfway home from a hockey match that I wasn't gonna put up with (what I felt was) a coach who looked for someone to blame after each match. That day it had been me, and I felt I had enough of my own shit to deal with, and there was no way I was gonna take on any more than I already had-especially not in something I volunteered for and took part in for enjoyment (ok, and the time off classes for matches....!)
I remember it even though it happened well over half my life ago. I remember it, even though I've listened to that song easily hundreds of times in the intervening years. I remember it because of my emotions at the time, the beauty and drama of the piece of music, and the realisation that I had a choice over how my future would play out. I remember it because as a teenager, I didn't feel I had much choice in anything. I remember it, because at that age, music was my everything.
Music in all it's forms, from John Kenny's Metal show on a Sunday night to Dave Fanning's nightly show to The Hotline with Tony Fenton's boombastic voice blaring out the requests, and random tidbits of info about songs, about their singers, their composers, the story behind the lyrics. I followed djs if they were interviewed in Hot Press and I worshiped their music recommendations, I sought out tapes and cds they recommended, even though I didn't own a cd player. Hell, I even followed Iano from 2fm to TodayFm! I, like many of that era, thought I'd mastered the art of taping from the radio. And then there was Tony.
He timed his intro's and outro's to perfection. If a song had a double chorus/chord ending, he would get his link in to the space between them. I had (probably still have!) a tape somewhere with my radio-taped version "Boys of Summer" and I mistimed my taping slightly, because there's a fraction of a second as the final guitar twangs fade and then Tony's voice just pops in with one word "Classic".
Part of me was incredibly annoyed that I'd let him beat me, that I hadn't gotten to hit the pause button in that split second. But as the years passed, I grew to love that one word. He was right. It was "Classic". Everything about that song is classic, from the edgy start, to the heartfelt chorus, to that wee solo at the end. It was a classic. It is a classic. It always will be classic. Just like Tony Fenton.
I didn't think it was possible to grieve with so many others for someone I'd never met. I didn't think it was possible to empathise with so many folk I'll never meet. Yet we humans are all about the shared experience, whether we realise it or not. And when so many thousands of people are sharing such grief, such emotion at the loss of one person, it makes you think just how special that one person was. That one man, who could sit in front of a mic, whose voice could reach you in your living room, in your car, in your bedroom, for a few seconds in a shop....that one man could somehow make that huge connection and take it and make it feel like he was someone you knew, someone whose music tastes you trusted, someone whose anecdotes always made you smile, and someone whose smile could be heard in every word he spoke....that one man was someone special. Ní beidh a leithéid ann arís.
What good is music?
If it ain’t possessing something sweet
Now it ain’t the melody
And it ain’t the music
There’s something else that makes this tune complete.....
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing. That's what the Sligo Jazz Project week had, and then some. A week of music, of love, of laughter, of such incredible energy and vibes that I'm still not quite over it yet. Meeting new friends, reconnecting with old (and not so old!) friends and just generally living in the moment, it was a week I badly needed, a week to take myself out of this strange new world I've found myself in over the last two and half a months.
Music is one thing that helps. It helps distract, it helps soothe, it helps heal. The right notes, the right melody can hit at times when you least it expect it to, and that's what happened to me a lot last week. There were times when a memory would come to mind, something small and would leave me on the verge of tears. Then a groove would begin to emerge from a classroom, voices or notes would echo down the corridors and life suddenly seemed ok.
Watching returning students who've improved so much over the years, watching new students get their groove on, the kids group so fantastically led by Cathal and watching the reaction of the crowds as they fell into a music induced trance was fantastic. Catching up with returning tutors, chilling out with new ones, and some amazingly sweet moments mid-conversation, mid-drive, mid-gig, mid-jam....just fantastic.
There's so many happy moments that bring a smile to my face when I think of them, hearing & watching Jeanfrancois & Judy jamming together on the first night in 5th, driving a rather lovely gentleman round Sligo as he stuck his hands out of the sunroof was fun, as were the many mad moments during dinners, where Lieve and I would hit the wall of tired insanity and starting laughing at something completely nonsensical. The first sup of a glass of Guinness after a long day, Johnny's constant cheeriness and loveliness around the school, and a rather long and funny conversation about the correct way to pronounce indefatigable (in-de-fatigue-able or in-defat-ig-able) with 3 funny gents will always make me smile, as will the quietness of last evening just chilling in the Sligo Park with a glass of vino and some wonderful company before moving onto 5th to begin the goodbyes.
There were so many beautiful musical moments, not least Alan Broadbent's calm and moving sincerity as he talked about his arrangement of "Wayfaring Stranger" that Charlie Haden sang so hesitantly and yet so beautifully-he spoke of the subtle mood changes in the music, how during the line "I know dark clouds will gather round", the strings surround him like the dark clouds... and then those very same strings soothe us with the hope in the line "Golden fields lie out before me...." . Varying moments in gigs throughout the week, Steve's solo tribute which finished with the tutors all singing along at the end, or seeing all the tutors performing & enjoying themselves during the last show....all just such beautiful moments...
One wonderful personal moment for me was chatting with Alan over lunch one of the days and talking with him about the first time I heard and saw that piece. I felt utterly transfixed, that for those few minutes, all there was in the world, in the universe was Charlie Haden's voice, those strings and me. It's still hard to put into words just how beautiful, how heartbreaking and yet soul soothing a piece it was, and how hard it hit me that first time, but I tried to explain that reaction I'd had to him. And Alan said, "well, that's the whole purpose of music really, to take yourself outta life sometimes.."
...irrevocably in you when you watch someone you love die. I've resisted somewhat writing about it, because I genuinely am unsure how to word it, how to encapsulate what a beautiful, yet heartbreaking, soul-affirming and yet soul-destroying moment it is.
I know I'll be thinking, feeling, reliving and remembering my Aunt's passing for a considerable length of time yet, and yet, this piece has been started, both mentally, and physically, so many times and stopped, on both the computer and on paper....so we'll see how far it gets today.
I honestly feel like I had no time to contemplate just how hard the loss of Anne would hit me. Out of all my Aunts, she was the one I was closest to, she was the one I would text now and again about something small, something silly. She knew about boyfriends, she knew about work, she knew about what i got up to in my free time, she knew about everything. That's not to say we were texting or talking 24/7, but over the last year, I had been down so much to Limerick for work and stayed with her & my Uncle so many times that I was really looking forward to doing it more often as the years passed. But alas....
It's the stupid things in grief that hit. Those "this time X weeks" ago moments that ambush you. Earlier today, the realisation that this date 8 weeks ago, I had been helping to carry her out to the hearse, despite the protestations of my Uncles and my gammy knee, I felt I had to lend to a hand, even if it was one guided by a limp, to even help to carry her was such an overwhelming emotion that I find it hard to describe. Even though Anne's soul, her spirit was technically gone, it was still her, it was still something I felt I could help her with.
As I said, something changes in you when you watch someone you love so deeply take their last breath. Everything in the world seems more raw, more fresh, more real. You can't understand why people scream at one another in traffic, why people insist on "things" being so important, newspapers and magazines and twitter and facebook tell you that you MUST download this app as it'll change/fix/improve your life, that you must visit this place or check out that band and it all seems so pointless, because at the end of the day, you'd trade everything, every possession, just to have those last few days back, because it would mean life would feel somewhat ok again.
The way the services went, the reposing in Limerick where her friends and colleagues were able to say their goodbyes, the funeral in Sligo, the cremation in Dublin went...they were perfect. Everyone took their own things from them. For me, the Cathedral will always be a place of mourning-i have buried too many friends and family from there to think of it in any other way. Yet I know merely being able to have Anne's funeral there, and especially having her neighbours as the celebrants brought a wonderful comfort to us all, and particularly,a special comfort to those in our family (and friends) of the Catholic faith.
Beautiful and all as the funeral was, the cremation was where I felt Anne's spirit, her essence, her soul and love shone through. From the moment Sean got up to speak, there was love, there was humour, there was heartbreak, there was kindness and compassion in every speaker, which echoed through the walls there. The music was perfect, and my only regret is that we didn't manage to squeeze in some T-Rex too!
There was even some smiles for me after the curtains closed as I realised that the next track on the CD was Pink Floyd's "Time", which, if you're not familiar with, starts off with bells ringing and blaring. As most of the crowd in the crematorium weren't used to cremations, and we'd been told the service should be no more than 30 mins, I had visions of the bells blaring and people thinking that crematoriums rang bells after the 30 minutes and they'd all get up and start leaving as Dave Gilmour blared "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day..." I had to ask my niece to run down to the staff and ask them to turn it down before it started but the thoughts of the absurdity of the situation left me smiling through the tears.
Smiling through the tears, a good way to describe how I'll forever feel about Anne's passing. I still can't quite believe it's happened, and I know I'll be saying those words for many years to come. I find myself breaking down at the stupidest of times and having to walk back to the car, or to a bathroom just to let the tears out, as breaking down in the middle of a shopping centre is never fun. Seeing jewellery she'd like in a shop, someone who has the same perfume as her, and occasionally, from nowhere, the thought comes that my Aunt is gone from us and nothing can ever change that.
July 31st should've been her 54th birthday. In years gone by, inevitably I'd text
either on the day or a day or few later and receive a thankful reply,
one which usually referred to her as "the worst Godmother" on account of
the fact that she would forget about mine. No matter how often I said
it, I could never seem to persuade that she wasn't a bad Godmother, and
besides-how could she judge that when technically, she'd never been
called into play as both my parents were alive when I was 18?! I loved those moments in conversation, in text, in person, via her phonecalls with Mum, because somehow, they only served to emphasise her love for me.
Suffice
to say, I never once envisaged a future where they'd both still be here
and she wouldn't be. She's over 20 years younger than Dad, and 14 years
younger than Mum-why would I ever have imagined she'd be gone before
them? And yet, she is.
Last year, on her birthday, I texted her
very early in the morning, as I was in the hospital after my knee
replacement, and she was due to pick me up when I was discharged. In her
reply, she said she'd forgotten it was her birthday! It was long day,
and we had to stop off to pick up my sick brother in Maynooth and bring
him to Mullingar-without telling my Mum, who was at my brother Sean's
bedside as he had just started his chemo that week.
When we
finally got back to Sligo, we had a cuppa and a wee birthday cake whilst
discussing my brother's chemo and my knee and the wee holiday that she
& Uncle were about to embark on in their new camper van. It wasn't
the perfect birthday for Anne by any means, but, looking back at that
day, it epitomised her. She'd spent all the day with family,
starting the day at her big brother's house and finishing the day at
her big sister's house. She spent it looking after nieces and nephews,
being full of wit and kindness, and loveliness throughout the long, long
day-all that was missing was my Uncle, and how I wish he'd gotten to spend some of the day with her.
We never know how life is going to turn out, and those little things, which seem so small, so insignificant, suddenly take on new meaning when someone we love passes away. Now everything is heightened, everything is different, our world is changed, "changed utterly."
(I've become rather bad at actually posting these ramblings...I write them, then think I'll come back to double check them and then post, but no, I write them, and forget. So here's a few from the last month that I've decided to publish...I've included the original writing dates on them so hopefully that'll remind me in times to come of the times when they were written!)
(16.07.2014)
For those of you whose gaelige ain't so good, that roughly translates to, there's no seaside/beach like your own seaside/beach-it's a slight paraphrasing of "níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán fein" (in Dorothy-speak, there's no place like home)
I spent part of last weekend in Sligo, just seeing family and catching up on some SJP stuff. A colleague of mine had been away on a mini-surfing break last week, and seeing the photos of the sea and the waves and the shore made me desperately want to be back home, back beside the sea, back to the waves. So yesterday morning, I got up and went to the beach (with my booties. My new kneecap and I are brave enough to go into the water, just not stupid enough to go over rocks with no grips on my feet!)
It was around 10.30 and the sky was cloudy and grey. It seemed like rain was on the way, but, to steal a quote from Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?!" I figured once I was in the water, I'd be wet anyway. So, swimsuit on, booties on, and off I waded.
I'd forgotten that, once you get over the chill, the sea feels so beautiful against skin-it's a strange sensation, one that can't be compared to the feeling of the treated water in swimming pools, or the tepid crap that flows in houses. The sea is something magical, something special. I will never forget that first look around after surfacing, Benbulben to my left, and the first beach, with Knocknarea peeking over the edge of the cliffs to my right.
Although after 10 mins, my knee (and eventually calf & quads!) were killing me, and yet, I couldn't bring myself to get out of the water. It was still such an amazing experience, to swim with the flow of the waves sometimes, to swim out against them, to dive through them other times, and occasionally, to just lie back, and let the wind and the waves take me along. Lying back, looking up at that sky was bliss. Grey clouds drifting, the sounds of waves breaking, birds flying and a feeling that I could've stayed in that moment forever.
I stayed in for almost half an hour, thinking about everything and nothing in between, my family, my friends, those who've gone before me, and how they enjoyed the sea and the scenes that I was drifting along in front of. It crossed my mind how lucky I am to be who I am, where I am; that I'm not a Palestinian, a Syrian, that I'm not living in suffering every day, that my brother is still here, that at least I was there with my Aunt when she passed, that Sligo is not just where I'm from, but it's something within my soul.
Were it not for growing up in Sligo, spending my teenage years beside the sea (albeit with the most bad grace possible, apologies to the parentals!), I don't know if my love of the sea, of those moments of listening to "water lapping, with low sounds by the shore"*, would have such an indelible effect on my soul as they do now. There is something uniquely spiritual about sitting listening to the sea, to ebb and flow of the water as it glides across sand, as it rushes in and out through the stones, and there is something amazingly awe-inspiring about the power and strength behind the Atlantic waves I've witnessed over the decades that have pounded the beaches and the rocks around my home county.
We humans are supposedly made up of 90% water, so I guess it makes sense to feel so at home in it. Yet there's a calmness, an "at homeness" that I feel in the Atlantic that I've never felt anywhere else, not the Mediterranean, not the Irish sea, not the North Sea....maybe the old phrase "Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile" (Irish for one beetle recognises another beetle") holds true, maybe somewhere, something inside instinctively recognise this place called home.
Or maybe it's just wishful thinking. Who knows. All I know is that there is a soul soothing comfort in that sea that I have never felt anywhere else and that days like last Sunday are something rather special indeed.....and most certainly, níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán fein.
*p.s. I know Yeats was talking about lake water lapping, but the sea does it too..!
