A CALL FROM IRELAND

SOMETHING GREAT JUST HAPPENED.

 Never too old to learn.I had been  getting messages from an Irish cousin on Messenger a young man Eoin whose mother is a cousin and a dear friend. 

When we met so many decades ago, we immediately clicked. We were so alike. When Dympna confessed her love for THE KING, I  knew she meant Elvis and I share that love.

One of my greatest pilgrimages was to GRACELAND. For me it was an unforgettable experience ---people weeping in every room. And me among them.

So today I got to talk on a phone call to one of her sons.  I  hope that tomorrow she will be on the call.

This turn of events and this reconnection with my Irish cousins has made me so happy.

It has been a complete change from the sadness of my sister-in-law Gurmit's death and  the anniversary of my husband's younger brother's death   25 years ago.

I want to add here a poem that I wrote years ago after I first met my cousin Dympna. I hope that she likes it.

IN ARDBOE DYMPNA REMEMBERS

 

The old women say “Oh, surely there’s time

Yet to have bairns.” But at night I worry.

Thinking of their soft skin and staring eyes.

They look up at a mother and follow her

Around the room. Is it too late for me?

I can’t face that end. Oh, that – a music box.

Hand-made, wind it up and it plays “Let Erin Remember.”

 

Where? In the Long Kesh Prison Camp. The H-BLOCK.

The boyos make things to sell or give.

That was given to me and the little harp-

No , Patrick is from the next town, Coalisland.

Isn’t it a scram? A woman lives with her mother

For thirty- four years in a place just a few miles

Down the road from a man she meets in a prison.

 

Fifty miles away.-- That Celtic Cross on the mantle?

He made for my mum. All alone here—

No,no,  in the Council housing we’re not afraid.

Not lonely, we had to leave our place in the moss.

Too scary with soldiers busting the door late at night.

When these flats went up, we applied.

But to be honest I could not marry an active IRA man.

 

He will give that up when he is released.--

The Brits ambushed your cousin’s wife’s brother.--

Hugh, he has a monument. Let Erin remember?--

No, let us forget long enough to have a life,

A moment, a love, a baby. Babies are magic—

A baby before the earth closes over us.

And only God remembers and Erin forgets.