Back in the USA

I returned to the United States last week and find myself trying to start a new project this morning. It is something I have mulled for the past two weeks yet it is difficult to begin because so much of my head is still back in Ireland. I see the churchyard and fringe of sturdy beech trees in front of which my father lies sleeping. I see the flagstone path up to his grave which I helped to lay in conjunction with my youngest brother Dermot and brother-in-law Michael and my nephews. I see my mother sitting alone in the living room saying her novenas, praying for me, for Dad, fore all of us. I see Siobhan hugging Max, the lovable puppy she fell in love with at first glance despite her insisting my nephew had to have a dog that wouldn't shed. I see Floss, the Springer Spaniel puppy my brotehr Dermot's children had to get when they knew their cousin had a new puppy. I see the enclosures my father built for the puppies just before his death. I see my sister Deirdre at work in the broadband I helped set up for her. I see my brother Seamus wait fro the letter telling him he can come up for the epidural to Belfast for the epidural that hopefully will take away the pain in his back. I see Dermot gazing at our Dad's photograph on his bedside table before tuirning off his light.

Time will let us all move on, but he will be with us and we will never forget him.

The morning his wife died

Via Scott Pack at The Friday Project (my UK publisher), I was alerted to this blog entry from another Irishman (or of Irish descent living in London) John Lenahan who writes extremely movingly about the death of his wife four years ago and thought I'd link to it. He empowers the piece with the use of imagery incorporating banshees and the shrieks of copulating foxes--a sound that's as otherworldly and eerie in Pennsylvania as it is in Ireland.


Having recently had a friend who died during the Christmas period, I related to what he described, and it brought back memories and sounds of the long night that my paternal grandmother Catherine died when I was an uncomprehending eleven-year-old silently watching from outside the bedroom.

Death is not something a great many Americans feel comfortable talking about, I have discovered, in comparison to Europeans--one sign thereof being their abundant use of euphemisms such as 'passed on' or 'passed' rather than the proper word 'died.' And to be honest, I never fully understood the importance of a funeral until I attended my best friend's in London where, as I sat alternately staring at the glossy coffin and watching the ceremony and listening to the words, it was revealed as in an epiphany. In one surging moment of intensity I comprehended fully. It wasn't about religion. It wasn't about ritual. It was about goodbye, a beautiful goodbye.

Anyway, Mr.Lenahan describes precisely how loved ones truly experience and seldom reveal.

A host of golden daffodils

Last Friday was the first anniversary of our Cockerpoo Spice's death (that's him in the photo across), so of course Larry and I went to his grave and just stood there remembering him and the good times we'd had throughout the seventeen-and-half years of his full life. His grave looked pretty.

Last fall, one evening when the Pennsylvanian air was icy and thick with the promise of a wicked winter (a promise that wasn't kept...thankfully) I planted two large packets of daffodils on the grave, nine in each of the four corners and then mulched the top. It had been mucky but satisfying work, a sort of labor of love performed in the dusky solitude. It also brought to mind another beloved dog I'd once owned.

Sandy was a corgi-terrier mix and I'd had him when I was a kid back in Northern Ireland and he'd died prematurely, poisoned by the British Army who used to sneak up to people's houses late at night and listen at the windows in hopes of hearing people talk about being in the IRA or planning something, etc. (I lived in a staunchly Nationalist area.) To stop the dogs barking, they fed them poisoned meat to kill them and my Sandy must have ate a piece because I found him dead, his mouth caked with spent froth, in the garage next morning. Anyway, Mum allowed me to take the day off school to grieve and I held his rigid corpse for hours before I wrapped my school tie around his neck and buried him in the garden. (Thanks for that, Mum.)

We bought Spice's daffodils on a whim. We'd been visiting a local garden store and happened to notice them in a bin--an 'end of season' sale sort of bin--and as we hadn't decided how to mark his grave, they seemed the perfect answer. We figured they'd beautify the area in spring and be a lasting reminder.

To my surprise, when we arrived at the grave last Friday, the daffodils were in vibrant bloom, most of them anyway. It was like our dog was giving us a gift.

Today, I had a call from a feature editor of a website that's running a tie-in feature with the film entitled Year of the Dog starring the incomparable Molly Shannon of Saturday Night Live fame. It's about a woman and her dog, and the dog dies, and how she tries to rebuild her life, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'll link to the interview when it posts on May 5th.

As I reread this, I realize some people will think this guy's crazy writing about his grief over a dog, but I don't really give a damn. People need to grieve. They need to grieve over humans that die--in my opinion, people don't grieve sufficiently about anyone other than very...and I mean very...immediate family nowadays, and even then their grief's not for long because they get distracted with stuff that doesn't mean much in the end--and they need to grieve over their animals. It's good and right, period.