The Kerryman - The Joyes of Life

01/12/2022

She came to us 12 years and 3 months ago. She would have been 13 next May. She came and changed our lives. I always knew she would make a difference; I just never thought it would be a world of difference.

She’s a retriever, a golden one, although in winter, her coat turns to snow. She toilet-trained fast, and got the rules of the house quick. She only ever wanted to please. She had brown eyes and we named her Riley - it matched her DNA - our Riles always smiles.

She would bring mud in every morning, the weather in every day and as a retriever, a shoe in the mouth on every greeting. And greeting, is what she did best; she was a big dog with a bit heart with a big tail that would sweep a small village clean with her enthusiasm. You might be five minutes or five days gone, still she would be the first at the door, waiting to tell you all her news.

And yet she was the greatest listener I know. She knows the secrets of me. She knows the secrets of us.

For all our moods, she was always in a good mood. She obeyed the rules until we broke them for her. She trusted us wholly. We were all she knew. Our comings and goings were her landmarks and for all our inconsistencies, she loved us consistently. Indeed, for all our terms and conditions, she loved us unconditionally.

She broke hips, she broke wind and she broke hearts. She showed us supermoons in the dead of night when some fox ticked her off and she introduced us to sunrises when the change of season confused her. She was nature personified and she was showing it off.

She was the second mother in the house and the second sister. She was my husband’s best pal, and he was hers. We were good at sharing him.

She would pull us into streams, into rose bushes and into people. Everyone was her friend and she was a friend to everyone. She made us laugh, she never judged and she lived in the moment. The only time she ventured upstairs was when she got spooked. She rarely got spooked but it upset us when she did.

You could sit in the rain all day and she would sit with you. You could sit in the sun all day and she would find the nearest shade. She never took treats from strangers but spent a lifetime looking for them off us. She dodged arguments she wasn’t involved in and licked away tears that were never her fault. She was a roller, she was a flirt, she handed us fun and a perspective when we weren’t even looking for it. The only time she got miffed with us, was when she saw a suitcase in the hall.

Year in, year out, she is there – every joy, every trauma and every disappointment. A presence, a breath and a satisfied groan.

But then her smile got compromised and her breathing laboured. 12 years of giving, was taking its toll. Yet when we asked her to lie down one last time, she did as she was told.

We let our beauty go.

I miss her. Already I miss the weather in the house and her mud on the floor. I miss her face at the door and the weapon of her tail. I miss the way she talks to me. I miss her search for something to give to me. I miss the way she loves me.

So, I doubt I will ever stand in a moonbeam without seeking her company, or sit in the sun close by to her shade. Our golden smiley Riley, the listener, the giver and my darling girl.

22 May 2010 – 29 November 2022

31/03/2021

"I am tired. I can hear the noise coming down the tracks and already I am tired from it.

So, we have had a new “easing” of restrictions, vague road markings (as opposed to a map) dependent on the “contracted” vaccine supplies coming in and - the real knub of my exhausted state - the decision to deliver the jab according to age-bracket as opposed to job-spec.

Cut now to the din - the incessant churning airwaves, the rotary printing press and all the righteous commentary on who should be righteously vaccinated.

Much like the Government, I am going to keep it simple here, because if we have learned anything from this past year, it is that we don’t respond well to complication. We don’t respond to mixed messaging either. More than ever, we need to keep it clean, make it clear so that we can finally stop hammering at plaster and drive the nail home instead. Because even for those of us who have not been sick, we’re sick of it.

It’s as simple as that.

So, is there any chance, that we might stop with the grievances, the slights and the politics? Crucial to our success and our re-opening, is the necessity to roll out the vaccine as fast as we can. If simplicity serves expediency, then can sensibility and sensitivity move aside? We can roar about it later.

Age is arbitrary.

I am not unsympathetic or indeed unmoved by the arguments and fear of the guards, the teachers, the carers and the SNAs – my own bread and butter comes from working with schools – but are we really going to rush the lifeboats of this contemporary Titanic?

I have heard a great many healthcare workers grapple to express their (misplaced) guilt at getting the vaccine ahead of their elderly parents, relatives and friends but no one disputes the cogency of this policy. It was a needs’ must. It is a needs’ must.

In other sectors, it is not the same. I say this not to undervalue the work of all who protect, mind, educate and teach us but rather not to put a price on all that is priceless. When we get into the business of tiering one another in accordance to importance, then most people emerge feeling to the contrary - belittled, left out and relegated. It’s like being good enough for the team, but last to be picked. Can we please not go there? God, the bogs and quick sands of it all.

Its back to the simple hard facts. How many teachers have died from Covid, who were not in the older age bracket or vulnerable group? How many guards have died from Covid, who were not in the older age bracket or vulnerable group?

I concede – exceptions make hard laws.

However, its life and death. That’s what it’s down to. Absolutely, we would all love a safety net, deserve one, but not all of us are walking a tight rope.

And it’s as simple as that.

16/03/2021

Much in the way that foxes and wolves are nature’s watchmen, social media and populism appear to have become the custodians of human behaviour.

It just seems to me like we're regressing? To my mind, not since the church was at its zenith, have we been so corralled, checked and monitored.

We use reinvented words like messaging, pivoting, agility, acceptance, resilience but in reality, it’s all a bit skewed and as flighty as the narrative of the day.

We are told to be kind to ourselves, but are vilified when the “wrong” thing gets said (according to some intangible bible of righteousness). We are urged to dream, believe and achieve, but the kudos only comes when success is firmly in the bag. And how is it that the world can be everyone’s oyster when for too many, their horizon is no further than their elbow?

Talk is cheap these days. For all the rhetoric, rap and cause, there is a dearth in humanity, empathy and forgiveness. You can be as wise as a king from the East or as naive as a child not schooled and still not get it “right”. Yet silence is violent and brings its own casualties back from the line.

It’s a hard world out there.

We talk about the damage to mental health that Lockdown has wreaked, but what about the return to normality; what damage will that wreak? For many this past year has been a godsend, an offering of sanctuary and remission from a social warzone. Some, have even found their voice in Lockdown, fully ripe to be robbed again by "Freedom".

Because it is a hard world out there.

I do wonder if the relic of these times, this generation, will be reduced to a litany of frenzied tweets, fickle “followers” and “being cancelled”.

Where are we going wrong? Because we are going wrong.

It’s not that we don’t know what love is. On Mother’s Day recently, we touched love whether it was through words that flowed with abandon, sentiments that abounded with sincerity and where connection and loss were never more beautifully articulated and pronounced.

So how do we lose ourselves to the other stuff, the mean stuff? As much as experience is a cleaver to ignorance, it can sadly slice up empathy, understanding and trust. Naturally, affirmation is what we as human beings seek, but surely not at the cost where the measure is “traction” and “likes” without regard to human frailty and fragility?

They say love and fear are the roots of all other emotions. Better I think to live by the rules of love than fear. Also hope. What is a life lived without hope, even after we mess up or life messes us up?

Whether it be in Lockdown or in Freedom, am I being an idealist to want to in live in world, that supports the infinite expectation of a new dawn with new compass points far from the wolves and watchmen.

10/03/2021

Philosophy tells us that a characteristic of wisdom is not to do desperate things; something I could have done with knowing on emergence from my mother’s womb.

In as much as I might have benefited from this knowledge, I think others may possibly have too. This was my line of thinking on watching the interview with Meghan and Harry earlier this week - a singular event that managed to shove a ceaseless pandemic off the headlines albeit to be replaced by more lurid ones.

To be honest and fair, and far from philosophy, the whole thing (which is understandably not for everyone) was a blessed relief and distraction from events that have plagued us for a year now. Yet as I watched the interview unfold, I became more uncomfortable.

For one thing, it is hard to see a pregnant woman in such distress. It is very difficult to bear witness to an account of isolation, racism and suicidal thoughts. Although feelings are not facts, they belong to us as facts and in the vast terrain of feelings, there should never be judgement. Personal precedence is obsolete here as our feelings are entirely our own, not someone else’s and our experience of life, is our own, not someone else’s. And in as much as we might empathize, sometimes we just cannot understand; Meghan herself alludes to the gap between perception and reality; two infinities that largely fail to be bridged.

It takes enormous courage to speak publicly about fragile mental health. For all the recent encouragement to do so, unfortunately it remains taboo. The duchess said she found it difficult to burden her husband with hers and he in turn said he felt ashamed to bring the state of his wife’s mental health to his family. Remember he, William and Kate founded “Heads Together” a few years previous; an initiative to combat stigma and change the conversation on mental health. Yet, here he was still a victim to that stigma, and so too his family, it seems.

So, everyone suffered; desperate stuff. For all the ancientness of a tradition, wisdom failed and for all the civilization of palaces, a void in humanity reigned.

Yet Meghan painted a tender picture of sharing a blanket with her grandmother-in-law and of a close friendship with Harry’s cousin and her husband. This is what muddies my thoughts on the whole debacle. At the core of it, is family; root family vs new family – two other infinities that often fail to connect. Although it was hard at times during the interview to discern between “the institution” and the family, I found myself sad to be witnessing what appears to be a finite divorce between two families. Failings notwithstanding, I felt sorry for the family being divorced and I felt sorry for the family doing the divorcing. There are no winners here and despite what Meghan claimed, I cannot believe Harry’s ending is a completely happy one. At his own admission, he loves his root family and yet is estranged from them. How can you be happy, when you are not talking to those you love?

Meghan says she likes to rescue things and I hope she is confirmed in rescuing Harry and their son from an environment that appeared to have been strangling them. I hope too that she has rescued her own mental health and is receiving the help she yearns and needs.

Still, when it comes to happy endings, might it not have been a happier one, that in rescuing what was at threat, other things weren’t destroyed and that in retrieving what was lost, vital relationships weren't severed.

But then, I suppose that’s the stuff of fairy-tales and I am trying to philosophize here.

25/02/2021

So, I am working up to the third goodbye to my first born. We have been here before, been optimistic before and been disappointed before. Like so many of his peers in this pandemic climate, he has had to recalculate, re-navigate and re-align.

Still, he is resilient, he is dogged and he has packed his bag – again – headed in the direction of independence. It is not his going that makes me sad, but his leaving.

Important to say in these times, my emotion is not on the same plane as those in grief, those in sickness or those in solitude; those who have lost a loved one, lost a job or weathering it all on their own, overwhelmed by a year of loss and loneliness.

Yet in talking to my mother – a sage for the ages – instead of loss, she talks about gain (despite not gaining a vaccine date yet!!!). In listing out her gains, she has made me look to my own and instead of magnifying the “have-nots”, she has illuminated the “haves”.

We are all aware of the losses of this past year, but what of its gains?

For one, I have gained the treasure of the weekly family zoom, where the banter of our kitchen table of old has been resurrected so that as siblings, we get to vie with each other again in debate, in opinion and in joke. The traditional hierarchy is back and the dynamics returned rendering us, if only for the hour, the family we once were, before we formed families of our own.

Over the past year, I have gained conversations that might never have happened. I have gained moments of bliss that might just have been missed. I have gained new perspectives, new vantage points, new interests and old passions. I have re-discovered pizza, cheese burgers and ice-cream sundaes; that friendships surpass a dress, a hair-do and chilled Prosecco; to be fun, to be real, to be true.

I have learned the value of encouragement over congratulations, the purity of a dog’s love, the art of the gamble, the management of disappointment, the creaminess of P**n Star Martinis and the differentiation in coffee.

I have gained an appreciation for Lockdown Birthdays, Helium Balloons and red roses.

I have gained time to stop and chat to a little boy, keen to show me his new puppy and the poo he has just picked up.

I have gained a clear mammogram for the 11th year running, three grown-up friends in my three grown-up children and I have gained what I kind of knew all along that the guy I fancied at 18, suits me just fine in a pandemic at 52.

So yes, the goodbyes loom, but in his going, he is gaining. And that becomes our gain too.

Au Revoir my son.

09/02/2021

"Despite the fact that I have produced three specimens of the male gender (with valued assistance from another specimen of the male gender), and despite the fact that I hold same-said gender in high regard, now more than ever, having shared three lockdowns with them (along with a much aligned and treasured female), I wouldn’t dare speak for them because, well, I guess there is a reason why we are called the opposite s*x.

That said, I would be equally reluctant to speak for my own s*x because as a gender we are so diverse, vast and complicated for one voice to resonate with all.

Therefore, I will speak for myself and in so doing, throw out some questions, for all genders, types and identities.

As women, have we lost our softness or more particularly our love of softness? Just to be clear, I am not talking about our minds here but the body beautiful.

Between the charge of infinite visuals and the hamster wheel of marketing, are we really to accept the epitome of woman today is one with ripped abs, a tight butt, perky breasts and streamlined thighs? If so, are we in danger of losing what can be the most attractive thing about being a woman? Softness, femininity, mystery?

Strength and health are proper goals but they tend to be sold in packages of elusive beauty and perfection so that the messaging gets all screwed up.

It seems that along the way, softness got collated with looseness and slackness and I think that’s a pity. Although each era tends to formulate their own female ideal, from what I interpret through art, poetry and prose, past eras seemed kinder to the female form, encapsulating the scars and tribulations of life on a woman’s body; less pre-occupied with correction, thigh gaps or bum plumps.

I recognise the more recent trend to exhibit faults; the failed photo as opposed to the filtered photo. The intentions are good, attempting to counter the falsehoods and the so-called show-reels of life but it comes at a price – a loss of mystic, privacy and in some cases dignity. It can also be another form of body obsession and the ongoing quest for validation, likes and following.

I get that the dial has changed and I get that I am woman of a certain age but I am still part of the audience and I get to work with the younger audience. For all the soundbites on loving ourselves and be kind to ourselves, far too many aren’t hearing it and I think that’s because the visual is too loud.

I may well throw out these questions but I suppose at the end of the day, I am questioning a machine; a machine too rich and too in control to acknowledge how its definition of a beautiful body is destroying beautiful minds.

Whatever about softness and the female form, perhaps in fact I’m calling for a softer world; a universal idyll for all genders, types and identities."

02/02/2021

Covid Conversations of a Tuesday:

Me: How are you?
Friend: Grand, you called me on a bad day.
Me: You ok?
Friend: Yeah, I just hate Tuesdays.
Me: I feel that way about Mondays
Friend: Mondays are grand. Its Tuesdays that kill me.
Me: But Tuesdays are closer to Thursday?
Friend: That’s why I like Wednesdays
Me: Thursdays are good
Friend: They are because they might as well be Friday
Me: Anyway, have a good weekend
Friend: Its only Tuesday!!!!
**********************************
Phone on Speaker:

Me: How are ye?
Mother: We’re great! Aren’t we?
Father: We’re great!
Me: What are ye up to today?
Mother: We’re just contemplating that!
Me: It looks like ye up next for the vaccine anyway...
Father: Well, that's the hope!
Me: The waiting game.
Mother: Yeah. But between the zooming, the Netflix and the phone-calls, we’re doing grand!
Father: We’re doing more than grand!
Me: By the way, what’s your opinion of Tuesdays? Would they be a bit of “meh” day for ye?
Mother: Ah no - sure haven't I just had my breakfast served up to me in the bed
Father: Complete with a bit of holly from the garden
Mother: Sure, Tuesday could be Christmas Day here
Mother & Father: Roar Laughing
Me: Is she slave-driving you Dad?
Father: Of course, she is – but aren’t I well used to that!!
Mother & Father: Roar Laughing
Mother: Ah now, don’t I get to do all the less glamorous stuff!
Me: What would that be mam?
Mother: The picking up, the washing up, the ironing, the folding….
Me: You’ve been doing that a long time for a lot of us
Mother: I have but I think your father thinks it’s been done by magic all these years. That or it’s a miracle!!!
Father: 62 years of miracles with your mother!!!
Mother & Father: Roar Laughing.
***********************************************************************
HAPPY TUESDAY!

21/01/2021

19/01/2021

“I am getting tired of certain media defaults in reporting; the irresponsible choice of headlines, the rush to attack as opposed to moderate and the tiresome so-called apologies that aren’t apologies at all.

The irony of using media to complain about media is not lost on me.

Take the glaring front page headline from a newspaper last Sunday “Lockdown could last PAST April”. The article continues onto page 2, appearing under a far less visible and altered headline “Lockdown could last UNTIL April”. Make up your mind, why don’t you? A week may be a long time in politics but a month is an infinity in a pandemic.

It is not so much the inconsistency of the preposition here, which is straight up shabby editorial (that or conniving), it is the irresponsibility of the headline itself. Whether you are a subscriber to the newspaper or not, that headline in one form or another will have been shoved in your face or hollered into your ear and yet it is but a speculative commentary. However, to a population endeavouring to self-manage through a terrifying January, the prospect of having to survive “past” April or even “until” April under current restrictions can potentially be destructive to others and/or self.

We are not children but we are a nation in crisis and crises needs to be managed. I am not calling for stories and information such as these – speculative or otherwise - to be suppressed or not communicated, but can the media please cull the scare-mongering headlines; they are not intelligent or helpful. The figures are scary enough. Words resonate, words are powerful and they come with responsibility. Or does this whole “in this together” and “minding each other” not extend to the media?

Ironically, same paper is jam-packed with articles on increasing anxiety levels along with bulky supplements on mental health. So, how is it that with one hand they contribute to the problem whilst with the other, make hay in addressing it? Create the issue, then solve it? Is that the modus?

Then came the attacking reports from print and broadcast media that excess doses of vaccine were given out to families or associates of hospital staff. It seems the excess doses were borne out of some vials yielding more than the calculated 5 doses per vial, giving up to 6 and in some cases 7 doses per vial (according to skill, needle and syringe heights). Ideally at the end of a vaccine sequence, there should be a standby list in the context of prioritisation roll-out, but in the absence of that (which hopefully will be rectified going forward), was it really wrong to use the vaccine effectively as opposed to using it appropriately when there was no one “appropriate” to use it on? (the vaccine apparently only lasts hours after being drawn). Transparency is crucial but let us not confuse that with optics. Nobody endorses unfairness and the underlying principle is for the process to be done fairly in accordance with priority and risk. However, in the absence of both, surely the vaccination should not be wasted? To me, the attack on medics who are trying to do their exhausted best was harsh. Why use aggression where moderation can serve better all the lessons still to be learned in these crazy times?

Finally, I revert to the subject of my piece last week in respect of Mother and Baby Homes. It concerns the “apology” from the editor of a national newspaper. He uses the collective “we” pronoun in regretting their “unintended” upset to survivors by covering the report prior to its publishing and survivors’ first sight of it. The “unintended” bit takes all the good out of it because anyone with half a brain would know the hurt it would cause – jumping the queue and all that: see media outcry for same crime above – and then by the editor taking the higher moral ground of pursuing it as a “matter of profound national importance” only goes to make same-said survivors feel small for being hurt; the same survivors whose feelings and whole lives were made small years ago in deference to the self-importance of a nation, state and church.

Look. I hear my anger. Forgive me. I am just trying to self-manage through a terrifying January.”

13/01/2021

This day last week, I took the Christmas decorations down. It felt a long way away from early December when the putting up of them was a team effort with fires lit and Christmas tunes sung. Taking them down was polar opposite, with literally no Joy(e) involved in the labour. In fairness, it was my call to do it solo, done in the interest of everyone’s mental state. It’s a bleak January task at the best of times, but this January… well this January is grim.

In that same vein and in answer to the popular call to prolong Christmas a little longer into this strange new year, I left the Christmas crib up along with its figurines. Which explains why in the wake of the recently published Mother and Baby Homes Report, I found myself peering at it.

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. We can get all semantic about it and call it “the holidays” or “the season” in this mad world of “correctness” but talking plainly and pulling it all back, the reason for Christmas, is actually in the name. And central to the Christmas story is Mary, a single pregnant mother who at best was 16 when she fell pregnant but could have been as young as 13 or 14. Therefore, Mary is much aligned with the mothers of Bessboro, Castlepollard, Tuam and all the other Mother and Baby homes throughout the country; homes that might be better described as Children and Baby Homes seeing as many of the mothers were no more than children themselves.

The timeless shaming of unmarried pregnancy has been just that – timeless. It transcends generations, borders and societies; dating back to the time of Christ and before. So, it was not unusual that on discovering his future wife was pregnant and not by him, Joseph’s impulse was to run. But he didn’t. He stayed, he married Mary and by all accounts formed a solid foundation in their rearing of Jesus. Even in that ancient time, compassion, trust and love prevailed over societal expectation and traditional mores.

You might roll your eyes at the fairy-tale or indeed if you are a believer, you might say, they had God on their side.

I don’t mean to simplify, understate or reduce the complexities of this report, these institutions and the lives lived and lost within them. These homes were “The Inn” that offered refuge to young women. However, they did not provide sanctuary. Neither did Society. Neither did the State. Yet, those three stakeholders would have cited God on their side. Bleated it. Boasted it. Lorded it. So, can I ask - where in God’s name, did they get their modelling from? Not from God, or at least not the one I’m familiar with.

“Suffer little children who come onto me, for theirs is the Kingdom of the Lord”

Common to the wide expanse of time that these homes were in existence, would have been the celebration of Christmas; Christmas belonged to every year of every decade throughout the life-span of these institutions. Cribs would have been erected, the Mother of Jesus would have been honoured and her infinite praise and that of her Son would have been heaped. In all of this glorified exaltation, did the humanity of the Christmas story not enter the consciousness of the Church, our State, our Society? Did its essence, humbleness and imperfection not resonate? Did not each of these pillars take pride in their Catholicism and so-called Christian ways? The same pride on which too many perished and were lost.

We are well into January now but the crib remains; not to extend Christmas anymore, but because its story has never been more relevant in these strange sad times.

08/01/2021

Just launched my first foray into fiction writing on Wattpad, sample of which can be accessed through the link below. Caution: Adult theme to start.

Here's the link: Just press read.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/254107912-interrupted

This is a love story that was supposed to happen from the beginning. It spans the lifetime of two people, who fit from...

05/01/2021

"Some people should never have to say goodbye.

This is what I thought in this new year of 2021, attending as I was my first funeral since Covid-19 began. It wasn’t that there haven’t been other funerals (and weddings) to attend since last March – there have been - but rules were vague, messaging mixed and the fear of a myriad of things underlined decisions – taken rightly or wrongly – not to go.

However, I went to this one, not just because it was within our 5k radius but because despite online streaming, government guidelines and health advice, you really feel bad about honoring lost loved ones without actual physical presence.

Of course, physical presence meant a church car park, a masked face, a 2m distance from everyone else and the awfulness of not being able to hug or hold those in grief. God, but you feel bad about that too. The funeral was of a wife, a mother, a friend, a charity-worker, a volunteer, a sportswoman, a fun-seeker, a go-getter and a force of nature. And she should never have had to say goodbye.

But despite the dystopia of Covid funerals, it was a funeral every bit as rich, affirming and powerful as any decorated service under normal times. It was pure.

With three grown up young adults and a very articulate young teenager as children, they and her husband ensured that the sadness of the occasion became a celebration of a life wholly lived.

Through poetry, prayer and storytelling, she lives. How wonderful for a son in his early 20s to be able to say that the funeral of his mother was the only negative thing about her that he was ever involved with. How endearing to hear her elite athlete of a daughter thank her mother for attending all of her matches even the ones she asked her not to. And how moving to see their father silently walk through a full church car park elbowing friend and stranger alike as they stood in the cold to bid adieu to his wife.

It was all so far away from my own memory; she and me laughing in my kitchen, well after midnight on a warm summer’s night awaiting the return of our daughters from a festival; thinking, assuming, hoping we had all the time in the world.

Which brings me to another precious friend I lost this Christmas and to another summertime memory; she and me walking The Camino; laughing, debating, thinking and hoping we had all the time in the world.

Why is it that the good ones go early? Why is it that the people who give most to life, are taken too soon from life? And why do some of us remain, while others don’t stand a chance?

Some people should just not have to say goodbye.

Poignant then, that in this new year of 2021, a young man at his mother’s funeral alluded to her “art” and “skill” at having always being late for everything. But he had a reason and a conclusion to this:

His mother was just not good at saying goodbye."

May my friends rest in peace.

Addendum: To all those lost in these unprecedented times I am sorry. And for all those services, funerals and weddings I did not attend - I am sorry.