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Bellaghy, Death and dying, Dennis O'Driscoll, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Northern Ireland Culture, Seamus Heaney
Epitaph . . . for your birthday
Epitaphby Merrit Malloy When I dieGive what’s left of me awayTo childrenAnd old men that wait to die.And if you need to cry,Cry for your brotherWalking the street beside you.And when you need me,Put your armsAround anyoneAnd give themWhat you need to give to me. I want to leave you something,Something betterThan wordsOr sounds. Look for meIn the people I’ve knownOr loved,And if you cannot give me away,At least let me live on in your eyesAnd not on your mind. You can love me mostBy lettingHands touch hands,By lettingBodies touch bodies,And by letting goOf childrenThat need to be free. Love doesn’t die,People do.So, when all that’s left of meIs love,Give…
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calling the shots
Because it matters, and I finally figured out what I wish I'd known for so many years as a girl in a school uniform or an administrator in a business suit. It was never my fault.
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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Act Two, Door into the Dark, Postscript, Seamus Heaney, The Underground
Walking on Air.
"Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you." ~ From his remarks to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduates, May 12, 1996
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Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats
Omagh. On a Saturday afternoon.
It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people. – Martin Luther King Jr. Last year, after almost 26 years, the British government opened the first hearing of an independent statutory inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing that claimed 29 lives and injured hundreds in the County Tyrone market town on 15 August 1998. The question at the heart of it—could the UK authorities have prevented the bombing? The answers are slow to come. The preliminary hearing was procedural. This year, the court heard testimony from the bereaved and the injured. But the bombing itself will…
