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Gratitude not Goodbye on Your Birthday.
It is her birthday today, and she is dying. Curled up in a fetal position, in a cloud of morphine, she is not going to get well. From her friends and family, there are tender and tentative birthday wishes on social media. Distance – virtual and real – helps conceal the truth. From her son, the man I love, there is heartache and helplessness, a daily struggle as he watches her struggle in a space between holding on and letting go, a bewildering space that both tightens and expands without warning. There is no greeting card section for a birthday like this, no easy way to celebrate 79 years of…
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"Let's Go Crazy", "Little Red Corvette", American Dream, Antrim, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Dispatches from the Diaspora, In Memoriam, Northern Ireland, Prince, Soundtracks of our Lives
‘We are Gathered Here Together to Get Through This Thing Called Life . . . And Death’
Little red Corvette Baby you’re much too fast Little red Corvette You need a love that’s gonna last. I first paid attention to Prince and the Revolution when I was about twenty years old and “Little Red Corvette” was getting regular airplay on Radio One. It was the eighties, and I had big hair, big enough to be in The Revolution, and stowed in the back of my mind I had big plans to escape from Northern Ireland and its greyness. Most of the time, I was bored and with no particular place to go other than the disco on a Saturday night with my best friend. And, “Little Red Corvette” – if it’s about anything – is about Saturday night, when…
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Children of The Troubles, Damian Gorman, Devices of Detachment, For too many Palestinian and Israeli Parents, Gaza, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Tony Parker
Gaza in Context ~ How Long Must We Sing this Song?
As I write, Gaza is being bombed. Again. On Monday, Israeli forces shot and killed 58 Palestinians and wounded at least 1,200 during a protest against the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem. Children lie among the dead. Again. Babies, one of whom was in her grandmother’s arms when she inhaled the tear gas that would kill her a few hours later. One of the Far away, I begin the mental mathematics. Adding it up, I know for sure only this about Gaza – children are still dying. The news comes fast and furious, the way it always does. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Mainstream media. Social media. Mixed-up…
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airing laundry for mother’s day
Old Smoothing Iron by Seamus Heaney Often I watched her lift it from where its compact wedge rode the back of the stove like a tug at achor. To test its heat by ear she spat in its iron face or held it up next her cheek to divine the stored danger. Soft thumps on the ironing board. Her dimpled angled elbow and intent stoop as she aimed the smoothing iron like a plane into linen like the resentment of women To work, her dumb lunge says, is to move a certain mass through a certain distance, is to pull your weight and feel exact and equal to it. Feel…
