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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Birthdays, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father Daughter Relationships, Fatherless daughters, Fourth of July, Loss, Memoir, Milestones, Rites of passage, Second Birthday Without Him, Soundtracks of our Lives, Ted Kooser
Marking your Birthday – “Slow Learning but You Learn to Sway”
It is your birthday, and for the second time since we met, you are not with me on your day. How should we mark the occasion? Without any fuss, I can hear you say, and maybe you can hear me ignore you as I plan a fuss of some kind, the way I did for each of the 23 birthdays you celebrated with me. Anyway, my love, weren’t you the one who always told me not to throw away old photographs because they were proof that we were here? Proof of life. Proof of having lived. These markers matter, don’t they? There are people who don’t know you lived, people who come to our house and…
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Breast Cancer Awareness, Damian Gorman, Dispatches from the Diaspora, Jonathan Klein, Let Them Come, Photos That Changed the World, Refugees, Sarah Lewis, Syria
The Only Home We’ve Ever Known . . .
In his 2010 TED talk, Photos That Changed the World, co-founder of Getty, Jonathan Klein, maintains that a picture can make the world a better place. With clear-eyed compassion, he proves his point, presenting a series of images many of us know well, images from which we can neither look away nor back. In her book, The Rise, Sarah Lewis refers to this power, this “aesthetic force” as the thing that will force us into action, perhaps even to justice: . . . it leaves us changed — stunned, dazzled, knocked out. It can quicken the pulse, make us gape, even gasp with astonishment. Its importance is its animating trait — not what it is,…
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A Sense of Wonder, Aging, Barmbrack, Belfast, Best friends, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Good Vibrations, Hyndford Street, In the Days Before Rock n' Roll, Irish culture, Little Feat, Madame George, Memoir, Milestones, Music, Norn Iron Soul Food, Northern Ireland, Paris Buns, pop culture, Pop Music, Pop-in Records, Record Shops, Rites of passage, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Snowball, Soundtracks of our Lives, Terri Hooley, Themes of childhood, Van Morrison, Vinyl Records, WagonWheel, When the Healing Has Begun
We’ll walk down the avenue again . . .
From Cyprus Avenue on Van Morrison's 70th birthday - when the familiar refrain streamed across a continent into my kitchen in the desert, and the appreciative whistles from the Belfast crowd, my whole world stopped for a second. Back street jelly roll . . .
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After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Bellaghy, Castledawson, Death and dying, Dennis O'Driscoll, Derry, Dispatch from the Diaspora, FInal wishes, Funeral, Grieving, Keeping Going, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Postscript, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
P.S. Seamus Heaney and a Grave Situation
When I returned to Bellaghy this summer, I visited Seamus Heaney's grave again. This time, a simple wooden cross stood in the dirt. This time, I was a widow, changed and contemplative, convinced that cosmic strings keep us connected. This time, I wondered about the spiritual space in which both men might move. Where are they?
