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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Arizona, Being a Widow, Belfast, Blog Awards Ireland 2014, Death of parent, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Dr. Mary McAleese, Fatherless daughters, First birthday without him, George Moore, Irish culture, Irish Diaspora, Joseph O'Connor, Language of Cancer, McClelland Irish Library, Memoir, Milestones, Northern Ireland, Phoenix, Rites of passage, saying goodbye, The Canon of Expectation, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood
neither here nor there: a note from the irish diaspora (& widowhood)
The immigrant’s heart marches to the beat of two quite different drums, one from the old homeland and the other from the new. The immigrant has to bridge these two worlds, living comfortably in the new and bringing the best of his or her ancient identity and heritage to bear on life in an adopted homeland. — FORMER IRISH PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE Continuing to pay tribute to the Irish Diaspora, President of Ireland, Mary McAleese visited Phoenix, Arizona in December 2008. Moving through the crowd gathered at the Irish Cultural Center, she greeted many of us personally, even obliging me with a photograph when I told her where I was from.…
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Aging, bombing, Children of The Troubles, Death and dying, Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley, IRA, Irish Diaspora, Martin McGuinness, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Peace, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, UVF
Remembering Ian Paisley & Dreams Deferred
I suppose if you live long enough, almost nine decades, all is eventually forgiven. At least that’s what the obituaries for Rev. Ian Paisley suggest. Like many of us, I was raised to observe the “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” credo, to speak no ill of the dead, but in the days since Ian Paisley’s passing, I have grown increasingly vexed over the glowing online obituaries, the over-the-top eulogizing of a man, who from the year of my birth until the year I left Northern Ireland, railed against the Catholic church, spewing hate and bigotry – brilliantly – and inciting countless followers to violence. I did not know Ian Paisley as a father and…
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Abnormal Bleeding, After death of a spouse, Aging, Anxiety, Etta James, Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, Hot flashes, Irritability, Mad Men, Memoir, Memory Loss, Menopause, Only Women Bleed, Stress, Women and careers
with a menopausal woman in mind ~ stormy weather
Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes. George Bernard Shaw This past week began with rain in Phoenix, so much rain that for the first time since I emigrated here, the weather forced me to stay home from work and my daughter to miss school. Even my mother called from her sunny kitchen in rural Derry, where the weather is cooperating and will maybe stay dry for the On Home Ground Festival in honor of our Seamus Heaney this weekend. Transformed by flash-flood warnings, power outages, cars abandoned on lakes that were freeways the day before, the Valley of the Sun was in…
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9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood
naming names on 9.11
Flanked by row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart, we can stretch out our arms to touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, is heartbreakingly beautiful, each one of its 2,996 flags signifying a life taken on that horrific autumn morning. We first visited the memorial in 2012. I remember watching as my daughter walked away from me, a somber and solitary figure cutting a new path deep into the Healing Field of red, white, and blue. I was undone by the sheer enormity of the memorial and her diminished stature in it. I had to force myself to look away to…
