Just Love Harder

I flew across the Atlantic Ocean with a small pillbox in my bag. I was bringing a bit of my mother and Ethan to rest in Irish soil. My mom was so proud of her Irish heritage, and Ethan was going to carry on the McDonnell name if he had lived long enough to have children. I wanted to bring some of their ashes to the land our branch of the McDonnells had lived almost two centuries ago.

Before I traveled, I learned that my family hailed from County Mayo. I thought it would be nice to leave the ashes there, but I was on a tour of the country with 20 people and our bus didn’t have a stop planned for County Mayo. I decided I’d leave the ashes to Sligo, which was near County Mayo and was one of W. B. Yeats’ favorite places.

But I had told our tour guide about the ashes and County Mayo, and she made it happen. She detoured our tour so we could stop at a Catholic shrine, Our Lady of Knock, in County Mayo. She told me it would be a lovely place, and I instantly recognized the name—my mother had been a devout Catholic, and Our Lady of Knock was very meaningful to her.

So, we drove to the chapel next to the wall where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared along with Saint Joseph and Saint John. A bed of flowers lay in front of the wall. Early on a Sunday morning, I mixed the ashes I had brought with the soil of the flower bed. Most of the people with me had only known me a few days, but they came with me to the flower bed. They cried too. Tears for my loss and for their own losses as well. We all came to that wall with our own heartaches. Healing happens, sometimes, when we share our pain.

Leaving that part of my mother felt right. She loved Ireland. She was devoted to Our Lady of Knock. She would feel at peace under the heavy Irish clouds. Leaving Ethan behind was harder. Since I came home, I wake up sometimes feeling lost and panicked, like I abandoned a piece of my son. I took him to a foreign land and went home without him. I’ve been afraid I did the wrong thing. That I’ve lost something I’ll never see again.

Today, I went for a run by the water. I talked to Ethan, like I often do. And I felt soothed. I considered the full-circle ritual of bringing an American McDonnell to rest in County Mayo after all these years. I imagined my ancestors leaving Ballina for America, knowing that they would never return to the graves of the loved ones they left behind. Ethan and Betsy are there with those long-dead relatives now. None of them are alone.

This is a poem I wrote in a hotel in Tramore near the end of my trip:

Three Thousand Miles

The boys in Dublin
          have faces like milk &
          fresh haircuts.
Their voices rise like pipe
          smoke along O’Connell Street.

The children of Derry scrape
          along the sidewalk, late
          for school, wet knee socks
          in the rain.

Granite skies soften along the Wild
          Atlantic Way—clouds fold
          into themselves, rolling until
          they are nothing but mist above
          us and bog below.

Here, we dress in layers:
          on & off with the sweater,
          umbrella in a bag.

Skies may bless the Cliffs
          of Moher or shroud
          the Ring of Kerry—a mantle
          of indifference.

Once, a family left Ballina—
          threw salt in the River Moy for luck.
They crossed the island, crossed the sea,
          bags packed with darned socks, lace
          curtains, small pots of lanolin
          for wind-burned cheeks.

Three thousand miles
          they traveled. Three thousand
          miles I’ve retraced, a raincoat
          in my bag. A pillbox in my pocket.

A detour from Derry
          to a holy wall in County Mayo—
          a bed of flowers for Or Lady
          by the wall.

Three thousand miles and more
          than three years, I’ve been holding
          loss in my pocket. The dust
          of bones for this rich Irish soil.

I asked him: Is it time
          to leave this part of you
          behind?

Be brave enough to do this,
          he would say.

Brave enough to stare down
          the slopes of Slea Head &
          to climb Blarney’s Stairs—
          to dance in the peaty air
          of a pub with the searing burn
          that come from grief & joy.

The fire that lets you throw your head back
          in the howling mountain wind
          and sing because you are alive.