Fare Thee Well…Emerald Isle

Sadness Mixed With….

[Written on April 2, 2010 - my last full day in Ireland....only now discovering the draft that never got posted...truly appreciating the poem that I'd written at the end, that I utterly and totally forgot having written.  That is the masterpiece of this good-bye note to Ireland.]

There is sadness in my soul at this moment, one that I awoke with yet didn’t realize until I left the hotel and once again walked the streets of City Cork, taking the back alley ways and side streets, photographing the architecture and faces of the people, without being intrusive.

It is midday on my last full day here in Ireland and I am back and forth between computer, television and the sundry collection of books on Ireland that I’ve amassed.  I am feeling mixtures of sadness, mostly sadness, and anticipation about my return to Toronto.  It seems like I have been gone for a lifetime; perhaps it has been.  I don’t feel like the same person who landed on the shores of Ireland but a week ago; something has changed.

Not wanting to return to Canada; wanting to get in the car and just drive; drive to the forlorn shores of Bantry Bay, to make that climb up into the mountains, to sit awhile with the sheep and rams on the high hills of Ireland, listening for the whispering breezes on the other side of the mountain tops; wanting to just be.  But how would I exist, what would I do; how could I survive in this strange yet familiar land?  Would I end up, out of necessity, seeking a job in the legal profession in Cork…just another city which holds no charm for me?  Would I get caught up in the corporate world of city life in Ireland as I have in Canada?  It wouldn’t be any better.

So, as I write this note; as I knock on the door, as I ask the question, Spirit please speak to me and show me what to do.  Return I must; but for a little while or a long while?  Should I plan on returning to this land of the bard and poet to while away the hours of my life reminiscing of a life I never knew, but somehow feel I do know?

At times I feel I am in the skin of my grandmother, the 18 or 19 year old girl, who waved a tearful good-bye to her mammy and pappy as she headed with her beloved to the docks to board the boat to that strange and far away land and place called Boston; not knowing, but somehow knowing, she’d never be seeing her mammy and pappy again.  I feel that sadness and that excitement; in looking back I feel her sorrow for never again seeing her family, her Ireland before going home to be with the Father in Heaven.

I remember the photograph of grandma Dot, standing behind the wheelchair in which her beloved Paddy sat; white and ashen faced, barely a resemblance of the ruddy faced young lad she’d departed the shores of Ireland with in another lifetime.  Her face is blank, staring off into nothingness, and my grand pappy, well, when I look upon him, my heart is wretched because I believe that had he not left the shores of Cape Breton to go to the city, to be closer to his children, his life would have been better, would have been longer.

But there he sat; barely alive in his wheelchair.  And standing beside him and grandma Dot is my own father holding up in his arms my own wee girl, Christine Mary, not even 6 months old.  Generations… and it is only I who write and my daughter Christine Mary who remain behind, to tell the story, to turn the next page, to live.

So many generations, so much time, and yet I feel as though I’ve just touched them in the here and now; been a  very part of their departure and that somehow my coming home to Ireland has brought them back home to rest with their mammy and pappy.  Perhaps their spirits left off, when I stopped at the top of the mountain in the midst of the snow and rain, got out of the car leaving the door open; perhaps subconsciously keeping it open that they might exit and return to blend with the sea and the mist that covered the mountains; to float down the mountain side, over the valley below; to find and come to rest with their beloved…somewhere there by the sea of Ireland.  Perhaps should I return one day to Bantry Bay or the Mountains of Glengarriff, I will find my own rose bud blooming in the craggy and lifeless hillsides, fertilized by the return of love to its nest, at last at rest and at one as it was meant to be from time immortal.

As for me, the return to the city is one of dread; not wanting to lose this sense of whom I am that I have found in such a short space in these oh so many years that I’ve physically existed on the face of the earth.  I am so afraid that I will once again get sucked up in the much adieu about nothing of the material world…and lose myself again.  What a tragedy, after waiting for so long to find me, to lose me so very quickly.

So, tell me my self, what can I do to preserve, to reserve that special essence of me, the real me, that it not get lost in the darkness of the material and physical…until you journey me through the next door of solitude and peace here on earth?  How can this be maintained in a place that cares only about filthy lucre and not the human spirit; where product counts more than the producer?

I do not want to lose my treasure and so I beg…speak and let me hear.

I wrote the above several hours ago.  I just now sent off an e-mail to some folks and in it I quoted a Celtic poem, a blessing.  As I signed off, this poem came out of me, and I share it with you – perhaps this is the voice responding to my request of hours ago.

I Found It

May your life be filled with treasures untold, such as I found,
Treasures eyes cannot behold, neither moth nor rust can eat away their soul;
Eternal blessings indescribable, precious and weighty beyond measure,
These my dear friends…these we should treasure!

If when I look at you, I look deep within to the pool
Of togetherness that is every man, woman and child
Born out of love, sustained by love, fed with love
Nourished and guided by the hand of love
That created each of us, God’s pure expression of His Love.

I’ve found my treasure on an Emerald Isle,
I travelled many a weary mile
To find in this land from whence it began,
The treasure was there, always at hand.
But I could not see, could not find
For my eyes were blind.

I searched about, all without…
But it wasn’t there; it isn’t here on this Emerald Isle,
It is where it always was, always shall be
It’s in the depth, the essence that is me.

I found it here on this Emerald Isle,
Not that it was here in this place or this time;
I found it here because I was ready to hear
Ready to receive, ready to believe;
I gave it all up this struggle to be
I laid self down….and there found me!

(c) Shammah 2010