In the early hours of July 31, 1975, five members of The Miami Showband were heading home from a gig at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge. Their drummer, Ray Millar, had gone home to Antrim instead to stay with family members. On a narrow country road outside Newry, the band was flagged down by a group of uniformed men at what appeared to be a routine UDR (Ulster Defense Regiment) checkpoint. Such an incident was “normal” in the seventies in Northern Ireland, and they wouldn’t have been overly alarmed. But then the men in uniform ordered them to get out of their vehicle and stand by the roadside while the soldiers conducted a check of the back of the van.
I don’t know if standing there on the side of the road, The Miami Showband realized this was not a routine army checkpoint. They would be the victims of a vicious and premeditated ambush carried out by members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). As they waited, two of the UVF men – later revealed as members of the Ulster Defense Regiment – planted a bomb in the back of the van. It exploded prematurely, killing both, and in the chaos that followed, the remaining UVF members opened fire, killing three band members.
There were reports that the handsome young lead singer, Fran O’Toole, was shot 22 times in the face. Vulnerable and on the ground, he begged for mercy from men who kept shooting. Brian McCoy, shot nine times, was the first to die at the scene. Tony Geraghty was shot in the back – four times. Des McAlea and Stephen Travers survived the blast from the explosion that flung both of them into the air. McAlea suffered only minor injuries and somehow escaped into the night; Travers was seriously wounded and survived only by pretending to be dead. Later, he recalled the gunman kicking the four bodies to ensure they were all dead.
Some four decades later, sitting at my computer in a sunny room on the other side of the Atlantic, the shock and revulsion returns, along with the fear we felt as details of the massacre unfolded in our newspapers and on the radio. I remember my mother ironing in our kitchen and at the same time shaking her head in disbelief and muttering to God. It was unimaginable – these young men, Catholics and Protestants, darlings of the show band scene, in their prime and adored by thousands of fans north and south of the border, slaughtered in the muck on a country road.
Naively, we had believed musicians were immune. Too, we saw in the Miami Showband what could be, its members and its audiences crossing all social, religious, and political boundaries. In fact, in his address to The Hague some years later, Stephen Travers would recollect his band as “a blueprint for social, religious, and political harmony.” But on that night in 1975, what happened to The Miami Showband left no doubt that musicians were just as much of a target as anyone else. It became known as “The Day The Music Died,” but such a tagline does not convey the monstrosity of it, the chilling choreography behind it, the harrowing legacy of it.
In the years following the Miami Showband massacre, musicians were afraid. Word on the street was that Northern Ireland’s musical life was over. Performers from the UK mainland were too scared to risk their safety, and with this increased risk, performing in Northern Ireland became wildly expensive, the cost of insurance premiums soaring given the real threat of hi-jackings and bombings.
Our wee country had become a “no go” area.
Lovers of live music grew accustomed to canceled gigs, more bombings, more shootings – all part and parcel of Northern Ireland living. Performers were warned to stay away. Most took heed. A few – too few – kept going, like Rory Gallagher, who played Belfast’s Ulster Hall more than any other performer. How we loved him.
Rory Gallagher has once again returned to Belfast, at least he came, and for that we must thank him. Belfast has now become a graveyard for music. Concerts and big groups are a thing of the past…We want action now, for too long the groups in England haven’t given music where it can give the most help. Lennon tells us to give peace a chance, but has he visited us? All we want John ,baby, is the truth. Perhaps he is furthering the peace movements somewhere in Hyde Park. Perhaps the groups don’t want to make any sacrifices, maybe they are afraid, maybe they cannot stir themselves to help the people who need it most, who have no power to speak of.
– excerpt from early 70’s Belfast underground paper,’Take One’.
Rory must have known that when the music played, you would never have known that our country was in the grip of “The Troubles,” even as the bombs exploded in the city around him. Music was the alternative and in time, there would be punk rock and an anthem proclaiming as such and a renewed sense that music could save us all –
When punk rock ruled over Ulster, nobody ever had more excitement and fun. Between the bombings and shootings, the religious hatred and the settling of old scores, punk gave everybody a chance to live for one glorious burning moment.
So when I heard about those gunmen storming into The Bataclan Theater in Paris last Friday night and slaughtering scores of fans, I was sickened again. How could this happen? Yes. I should know better than most that a popular concert venue in Paris on a Friday night is not an unexpected place, that there are some for whom Paris is “a legitimate target.”
And, I should also have expected the statement from Stiff Little Fingers who were due to play in Paris on the heels of their gigs in Dublin and Belfast.
Of course they would play in Paris just four days later. Of course they would. And they did – with authority and heart.
It was the right thing to do – for Paris, for all of us.
Twelve days after Ken died, I wrote this post. I haven’t read it since, and I’m not going to read it tonight. Somewhere in the middle of the grief-stricken ramblings, I remember is a pure – and good – memory of this day twenty five years ago – January 13, 1990 – the day when Ken and I embarked on what we both knew was one hell of a love story.
So, I’ll raise a great big whiskey to you tonight, Ken, and tell you that I’d do it all again.
x
11/27/2013
A friend, one who knows, told me the other day that it will take at least a year before the sharp stone of grief will shift from the very center of my being. She told me not to make any big decisions until I make it through all the “firsts” – the first Thanksgiving without him, Sophie’s first birthday without her dad, Christmas and decorating the tree, New Year’s Eve and not-quite-legal fireworks at the end of our street, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, my birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the Fourth of July and fireworks over Morro Bay, summer vacation (will I ever be able to face Morro Bay again?), his birthday, Halloween and pumpkin carving, our Wedding Anniversary, and finally, the first anniversary of his death. His death.
My. Husband. Is. Dead.
And then she said, well, she texted me, which is a good thing because if it’s written down, I’m less likely to forget it:
. . . after a while that pain will feel like a friend. And you will be afraid to lose it because that will mean you are better and over it and not missing Ken any more.
~ just one of the mind games that Grief plays.
This grieving business has brought out the best in people who care about me, beautiful expressions of sheer humanity. It has also brought out the worst – albeit unintentional – in people who don’t know me and don’t love me but who are paid to deal with me, to deal with death for a living, to know what to say to new widows, to know not to say stupid things. (Recent days have brought me back to when I first landed in cancer country, but if you’ve visited this blog before, you know I have beaten that horse to death).
From the people at the mortuary, those with years of experience in the funeral industry, who called me with the first-time-I’d-ever-heard-it-details of Kenneth H‘s last wishes as opposed to Kenneth M’s which I knew like the back of my hand, to the automated email telling me about the online obituary and memorial page even though my husband, a very private man, had been adamant about no obituary and no fuss; to the doctor whose office assistant left a voice-mail telling me that there was nothing else she could do for me because I take four medications already; and then, my husband’s primary care doctor who wanted me to place myself in his position, to take a minute and see where he was coming from, regarding the whole debacle over who should sign the death certificate – hisposition, if you don’t mind – and then my oncologist (whose assistant didn’t return my call for help until after it was too late to call my primary care physician) who wouldn’t prescribe anything for me because, you know, the physical pain of grief has nothing to do with cancer, now does it?
I wanted to scream that if we were still in South Derry, there would be a very nice doctor on the other end of the line, telling my mother he was sorry for my trouble and that he would sort us all out with enough Diazepam to help cope with the shock, the journey back to America, the jet lag, the grief, the pain, the immeasurable sadness. The same doctor didn’t know my mother or me; he was merely the doctor on call, a kind stranger, and he had a heart of gold.
In the twelve days since my husband died – my husband died – can you hear me now? – I have cried and cursed and ranted and raged. I have been irreverent and exhausted and delirious and despondent. I have even laughed about things that should make me cry. I went out today and bought lipstick. Honest to God. I actually got up, showered, put make-up on a haggard face and drove to a store the way I have done thousands of times before, and I bought a cheery lipstick called ninety-nine red balloons. Just like the song.
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by
I also bought a too-expensive-even-though-I-should-be-watching-my-finances-now-that-I’m-a-widow autumnal centerpiece for a Thanksgiving table that will be missing a place-setting. At some point, I noticed I had already changed my Facebook status to “widowed.” I don’t like the ring of it one bit.
Some of these trifling things are great distractions – wondering who will show me how to back-flush the swimming pool or tell me what that even means, or set the timer on the sprinklers or develop that intuition my husband seemed to have about knowing when to change the oil, or rotate tires, or change air filters, or get gas (I always forget to get gas, usually I’m on “E” with the light on. I used to joke about how running on empty is my last stab at living dangerously). It may actually not be that funny.
In the past twelve days, I have learned how to comfort people whose husbands are still alive. I held in my arms the neighbor I don’t know but who brought cheery chrysanthemums to my door. She couldn’t stop crying about the tragedy that has befallen my daughter and me, and I had to get some Kleenex for her and nod that time will ease the pain. Hell, I even consoled the discomfited doctor after she realized that my situation was sort of “urgent” and that, yes, Xanax might help.
Of course Xanax helps. Just ask any of my family members back home, who have endured incredible pain and loss in recent years. At every wake, there’s always some kindly soul passing around the Diazepam the way we used to pass around a pack of cigarettes at the pub. No. I’m not saying that Xanax, Diazepam, or Ativan numbs the grief or takes it away or helps me avoid the reality of loss. It just dulls – briefly – the excruciating physical pain of the sharp stone of grief that’s stuck somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.
Here’s the thing. I was Ken’s wife for one day shy of twenty-two years. That’s a lifetime. When we met, we both knew something special was happening. I used to think we would have fit in rather handily on the cast of Cheers. Ken wasn’t Norm or Cliff, but he was a regular. When he came in to the bar where I was a bartender, I always had a beer ready for him. I would position myself behind the bar, right across from him and nonchalantly wrap silver-ware in paper napkins, exchanging quips and innuendoes with him without making eye-contact, because when I did, I blushed.
A bit of a cliché I was a twenty-something Irish immigrant who had over-stayed her welcome in America and still had a broad Antrim accent. As such, I was the main source of entertainment for the men who had just come off the day-shift; they were easily enchanted by what they considered an Irish brogue, and the more alcohol I served up, the more they wanted to tell me all about their Irish roots. I often dismissed them as “Plastic Paddys,” which they considered a compliment. Now, this was before microbreweries were de rigueur, but I was still overwhelmed by the variety of beer in variously colored cans – yellow for Coors, the Silver Bullet Lite version, blue and white Miller Lite etc The regulars indulged me, “Hey Irish,” they’d beckon and to help me out, they ordered rounds of beer by color: “Gimme three silver bullets, one red and blue, two white and blue, and two yellow.” Ken said I always charged $11.50 a round, but none of them minded.
Ken wasn’t fictional Sam Malone, Cheers owner erstwhile recovering alcoholic and former Red Sox player with a little black book full of women’s names and numbers. Ken didn’t need a team of writers, and I never met a woman who didn’t love him; and, I wasn’t Diane Chambers (well, maybe just a little) but the chemistry between us was undeniable and made up for the lack of compatibility. For almost two years, we denied what was so obvious to everyone else. He loved that I loved music and that I could give as good as I got. I remember he was very impressed when I sneaked some of his favorite tunes on to the bar’s jukebox, a contraption that could be described as “country thunder.” When the bar-owner wasn’t paying attention, I added Neil Young’s “Ohio,” and The Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil,” Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” the Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” LA Woman by The Doors and, well, anything by The Moody Blues. Admittedly, I was a bit thrown when Ken told me one of his favorite songs was “All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards. Now, it was easy for me to hijack the jukebox, because I had the flat-out awesome job of going with the other bartender to a wonderful warehouse, somewhere in Phoenix, that was loaded with row after row of 45-inch singles. It was my job – a job – every other week, to replace some of the records in the jukebox, to keep it somewhat “current.” To stay on the owner’s good side, I’d throw in some Hank Williams, and I never interfered with Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” – nobody in her right mind would get rid of “Crazy” – but every new record I added was for Ken. And he knew it. Bob Seger’s “Sunspot Baby” would start up, he’d wink at me and then complain to the owner about how the new Irish waitress was ruining the jukebox.
The banter and badinage flew like electrical sparks between us, and we made those around us laugh and wink knowingly. We were the entertainment, and everybody knew we belonged together. Even before we did. I imagine had Dr. Frasier Crane been a regular, he would have had this to say about our performance:
“I know, I know. Now you’re going to deny it. Even though it’s ludicrously obvious to everyone around you, you two will go on pretending it’s not true because you’re EMOTIONAL INFANTS. You’re in a living HELL. You love each other, and you hate each other, and you hate yourselves for loving each other. Well, my dear friends, I want no part of it. It’s time I just picked up where I left off. It’s time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So I’ll get out of here so you can just get on with your denial fest.”
And then one day, Ken folded. I always loved that he broke first. It was January 13, 1990, which thereafter we considered our official anniversary. I ran outside to give him his change. After all, $11.50 for one beer was a bit much, even by my standards. When he had me outside and alone, he looked right at me, told me he was crazy about me, that he always knew I had been out there, and that he had almost given up waiting for me. Quite a pick-up line, but it worked. Then he asked me to plant a kiss on his lips, and I reverted to being coy and strategic. But that didn’t last.
Within a matter of months – one month – we had moved in together. He brought nothing from his previous life, just a lot of love for me, and I dragged the collected Shakespeare, my Seamus Heaney poetry books, my collection of Life and Rolling Stone magazines, and a whole lot of crazy love for him. Crazy love – like the kind Van Morrison sings about, especially with Ray Charles:
Yes it makes me feel righteous, makes me feel whole
Makes me feel mellow down into my soul
While I never convinced him that Van Morrison was, in fact, God, I managed to turn Ken on to tennis, and we watched Wimbledon and the US Open on a tiny black and white TV-radio-alarm clock combo in a tiny apartment that amounted to a shack in the back of an old ranch house in central Phoenix. Then one day when we were watching TV, I said, “Let’s go get married.” He said, “OK,” and put his boots on.
I remembering digging out a big fat phone book – the yellow pages – and found a wedding chapel in an old neighborhood in west Phoenix. The preacher there reminded me of a lovely blue-eyed old man in Field of Dreams, earnest and patient, as he told Kevin Costner’s, Ray Kinsella about Moonlight Graham and all the blue hats he never got around to giving his wife, Alicia.
We asked a stranger to officially witness the ceremony, and we vowed to each other that we would stay together in sickness and health, till death us do part. Health is easy, but sickness is a bitch. Madly in love, we had no reason to suspect that breast cancer (mine) or aneurysms (his) would move in and turn things upside down more than once and make us resent our own bodies. Thus, we filled up that ordinary November morning with a time-honored succession of extraordinary promises. We couldn’t stop smiling. We didn’t even tell anyone. Young and wild, it was as though we had eloped to Gretna Green. I think we probably even went to work afterwards. Along with all the other rituals we performed every day, the getting married was just something we could have done any day, at any time. No fanfare. No hoopla. Completely ours. Private.
We loved being answerable to only one another, doing whatever we wanted to without having to worry too much about other people. I remember one night when I was homesick for the smell of the sea. I just wanted to stare out at the ocean which seemed another world away from the desert southwest. It was a Friday afternoon, and we had nothing else to do. Still years before Sophie was born, we got in the car and started driving. No map. No GPS. No specific destination. Just ocean. That night, we were in Los Angeles, and I was inhaling the sea air. The next evening, we were in Pismo Beach, strolling along the pier. As if to put America’s vastness to the test, I asked him to keep driving. Eventually, we stopped by a lighthouse where we balanced the camera on the car, set the self-timer, and took a picture of ourselves, windswept and clinging to each other, completely unaware that a decade later, we would stand again on that very same spot on the road to Monterey, smiling for a picture that would be taken by our little girl. Then, for a decade, San Luis Obispo County – Morro Bay – became our family’s vacation spot.
We created hundreds of lovely little rituals and routines over the years. My mother always said I could set my watch by Ken. True. I always knew where he was, what he was doing, how much he loved me, how proud he was of things I had done professionally. He was my greatest cheerleader and the person who once told the young me who used to get her feelings hurt easily and who cared too much about what other people thought, that she needed to grow some hard bark, because she would need it. Well, Ken, I need it now. I know you didn’t want me to harden; you wanted me to be tough. But, it is just so hard to be tough enough to fully absorb the blow of your death, to look up and expect you to walk in with another cup of coffee for me and ask what I’m blogging about and then wonder aloud – with a wry smile – if the woman I once was would be coming back any time soon. Each of us wrestled with the truth that cancer changed me, as a brush with mortality would. It wasn’t bad or good. It just was.
It was not a perfect marriage, but it was an honest marriage. We argued about little things but never about the big stuff. One of our first arguments was over what it was he was thinking about. We never argued about that again. It went something like this:
What’s wrong?
Nothing.
Are you sure?
Yup.
So what are you thinking about?
Nothing.
Well, it must be something. I can tell. Are you mad at me? Is it about me? (I mean, isn’t it always about me?) Well, can you at least tell me what it begins with?
No baby. Just private thoughts. Private thoughts, my honey.
Private thoughts. Well, you can imagine how well that went over with someone who has to know the inner details, the finer points, the “how are you really feeling” details about everything. But he never told me. And the strangest thing happened. I realized over the years that we all have private thoughts, secrets never to be told, things that stay deep within us – not bad, necessarily, just private thoughts. Most people just wouldn’t say that out loud. But Ken did.
Looking back on it, he said it the same way he once told the cashier at a Pep Boys, after he’d paid in cash for new windshield wipers, that she couldn’t have his address. Not that he was a conspiracy theorist; he just hated his name and address being placed on some list only for it to be sold to someone who would profit from it. Annoyed because he was just not cooperating the way most customers did, the young cashier’s jaw dropped when Ken looked at her, deadpan, and with a twinkle in his eye, said quietly, “I just can’t do it. I can’t tell you where I live. The cops are after me.” And I had to walk out of the store because I was laughing so hard.
Then I learned to cook. It was before Food TV Network, and I relied almost entirely on an eclectic group of chefs on PBS so there was lots of Cajun cooking going on in the early years. Our first Thanksgiving Dinner together was a foreign affair as far as I was concerned. Never mind the Food TV Network, this was before the Internet and Google, so I had to go out and buy a holiday cookbook from Williams and Sonoma to learn exactly what went into a Thanksgiving Dinner and what this quintessential American tradition was all about. I’m sure like most Northern Irish folk, I would have the natural tendency to ask, with just a touch of martyrdom “Sure what would we have to be thankful for?” And then there would be some hand-wringing and worst-case scenarios about what happened to your man whose wife took up with somebody else, or the state of unemployment or Maggie Thatcher and terrorists, or The Troubles in general, and the brain-drain with all our young people like me leaving for America, Australia, New Zealand – following the sun.
A quick study, I was soon fixing turkey and all the trimmings like a pro. I even made pumpkin pie and candied yams (nothing from a can), and amber colored side-dishes and butternut squash soup, fare that would never have shown up at a fork supper or tea after a Harvest Home service at a country church in Northern Ireland. As if there wasn’t enough food to feed a small country, I was compelled to assert my Irish-ness with Brussel sprouts which Ken hated and roast potatoes and, for good measure, a Pavlova or a sherry trifle for desert – I could only make sense of Thanksgiving Dinner if I considered it an early Christmas Dinner. As if I’m not confused enough about my cultural identity. And to make it truly my Thanksgiving, we would listen to the entire Last Waltz soundtrack.
For tomorrow, I have ordered a turkey breast dinner. Just the breast, because that means there will be nothing to carve and no carcass for soup. Ken always carved the turkey, and he loved my turkey-noodle soup. Oh, how could I possibly brine and roast a turkey without Ken here to do the basting and the carving and telling me not to put apples or anything sweet in the stuffing? I always put apples in the stuffing. Why not? And when he wasn’t looking, I basted the turkey with maple syrup. I always add marmalade to the yams too and slices of clementines or even the syrup from cans of mandarin oranges. If it’s not sweet, what’s the point?
My parents are here, and already I am dreading the day they tell me it’s time for them to go back home to Castledawson and for me to resume living again. I hope they will stay for Christmas. My lovely irreverent friend in Tempe who hails from Ballynahinch and who knows about grief (as she will tell you herself, she is hands-down the winner in “The Sad Contest”) is going to bring a Pavlova and maybe even some currant squares and custard. And my mother will put the kettle on for us and make tea with Barry’s teabags and bring out a plate of Hobnob biscuits. I will complain if she puts too much milk in it, because I like a good County Derry cup of tea the way my Granda did, so strong “you could dance on it.’ Our meal tomorrow might feel a bit like a Northern Ireland Christmas dinner from days gone by. I just hope I remember to eat.
We have lots of food in the fridge – baskets of sympathy from near and far from heartsome people who ache for us. I don’t know what to say to them, other than thank you. And, my gratitude is heart-felt and genuine. But if I’m honest, I hate that it is these strange new gestures I am thankful for this year. It would be so much easier to give thanks that the turkey’s not dry.
Oh, Ken. Why did you have to die? There was something I wanted to tell you. It was important.
It doesn’t matter. By now, I have to believe you have run into Lou Reed, that the two of you have scored some really good weed from J.J. Cale, and you are feeling no pain. And maybe Seamus Heaney will raise a glass to you.
She was quick, controversial, and compelled to cross every line – out loud. And, she made me laugh even when it was against my better judgement. I think I first saw her on TV in the 1980s being interviewed by Bob Monkhouse or Michael Parkinson who would later call her “the world’s most hilarious and endearing bitch.” Watching in our living rooms, we willed her to say something irreverent, and she rarely let us down. Joan Rivers had nothing to hide.
In her article in The Atlantic about Joan’s passing, Megan Barber acknowledges the comedienne’s trademark restlessness
You could say a lot about those decisions Rivers made, in terms of age, in terms of beauty, in terms of femininity. But what you could also say is that she was, in all those choices, quintessentially American. She was restless. She was constantly reinventing herself. She was constitutionally unsatisfied. She was Jay Gatsby with a facelift, basically. Except—and here is the thing—she had no secrets. She was open about her manipulations. And, in that, she made fun of our own. She took our myths—all the unfair expectations we place on ourselves for constant beauty, for constant charm, for constant gracefulness—and laughed at them.
I suppose we could say whatever we want the way we do when we talk and write about famous people we don’t even know. Still, I always found something vulnerable in the persona that is Joan Rivers, the vulnerability you would expect to see in someone who shows her cards. All of them.
Now that I’m a bit older (and not as controversial as Joan Rivers), I understand better that sometimes it is just different for girls, especially those who do not conform. I understand better that sometimes it is true that if I don’t laugh, I really will cry. Mostly, I understand that sometimes my jokes about my breast cancer and my widowhood and my spectacular inability to manage well motherhood, money, and menopause will make you uncomfortable or render you unable to carry on an earnest conversation with me. And, I understand that maybe I’m just as difficult for you as I am for myself. If that’s the case, then maybe you shouldn’t listen to me. Just move on. Don’t – as Bo Dylan says – think twice. It’s alright. Really, it is.
Sometimes I think that some of the people who love me cannot bear to think of me as a widow, alone and preoccupied with thoughts of her own mortality, utterly incapable of holding all the pieces together. They don’t say so, of course. They don’t like to imagine me imagining how much easier some things might be if Ken were still here. I imagine most of us never thought of Joan Rivers as a widow who still said goodnight to her husband, or a mother who said “I love you,” before hanging up at the end of every phone-call with her daughter. Those parts of her didn’t incur the faux-indignation of the media. Those parts of her were not outrageous enough, unlike her first stand-up performance after her husband’s death when she told the audience, ‘My husband killed himself and it was my fault . . . we were making love and I took the bag off my head.’
Laughter. The best medicine. Good company does the job too.
(Photo by: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank)
In A Piece of Work,the documentary about her life, Joan Rivers shares how she was – until the end apparently – driven by a need to have “every hour of every day in her appointment book filled.” Holding up a blank page on her calendar, she exclaims “You want to see fear. I’ll show you fear.”
For me, I think the opposite is true. Filling up my calendar reminds me that every day is an anniversary of something, a reminder to be afraid or sad or joyful. Sometimes, I think I would far rather just accept the days as they unfold, minute by minute, no reminders necessary to remember my history, no expectations for how the future might unfurl.
Joan Rivers, I hope the paparazzi are out in full force for the funeral. I hope you get the send-off you wanted. And, I hope you get your beauty sleep.
When I die . . . I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents. I don’t want a eulogy; I want Bobby Vinton to pick up my head and sing “Mr. Lonely.” I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentine gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag.
And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyonce’s.
I thought of walking round and round a space
Utterly empty, utterly a source
Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place
In our front hedge above the wallflowers.
It’s been a year, and it is still strange to type the words.
There is still no way for me to convey the inestimable impact of his words on my adult life. He has been with me every day for as long as I can remember, like a pulse.
During the bad times, when friends and relatives have lost loved ones, my condolences to them have been wrapped up in Heaney’s pitch-perfect poems.
On the day of his death, we didn’t know what to say, because on that day, only Heaney himself would have been capable of producing the right words to assuage Ireland’s sorrow over his passing.
I had always assumed our paths would cross, and I would be able to thank him for making me brave when I needed to be, for gently teaching me to love from afar the language and the well-trodden lanes of Castledawson and Bellaghy in rural Derry, for “crediting marvels” in the unlikeliest small things, and, mostly, for inspiring me to set words down on a page, to light up this screen with them, so I might at last be able “to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.”
It was around dusk on November 15 last year that I crossed the door into the dark, into blacksmith Barney Devlin’s forge that sits on the side of the road at Hillhead, Castledawson. Barney’s son Barry was telling us all about the great night’s craic behind Heaney‘s “The Midnight Anvil.” Heaney wasn’t there on December 31, 1999, but he could “still hear” Barney strike that anvil twelve times to ring in the new millennium while another of his sons listened in on his cell-phone in Alberta, “the cellular phone held high as a horse’s ear.”
Looking back on that evening as I posed for a photograph with Barry on the other side of “The Door into The Dark” holding in my hands the same anvil that made the sweeter sound, then striking it, I find myself imagining a shower of sparks and wondering if it was at that very moment that my husband died, by himself and so very far away in our Phoenix home. I believe it was.
There is something soothing – and right-seeming – in believing so, in believing we may have been within Heaney’s spiritual field in that moment and in coming back to Phoenix to do what we were fit for, to take up the strain of the long tailed pull of grief.
On this eve of the first anniversary of his death, I am wondering about his widow, Marie, and how she’s doing with the empty space, with the alteration, and of the poem he once wrote for his sons in Station Island. And I am thinking of my husband and the empty spaces within and without, and of our daughter and of me, taking the strain.
Rest easy, Seamus Heaney, and thank you. Always.
A Kite for Michael and Christopher
All through that Sunday afternoon
A kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blow chaff.
I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of the newspaper
along its six-foot tail.
But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to life a shoal.
My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.
Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand here in front of me
and take the strain.
I don’t know if standing there on the side of the road, The Miami Showband realized this was not a routine army checkpoint. They would be the victims of a vicious and premeditated ambush carried out by members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). As they waited, two of the UVF men – later revealed as members of the Ulster Defense Regiment – planted a bomb in the back of the van. It exploded prematurely, killing both, and in the chaos that followed, the remaining UVF members opened fire, killing three band members.
Looking back on that evening as I posed for a photograph with Barry on the other side of “The Door into The Dark” holding in my hands the same anvil that made the sweeter sound, then striking it, I find myself imagining a shower of sparks and wondering if it was at that very moment that my husband died, by himself and so very far away in our Phoenix home. I believe it was.
