Hearts in Ireland

by J. C. Long

  Hearts in Ireland

  By J. C. Long

  When the future is shrouded and it’s hard to find direction, maybe it’s time to let the heart lead the way….

  Ronan Walker stands at a crossroads, unsure how to pursue his education… unsure if he even wants to. Now that his mother is gone, all he has left are the wonderful stories of her youth in Ireland, and he’s drawn to the land of his ancestors. There, he seeks out his mother’s family and meets Fergal Walsh, who works at Ronan’s aunt’s bookstore. A love of literature facilitates a fast friendship between the two men, and even though Ronan cannot deny the potential—and his desire—for more, he cannot see a future for the two of them when he leaves Ireland. Fergal must persuade Ronan to give school in Dublin a chance—and convince Ronan that his heart has already found its home.

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  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Caibidil 1

  Caibidil 2

  Caibidil 3

  Caibidil 4

  Caibidil 5

  Caibidil 6

  Caibidil 7

  Caibidil 8

  Caibidil 9

  Caibidil 10

  Caibidil 11

  Caibidil 12

  Caibidil 13

  Caibidil 14

  Caibidil 15

  Caibidil 16

  Caibidil 17

  Caibidil 18

  Caibidil 19

  Caibidil 20

  More from J. C. Long

  About the Author

  By J. C. Long

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  Copyright

  This story is for my “kids”; your continued friendship and support means everything to me.

  Caibidil 1

  KNOWING IT’S coming isn’t much comfort when it actually comes, I’d learned. The doctors told us for weeks that the end was drawing nearer, and we did our best to prepare for it. We had family from overseas on standby, ready to come at a moment’s notice. Mom was weak, but she was able to tell us exactly what she wanted done for the funeral. Even tired and sick, her voice, with its lyrical Irish accent, was still beautiful and soothing.

  She’d made peace with it all.

  I hadn’t.

  I put on a brave face for her, but in the darkness of night, when I was alone, I cried. At twenty-seven, I cried like a baby. There aren’t words to explain the difficulty of watching someone you love slowly wither away, like an unwatered potted plant. It seemed to be just yesterday that she was strong and vibrant, painting and talking to me about her village outside of Dublin, where she hoped to take me one day.

  You need to see where you come from, she’d say. You’ve seen America, and now you should see Ireland. And then her eyes would take on this dreamy, far-away glow as she thought about her homeland.

  She’d fallen in love with my father in a rather whirlwind romance while he was stationed with the Air Force in the UK at RAF Alconbury. He’d made a trip into Dublin during some downtime, met my mother, and it was almost like a fairytale after that. When he returned to America some six months after their meeting, she followed suit as his bride.

  I knew Mom missed Ireland terribly. She would talk to me about it near constantly when I was a child, and at bedtime she would always sing me good night songs in Irish, the beautiful foreign words rolling over me and lulling me to sleep.

  After the diagnosis, she talked a lot about getting back to Ireland, clinging to that thought as if it were a life vest, as if it could get her through the storm of treatment and pain. I would sit with her, looking at the beautiful pictures found in the various Ireland coffee table books Mom obsessively bought. She would see a place she’d been to and point to it, telling me about its magic and how much better it was in person, all while Celtic Woman played in the background.

  The day it happened, Dad and I both knew it was time. Neither of us could explain it if asked, but we knew, and so did she.

  Mom beckoned me over to her bedside. I sat in the chair beside her, taking her clammy, weak hand in my own and squeezing it tightly, as if I could give her my own strength. If it were possible, I would have, then and there, no questions asked.

  “I want you to promise me something.” Her voice coming out raspy but surprisingly strong. “Will you do that, Rónán?” She used the Irish pronunciation of my name, Ronan, and I knew what she was about to ask of me was serious.

  “Of course, Mam,” I said, looking deep into her eyes. They were filmy now, but once they’d been the fiercest green I’d ever seen. As green as Éire, she’d once said. As green as Ireland.

  “I want you to go—don’t put it off too long, like I did.”

  “I will, Mam, I will.” I had no doubt about what she meant. She’d been wanting to take me to Ireland since I was seven but always put it off till next year, or until we had the money to go. She’d delayed and delayed so much, and now she would never get to see her homeland again.

  “You promise me,” she insisted, clenching my hand tight with what must have been her last bit of strength. “Promise me, a stór.”

  Tears came to my eyes and a lump, hot and burning, formed in my throat. A stór—my treasure. She hadn’t called me that in a long time. It was her childhood nickname for me. “I promise.”

  The rest of that day was a blur for me. Mom passed back into the hazy cloud of delirium, occasionally talking in Irish, to no one in particular, though I did distinctly catch dadaí, the word for daddy. From what I knew, my grandfather on my mother’s side passed when she was eighteen.

  She became calmer after that. A few hours passed and she was gone.

  No amount of preparation we had done readied my father and me for that moment. I fell apart, face buried in the blankets of her bed next to her form, while my father stood there, one hand on either of my shoulders, head bent, tears falling freely onto my back.

  My next clear memory was of doctors talking, though their voices were just a background droning, not piercing the veil of my grief. I sat there as they talked to Dad, holding her hand as it slowly became cool. Her eyes were still open, but they were vacant. The beautiful spirit that was my mother was no longer there. She’d left us forever.

  Phone calls were made, a flurry of different activities engaged. Arrangements would be delayed as long as possible to give as many relatives as could come a chance to get in from Ireland. Dad must have told me a hundred different details about who was arriving when, and how airport pickups would have to go, and what the sleeping arrangements would be.

  I processed none of it. I have massive gaps in my memory after that. Allanah Murphy-Walker died at 3:17 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. By Friday, every relative that could make it had, and the funeral was planned for Sunday.

  Saturday evening the family gathered at Dad’s, and we had a big family dinner. There were a total of seventeen Irishmen joining us in the house. Grandma Murphy and Mom’s sisters, Gwendolyn and Maris, did the cooking, making my favorite dish, shepherd’s pie.

  While aunts and uncles and cousins chatted inside about old memories, I sat on the back porch, staring out at the lush garden that was Mom’s pride and joy. She called it her little piece of Ireland in America. I’m pretty sure the happiest smiles I ever saw on my mom’s face were when she was in the garden.

  Most of the Irish family was quite a bit older than me, at least amongst the members who made it. The exception was my cousin Hannah, Aunt Gwendolyn’s thirty-year-old daughter, only a few years older than me. As I sat there in the twilight, Hannah came out and joined me, taking in the garden. She was silent, and I appreciated it immensely. Everyone else seemed to think they needed to fill any silence with meaningless words, and that doing so mig
ht keep the grief at bay.

  “Do you remember my first visit here?” Hannah asked after a few minutes.

  “When I was six? Yeah, I remember.”

  “I was only nine years old, and it was my first time away from home—and in a foreign country. I cried every night for the first few days. Do you remember why I finally stopped crying?”

  I thought for a moment, forcing my mind through the haze of sorrow that had settled over me since Mom’s passing. I shook my head, unable to recall clearly.

  “One night you came into the guest room and sat down on the bed. You took my hand and asked why I was crying, and I said because I was so far away from my family. You told me, ‘You’re not far away—you’re right here. We’re family too.’” She smiled wistfully. “I felt silly for crying after that.”

  She reached over, took my hand, and squeezed it tightly. “You were there for me when I felt completely alone. I’m here for you too. Aunt Allanah was an amazing woman. I know I can’t understand the depth of your pain—but you’re not alone. You’ve got a house full of family. You reminded me of that twenty years ago, and I’m returning the favor.”

  My mind couldn’t form words to express the gratitude I felt then. I had indeed been feeling alone in that moment. How strange that Hannah, a cousin I’d seen maybe a grand total of six times in my entire life, knew exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. Perhaps that was the power of family.

  With Hannah’s encouragement I was able to go back inside and surround myself with family. I didn’t actively participate in the stories being told—neither did Dad, I noticed. He sat there, a small, nostalgic smile on his face as he listened to the voices in their heavy Irish accents, like he was lost in another world.

  At one point in the evening, the conversation turned to the funeral.

  “What song did yeh decide on, Richard?” asked Aunt Maris.

  “‘Danny Boy,’” my father answered.

  Aunt Maris frowned her distaste at that. She was Mom’s younger sister and looked quite a bit like her, though she lacked the same inner fire that had radiated from Mom’s every pore. “It’s a bit stereotypical, innit?”

  “It was Mom’s favorite song.” All eyes turned to me, surprised by my interjection. I wondered how many of them had forgotten I was there. “She sang it practically every day. I think it’s a great choice.” I let an edge slip into my voice, a dare for one of them to challenge the wishes of a deceased woman’s son and husband.

  “It’s a beautiful song,” Grandma Murphy said, bringing any thought of discussing that to an end. If Grandma Murphy approved, not a word would be spoken against it. “Did yeh get a live singer or will there be a recordin’?”

  “A live singer and violin accompanist. Two friends of ours volunteered.”

  Talk of the upcoming funeral continued. I didn’t want to listen to the details of what was going to be the worst day of my life being laid out again and again, so I excused myself to the kitchen under the pretense of collecting a drink.

  Aunt Gwendolyn, to my surprise, was already in the kitchen, fiddling with a teakettle, her eyes wet. She was Mom’s oldest sister and was coping about as well as I was from the looks of it.

  “Ah, Ronan! Want a cuppa?”

  I wondered if that was every Irish person’s solution to life’s problems; Mom always offered a cup of tea when things were rough, or I was sad or upset. The day I came out of the closet to her, we had like ten cups each.

  I nodded, though, and she poured a cup of steaming hot liquid, placed it in front of me, then poured her own.

  “I won’t embarrass us both by asking how you’re holding up.”

  I felt a rush of gratitude. I didn’t like the idea of lying to my family, and whenever someone asked that question, they didn’t want the real answer. They never wanted to hear that you were breaking inside, spiraling over a dark black void from which you fear there will be no return. No, it was a mechanical question to which you were expected to give a mechanical response of, “I’m holding up” or “depends on the hour,” which was bullshit. It depended on the minute—the second, even.

  Aunt Gwendolyn let her gaze wander to the large calendar on the wall beside the refrigerator, each month featuring a different Irish landscape. Mom bought the same calendar every year.

  “Her heart was always in two places,” I said, voice hoarse as I fought back unexpected tears. “Here, and in Ireland.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Aunt Gwendolyn said, reaching for my hand. “Yer mother loved Ireland, yes. It was her home. But you, Ronan, you were her heart, and you were always right here, so her heart couldn’t have been in two places.”

  “Do you think she regretted coming to America?”

  Aunt Gwendolyn snorted. “I don’t think Allanah regretted much in her life. She lived exactly the way she wanted to. When she loved, she loved with everything she had, and she loved your father enough to follow him across the world.”

  Hearing that from her made me feel a little better. There was a part of me that feared that I’d held her back, kept her from returning to a place she truly loved and wanted to be. I could have let that eat me up inside, let it destroy me.

  “Your mother knew that she always had a home with us in Ireland.” Aunt Gwendolyn paused, finishing her tea. She placed the cup in the sink and ran a little water in it, a practiced motion that probably came without thought for someone who spent their life drinking tea. As she walked out of the kitchen, she stopped beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You do too, Ronan.”

  Caibidil 2

  MY MEMORY of the funeral service was patchy at best. It was a gray, rainy day—appropriate to the task at hand, I thought; why should the sun shine when my heart was dark with loss? I didn’t hear a word of the priest’s droning, just kept my eyes glued to the photograph of my mother resting behind the coffin, upon which was laid a bouquet of flowers from Mom’s garden: her dog rose and ragged robin, two of her favorites. Even though it was the end of May, I later remembered the wind was chilly and cold as we stood next to the grave. I’d done my best to control myself, but when the violinist and singer began their heartbreaking rendition of “Danny Boy,” the floodgate broke and the tears came, salty and bitter and painful. Dad held me close, like I was a little boy again and not a man nearing thirty. As the coffin began its slow descent into the grave, Dad’s tears joined my own, our grief mingling.

  With the funeral done and the family returned to Ireland, the black fog that had threatened to descend over me since the moment Mom drew her last breath finally did. Days would pass where I could do nothing but stare at the ceiling, lost in my pain. I went days without eating, without doing anything more than the most basic required functions: the bathroom and breathing. My job, which I hated anyway, was understanding and gave me time to grieve, but I think my boss and I both knew I would not be returning to them.

  Dad called me at least five times a day, every day, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer any of them. The entirety of my world had become narrowed down to the ever-present ache in my heart. With Mom gone, there was a void, and I couldn’t fathom how I could possibly go about my day-to-day life without her in it.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  I lived in that constant fog for two whole weeks, not that I was really aware of the passage of time. It was a Tuesday afternoon and Dad was being more persistent than usual with his phone calls. By noon he’d called a dozen times and sent two dozen text messages, and I’d read none of them. I didn’t have the energy to deal with anyone in the outside world, most especially Dad. Thinking of him would remind me that Mom was no longer around.

  The sound of my apartment door opening jarred me from a state of half-sleep. I was laying on the couch, a throw over my body, the start menu of my Criminal Minds season four DVD playing the music over and over again, waiting for me to select Play.

  I sat up groggily and tried to peer over the back of the couch to see who had come in, though I already knew who it wa
s. Only two people had a key to my apartment—well, one now. Already Dad’s presence was causing unwanted pain.

  “Look at this place,” my dad said, the disapproval clear in his tone. “It’s a mess.”

  I reluctantly sat up on the couch, turning to look at him. I knew what I must have looked like, with my scraggly brown hair a mess, a two-week’s growth of hair on my face, and wrinkled clothes. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in a while, and though it wasn’t really messy, given my lack of motivation to even eat, it probably didn’t smell so great. I had laundry piling up near the washer and a few empty pizza boxes from the days leading up to Mom’s death, when there was very little time between work and going to the hospital and I needed something to get me through the day that wasn’t hospital cafeteria food.

  “Did you forget how phones work?” Dad walked around and sat on the edge of the couch. He kept his voice light, a gentle reprimand. “I’ve been calling since the funeral.”

  “A lot’s been on my mind.” My voice sounded strange to my ears; it hadn’t seen much use recently.

  Dad let out a sigh, settling back on the couch, and I moved my feet to accommodate him. “I know the feeling.”

  I studied him for a moment. He looked like he’d aged two years in the two weeks since I’d seen him. Dark bags bloomed under his eyes, his skin looked sallow, and his hair had more gray in it than I remembered. How did I forget, in my world of blackness, that my father was suffering too? Grief is a strange monster; it coils itself around you, making you feel like there is nothing in the world but you and it. The reality of the situation was that I wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone important to them, even though I felt like I was. I lost my mother, yes, but my father lost his wife.

  Guilt rushed through me, hot and scalding. I shifted uncomfortably, turning and putting my feet on the floor, elbows propped on my knees. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”