It really has been a long strange trip.
St. Patrick's Day gets me thinking of Republicanism (of the Irish and certainly not the American kind). A drive everyone a bit crazy playing Irish music in March. But hell I'm the boss.
One song, "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" has come to the fore this year. For the more literary minded Heaney has a poem in Door into the Dark called "Requiem for the Croppies" that speaks the same incidents.
After dying in the struggle, the United Irishmen were buried in unmarked graves by the English. The next year though barley or other grain would appear where the unmarked graves were. The rebels often would carry grain in their coats as rations.
The barely signified two things. One was to mark the grave. The other to show that in the midst of death life can spring up unexpectedly. And in remembrance give hope for a better future.
Now I've not spent the past several months on death or the sadness. Rather I am amazed that I am doing so well. C and I get along quite well. We went out the other night to the symphony to celebrate her birthday. The kids all seem to be doing okay as well. Certainly, they have had issues, but nothing compared to where I was at the same ages.
More importantly, I don't spend a good bit of each day wishing that I would or planning how to die.
Life has sprung up well. Certainly it is like the wind though the barley. There is a bittersweet remembrance followed by immense gratitude for the life that has sprung up out of a croppy hole that I thought/feared would be an inescapable abyss.
I think it's time to end the blog.
I'll leave it up for folks on the journey to see. The journey is a hard one. But it is not undoable.
Don't do it alone. Those were the darkest times when I kept it all inside. "Reach out, touch faith" you are not alone unless you choose to be. There are a fuckload of us (mixed orientation marriages) out there.
You aren't alone
Jim
