dreaming of home

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Dreaming of Home Every good memory, I have ever had involves my father, or he at least made it happen. From riding his big broad shoulders through town during the brisk Illinois fall to exploring the Cherokee reservation during the hot Carolina summer. I have always been a part of my father and he has always been a part of me and so it was no surprise that I was the one who stayed by his side as his health failed. We spent long nights together in the hospital during his last days, watching crime shows while I rambled stories of what had been happening at work and during my summer classes, and whispering to him that I loved him every so often once the lights were off. One bright afternoon as the sun slanted through the window, my mother and I sat by my father’s bed, my mother and I were discussing what we would like to do for his funeral and I had asked if dad had ever told her where he would like his ashes scattered. We quietly fought for a few minutes as I tried to get her to tell me where he had wanted them scattered at. She refused to tell me because she was certain that we would never get to the place where he wanted them scattered at. Finally she gave in.

“Fine, fine, I’ll tell you. Years ago, and I’m not sure how serious he was, but he mentioned he wanted them scattered in Ireland. But either way, it doesn’t matter, because I don’t see us ever having the opportunity to go there.” In that moment I vowed that one day, no matter what, even if I was 90 years old and realized I had the money to go, someday I would take them to Ireland and I would scatter my father’s ashes as the one last thing I could do for him. After our conversation, my father hung on for a few more days, and finally, after his best friend and my brother were able to come by and he finally let go. We gave him a true policeman's funeral, where all of the officers from our home town

came, along with officers he had met from all over the state of Illinois. I floated through his funeral, like a body with a head on a string, I was there and at the same time not, I barely remember anyone who was there. I spent the rest of the summer, traveling through life in the same way, and continued that way through the Fall semester. My mother knew my commitment to keeping promises, and this one was no exception, but little did either one of us know that the opportunity to fulfill that promise would come sooner than we expected. The fall was spent feeling isolated and lonely, my cat stayed with my mom, I lived by myself in a one bedroom apartment away from campus, and my friends seemed to be ignoring me. I knew it was hard, it was hard for them to understand loosing someone close and special because it had never happened to them but more so, I knew the problem was that they wanted to comfort me in some way, and they did not know how. Without knowing, they decided to simply avoid a situation where they would need to say something and so I spent the fall alone, when they finally did I call, I typically said I was too busy, because I didn't want to say something to make them feel uncomfortable, our desires to make each other comfortable, kept us from each other and kept me feeling lonely. Since my freshman year of university, I had been interested in study abroad and finally, during the Fall Semester, my desire to get away from everyone and feel a little more normal would drive me to ask about the program. Once during my independent study of organics, I decided to ask Dr. Foster what he thought of the program and whether or not it would benefit me in my goals later in life. He instantly told me that he thought I should go, and that I should go to a country which was still practicing a farm family centric style of farming (which is where my interests lie) He instantly decided that I should go to either Wales or Ireland, and upon hearing the magic word, I knew that the time had come. It was mid October by the time I finally got to speak to the office of study abroad and fill out my application to the school in Ireland, and there was worry

that I would miss the deadline. In the end, I got in to the Sociology program at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM) and set out to leave at the end of January. From November until January there was constant bickering, over me not going, over not making friends, not allowing me to take my father's ashes, and finally whether or not mom would come and visit. It was stressful, and in the end, I went but without my father's ashes. I will never forget any of my friends there, nor will I ever forget how I met them, it was mostly by fate, and seldom planned that I met some of the wonderful people that I became friends with. The flight from Chicago to Dublin took six and a half hours, but with the time change, it came out to a fourteen hour flight. I got off the airplane, waited two hours to get through customs, and then I wandered through the airport for another half hour wondering what I should do, I realized that that I was going to have to get there of my own accord and finally took to the bus to get to the city center. When I reached the train station I kept seeing a group of students and wondered if they were going the same way. Upon my arrival, I stepped off the train at one end, as the same groups of students stepped off at the other end, we pulled out the same map, and then a tall, flat cap wearing fellow walked over and asked me if I happened to know what was going on. He introduced himself as Johan, and we took to the streets of Maynooth to find our way to campus and our apartments. My first weeks there I made a number of friends, after all the bickering and arguing, I felt I did well. After meeting Johan, we found my apartment building and met my roommate John, a Ph.D. candidate in Immunology from Louisiana. From the first day we made fast friends and Johan would come over to our apartment most every day, we would go to our favorite pub on Wednesdays or Thursdays, spend our weekends together working on homework in John's lab and every Friday, we would ride into Dublin to have coffee and walk around after Johan's class.

Every other Sunday or so, I would call my mother to check in and see how she was doing, and every time our conversations would end with an argument over my father's ashes. One particular Sunday, Johan was over, and he and John were in our common room when I came back from talking to my mom, they both noticed that I was upset and when they asked what was wrong, I decided that I wanted to tell them about my dad, my promise to him, and how upset I was over not being able to fulfill his last wish. After my father's death, my mother had decided that she was not going to do anything with my father's ashes, and would rather that I mix his with hers and scatter them in the Carolina Mountains once she had passed on. While I knew that this was the real reason for her not wanting me to take his ashes, she put her discomfort down to not wanting to mail me his ashes and I had run out of reasons and excuses for why she should send them, and I was not sure where to go from there. Upon the end of my story, John jumped and yelled. "OH MY GOSH, Jamie, we have to do this! This is the kind of thing that makes friendships last a lifetime." Confused, I asked John what he meant by this, and he explained that no matter what, we needed to get my dad's ashes, and we needed to pick a really cool spot to take them to and scatter them. No matter what, we needed to my father's ashes, one way or another, and he then went on to come up with a tale international crime sprees, and other outrageous ways of obtaining my father's ashes from my mother's possession and sneaking them into Ireland. Laughing, Johan and I agreed that we would work to get my father's ashes, and then we would take a day to go to my father's home county and scatter his ashes. We started to plan, and Johan wondered about asking my mother to send part of his ashes, so she could keep the other half as a comfort. A few weeks later, when I called my mother, asking for half of his ashes and explaining to her that John and Johan wanted to scatter them with me and with much begging, and many pleases, I finally

convinced her to send me half of dad's ashes. We waited weeks, and finally I received an e mail from my mother letting me know that she had finally sent the package. A week or so later, after checking the post everyday for the package, it finally came. Johan and I opened the package to a belated Valentine’s card, a tin of cookies for John, Johan, and myself, and a baggie of my father’s ashes. Looking at dad’s ashes in a small freezer bag, just felt unholy, it just didn’t feel right for someone special’s remains to be sitting there in a plastic bag. I took his ashes to my room, and put them in a small box until the time would come. Our tin of cookies lasted us many a midnight snack night as we talked about when and what we wanted to do with my father’s remains we talked about for many nights after they first arrived, but our excitement tapered off as we got busy. Finally as April was drawing close, I reminded the guys and we realized the only weekend that we had left that we would all be free, was the first weekend in April. On April fourth, we left the apartment at 8am and headed to the train station, it was a dull, steal gray, rainy day. It was disappointing to say the least, especially when I had told myself that I wanted a perfect moment for the day, a moment that I did not think I would get. We knew that my father’s family was from Cavan, County Cavan and we had learned that they only way to get there was by bus. Once the train stopped at Connolly Street, we got off and walked to the main bus terminal (Busaras) and once there we caught a bus to Cavan. A ride that was meant to take an hour and a half ended up taking two and half because of the state of the roads and we were dropped in crumbly little town near the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We could not find a map or directions and so we began walking South in hopes of seeing something, after a couple kilometers we had reached the country and decided to turn back, a couple kilometers to the north brought up us to the town center where a barista at a pub pointed us further north to “a nice little lake”. We walked a rolling, hilly road until we

reached a shopping center with a small lake behind it; from far off it didn’t seem too bad, so we scaled a farmer’s fence and began crossing a field towards the lake. As we got closer and closer, the lake became more of a disgusting, polluted marsh. It had overfilled its banks and was full of garbage. Johan saw my disappointment and we walked up to the shopping center to sit down and think. John went inside the store and came out with a cab number, with hopes that the cab driver would know of and be able to take us somewhere nice. When the cab showed up I asked him to “take us somewhere nice” which required more detail, and so I asked the cabbie to take us to a nice lake, or nature park. He knew a nice spot, and about twenty minutes later had us standing out in the middle of nowhere next to a gate. “If you continue up the path you’ll see KilLenny Lake and Park, you can’t miss it! Give me a ring when you want me to come pick you up.” The cab driver pulled around and we started the trek up the hill, past the gate and there, we saw a beautiful stone cottage sitting on the bank of a large lake, surrounded by trees, with a small island that you could walk onto. We crossed the bridge to the island and began following the path towards the Mesolithic ruins. We never found the ruins, but there were beautiful trees, drying from the rain, with soft moss covering those closest to the water, the water was fairly clear, and you could hear the soft movement of water, the cracking of leaves and branches as animals and birds moved, and you could hear as the birds called to one another. It was gorgeous walking to next to the lake, but when we reached the end of the trail; I did not feel like I had seen a place worthy of scattering my father’s remains at. As we walked back, I thought “this is the place” as I walked by a fairly dull spot but when I looked up, I realized it had a beautiful view, I continued walking, and as John and Johan walked by there, they too thought it was right, and so I walked back.

I gingerly took my father’s ashes out of my backpack, rolled up my pant legs, took my shoes off and waded out into the lake. I stared at the sky for the longest moment, thinking of all the events that had lead to that moment, my desire to run away from everyone so I could feel normal, a number of fights with my mother, and the death of my beloved daddy, so many things that had hurt so much in the past months, had lead to a moment that felt right, and good. Finally, I looked at the water; I slowly opened the baggie, and let his ashes slowly scatter as they caught on the wind. Once the bag was empty, I watched his ashes settle in the water, and as I looked up at the sky again, the sun, finally, slowly started to peak out, and when I looked back down, I swear, for a brief moment, it looked like the sun was shining on that exact spot. A chain of events which had always felt out of my control, had come to a moment, where I had planned all the moves, and had been the key player, a moment which I would never forget, nor would my friends. Once I got out of the lake, I slowly walked back to Johan and John and hugged them as we walked back bare foot, allowing our feet and shoes time to dry. As we got back to the road, we put our shoes back on and called the cabbie to come and get us and I decided to call my mom and let her know that I had finished my task. My mother answered, and she sounded the happiest that she had in awhile, and I began to hope that my brother would be there so I could tell him of the day, especially since I had not been able to talk to him the entire time I had been in Ireland. I spoke to my mom for about ten minutes, and then she told me to hold on, that she had a surprise, and my brother picked up the phone. I told him of all my adventures thus far, of the trinkets I had purchased for him, and finally of the trip to scatter daddy’s ashes, I told him about the town, and our misadventure to get to the place of where would be the final resting place of half of my dad’s ashes. As we hung up the phone the cabbie pulled up, and we got in the car, he drove us back to the bus station, where on the bus ride home, I smiled, and looked through our pictures from the day one last time, and then fell into one of the

best naps I have ever had. My father had dreamed of home, a place where he had never got to go, I was sad that he never made such a dream a reality, but I was proud that I was able to do it for him. Going to Ireland, was the best experience of my life, and it certainly changed the entire course of my life.

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