Malin

On a clear day you can see the Isle of Islay, a vague silhouette outlined against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean that stretches infinitely in the distance, its turbulent waves crashing against the numerous rocks that dot the coastline of Malin Head. In the near distance standing proudly at the far end of Istrahull Island the lighthouse stands in all its glory and solitary splendour, reaching out as a beacon of safety and refuge to the fishermen and sailors who have passed it over the years - sons, fathers, brothers, uncles - out in all weathers and conditions eking out a living as they faced the ferocity of a cruel sea. Its intermittent flash of light still brightens the darkening skies as the first glimmer of dusk once more descends on this wild and beautiful landscape that boasts it is the most northerly part of Ireland.



Bernie had been coming to this place year after year once the turbulence of the school term gave way to the welcome retreat of the summer break. The visits to Malin Head were started by her husband Joe, who as a child had spent many  summers staying with his family at the ‘Green Hut’, a sparse tin building which his family of seven plus assorted cousins ate, slept and played for two adventure filled weeks every year. With hardly enough room to swing a cat, an old wooden bucket in a makeshift hut outside as the only toilet, in Joe’s young eyes  now infused with the nostalgic outlook of his adult memory, this was simply heaven.



When the opportunity of renting a cottage there came up, not quite as Spartan as the ‘Tin Hut’, he persuaded Bernie to spend two weeks there one summer. Reticent at first, given her mainly rural upbringing, (she couldn’t quite see the romantic misty eyed vision of her town dwelling husband), she gradually began to appreciate its beauty.



“You could experience four seasons in one day in this place”, her husband once said and he wasn’t wrong. Sometimes they would wake up to the sound of the heavy rain lashing against their bedroom window. Within an hour there would be a gentle warm sunshine that made the puddles from the rain glisten in its reflection. Later the sunshine might give way to an overcast and windy outlook, with nightfall experiencing a heavy gale that whistled and moaned through the surrounding barns and outhouses.



As she gradually began to recognise the serene beauty of the place, an inner peace began to take root within her spirit. It was as if the place had almost called her to return, even though she had never set foot there before.



They had met at teacher training college in Manchester. He came from Creggan, a sprawling housing estate in Derry, she from a rural village in County Galway. They were inseparable in college and she went back with him to Derry where they both got teaching jobs, he in a local primary school in the Bogside, she in a large girls secondary school in Creggan.



Soon they got married and had two boys, Sean, in 1967, a year before the outbreak of the Troubles which was to have a lasting and tragic outcome on her life, and Aaron two years later.



She relished being a mother. Ever since her mid teens, she had carried a painful burden. Her mother and father took her aside one day to reveal the devastating truth that she was an adopted child. Her mother had been unable to cope with a child out of wedlock, the cold , Catholic climate of the forties was unforgiving. So she was given up for adoption to a respectable Catholic family where she could  be brought up in the doctrines of the faith, unburdened by the shame and sin to which her birth mother had been condemned. The news was a severe blow to her. All those years she had been deceived into thinking that she had a normal mother and father, their only child, only to find that a piece of her life had been broken and irreplaceably damaged. Even though her parents had given her all the love and care she needed, there was now this nagging gap in her life.



They showed her a faded photograph depicting a young woman standing at the doorway of a cottage with a baby in her arms. Bernie assumed that the woman holding the baby was her mother and that she was the baby. The woman looked quite sad and she knew deep down that this must have been before she was about to give her up for adoption.



Sometimes she would lie awake at night thinking about her mother. What was she like? Who was her father? Where were they now? Eternal questions continually spinning around in her head as the years went by, with the resolve that some day she would find her, at least learn something about her.



As the children were growing up, the situation in the North was getting more and more bitter and violent. The seventies were the worst period and she was relieved that her sons were not teenagers during that turbulent period. However as they got older, her worries grew as they claimed their youthful freedoms to go out with their friends. She would lie awake at night, Joe blissfully snoring beside her, only lapsing into a welcome sleep when she heard the key turn in the door.



Every summer the family took themselves off to Malin Head. The house that they had initially rented had gone up for sale one year and they both jumped at the chance and bought it. Joe and herself were successful teachers. She had been promoted to Head of Department in English, he to Deputy Principal and eventually Principal.



Malin Head became a refuge, away from the turbulence. The boys could roam freely and spend their childhood summers in the wild outdoors, fishing for tiny fish among the many rock pools that dotted the shoreline.



Aaron had just turned 13 when tragedy struck. Joe had just recently been appointed principal of the school. The IRA’s campaign against the British army was in full swing with no end in sight. Practically every day there was a shooting or explosion. There was a tension in the air that permeated the psyche of the community as a whole. Joe was acutely aware of his responsibilities to his pupils and staff who had to go to school, and get back home with violence likely on the streets.



He was looking out for his students when the tragedy struck. There had been a bomb scare on the road beside the school. He went down to make sure that no pupils were in the vicinity. It was as he was coming down the path he got caught up in a shooting between the army and the IRA. He didn’t stand a chance.



Bernie had just finished her first class of the afternoon when Father Doherty came in with the Headmistress to break the news.



She hardly remembered the funeral. She had a vague notion of being led up to communion, the priest shaking hands. She remembers she never cried. She visited his grave constantly for weeks on end and left a fresh bunch of flowers there each time. Somehow the flowers were a way of bringing him a gift, the only way she knew how to mark their connection, a tangible symbol of their love to do something with the pain of not having him there as a physical presence. It gave her a momentary comfort.



There was little in the way of counselling or bereavement care in those early days of the conflict. She just had to pick herself up and get on with it. She focused on raising her two young sons. Her adoptive parents had both died a few years previously so she couldn’t turn to them. From time to time she thought of her birth mother and wondered what she would say to her to help with her grief. Every so often she would take out the photograph her fingers tenderly stroking the fragile and faded image.



About six months after Joe’s death that she plucked up the courage to return to Malin Head. Too many precious memories of her and Joe had prevented her from returning. Yet one day somehow she felt the time was right. There was something drawing her there that deep inside, despite the pain of memory, would provide her with a comfort and meaning.



Each time she went she began to feel stronger as if there was an inner healing in this place. The memories of her loss were suffused with the memory of another loss in her life, that of her birth mother. She resolved that she would find her or at least find out who she was and whether she was still alive or not.



She woke up early in the mornings and walked “The Head”, a circular route that took her past the Malin coastguard and then the weather station then up the steep winding road past Bamba’s Crown, an old derelict tower built at the beginning of the 19th century. It stood proudly overlooking the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by old Nissan huts used by the Irish Defence Forces during the Second World War. Just below the tower towards the coast lies a series of whitewashed stones spelling the word Eire (the Irish word for Ireland), a  legacy from the Second World War when Ireland remained neutral, the sign a reminder to fighter aircraft not to wander into Irish airspace. She would walk on to a twisting pathway besides Bamba’s Crown which jutted along the sea cliffs, where the waves crashed and pounded onto the rocks below.



During those walks she would often meet other people, either tourists exploring the magnificent views or local people going about their business. There was one person in particular that she would often run into on her walks, a friendly woman, slightly younger than herself. Her name was Maggie and she was born and bred in the area, originally from Glengad, a tiny hamlet a short distance from Malin Head. She had married a local fisherman who tragically lost his life at sea three years previously. Bernie told Maggie of her own tragic loss and from that day onward, the two women developed a strong bond with each other and eventually became firm friends.



Maggie lived with her mother, a frail woman in her mid 70’s, who five years previously, suffered a mild stroke which left her bedridden. She had two other brothers, both of whom had left Donegal  to seek work in England and America,



Whilst Malin Head was intensely beautiful, beneath the beauty lay sad examples of poverty and deprivation. The land itself often proved hard and cruel and evidence of emigration was displayed by the many derelict cottages that dotted the landscape, their broken and crumbling walls bearing testimony to a once  proud and  thriving community.



Bernie felt a warm bond towards Bernie’s mother, Sheila, just as she had towards Maggie. She always felt welcome in their household and would visit there often. Sheila had been widowed at an early age, her husband dying of a heart attack when only in his forties leaving her to bring up her young family of five singlehandedly.



One day on her way to visit Maggie and her mother, Maggie came running to the door.

“Mammy’s been taken ill. I’ve just called the ambulance!”

“Oh God Maggie. I’m so sorry! Is there anything I can do?”

“I’ll ride with mammy in the ambulance. Could you hang on here and wait for my call? I might need you to bring over some things to the hospital.”

“Sure Maggie. Whatever you say. I’ll wait for your call.”



They went inside and waited by Sheila’s bedside. She was breathing laboriously and Bernie could not help but feel a strong senses of sadness and solidarity as Maggie held her hand.



The ambulance arrived and sped off to Letterkenny. Bernie sat down beside the fireside, the only sound that invaded the silence was the steady tick tock of the clock on the mantelpiece.



Two hours passed. The phone rang. It was Maggie. She sounded extremely upset.



“Hi Bernie. Mammy’s in a coma. They say it won’t be long. I’ve called the boys. They’re on their way over. Bernie could you bring over a change of clothes as it’s going to be a long night. Oh and could you bring mammy’s missal. It’s on the table beside her bed. It’s very special both for her and the rest of us. She has had it since she was a little girl.”



She went to Bernie’s room to fetch some clothes and then into Sheila’s room. She took the missal from the table but in her haste dropped it to the ground. As she bent to pick it up, she saw a photograph had fallen out. At that moment a butterfly fluttered beside the bed. For some reason Joe came into her head, his warm and comforting presence embracing her as she picked up the photograph.



As she looked at it a sudden rush came to her head. She felt disorientated and dizzy. Her stomach heaved. It was the same woman in the photograph holding a baby in the doorway of a cottage that she had held on to all those years.



Could this be true? Could Sheila be her long lost mother? So many thoughts and questions rushed through her. How could it not be her mother? How would they both have the same photo, the same woman staring out of the picture holding a baby in her arms? This had been the only tangible object that she had to connect her mother to herself and now she was holding the exact same photograph.



Yet now she was dying, slipping away unaware that her daughter whom she was forced to give up had been within a whisper of finding her after all these years.



Whilst her other children gathered around her bedside, she was an outsider unable to break the dramatic news and be able to reconcile herself to her mother as now was not the time. The family had the right to grieve on their own. She could not intrude on their shared loss.



The pain welled up inside her because she could not reveal herself to this dying woman who was oblivious to the caring embrace of her loved ones. Yet also her search was at an end.



She gently closed the door of the cottage, holding the missal in her hand. The butterfly that had hovered around her earlier was fluttering around her head, its wings shimmering in the half light of the moon’s reflection. It flew around her head one more time and then disappeared into the night sky.