I remember my mother saying that when she got my grandfather’s death certificate the list of contributory factors on it were as long as your arm. He essentially died of old age and had been living with many of the ailments on his death certificate for years.
I was very young when his deteriorating eye sight meant he couldn’t drive anymore. I don’t remember him ever wearing glasses but he did use a magnifying glass to read the paper. He also used to get my older brother to read books to him. Usually Irish history books – an interest they shared.
When I was growing up I didn’t always know the opinions of the adults around me. There was a lot of stuff about which very little was said. But Granda told us what he was thinking more than anyone else.
He talked about the past. He told the story of how he met granny in Donegal – she was born in the Free State in the year of partition. He regaled us with tales of smuggling butter and cigarettes across the border on his bicycle during the war. We spent a lot of time driving around Derry with him. He’d come along on the afternoon school run with my mother. As we traversed the city to different schools and then the cemetery and shops, he’d give us little glimpses into the past. What happened on that street corner, who lived in that house, who used to sit on that wall.
Occasionally we’d drive past the house my mother grew up in, between the Bogside and Creggan. From the early sixties to the early eighties Granda had a shop in Creggan. There was often bother on the streets. Granda and my great-aunt Joan who worked in the shop day-in day-out, spent all those years in the midst of it. Granda identified strongly as a pacifist but those were complicated times.
British boys and young men were shipped across the water, out of sight of friends and family, to serve in the army. But the local boys and young men fighting during the Troubles were doing so on their own doorsteps. The same boys that only years before would have been buying sweets in the shop were now fighting in underground armies.
The playing field across the road from Granda’s shop was where kids played football but it also was the scene of riots. When rioting broke out people used to come into the shop for vinegar to soak handkerchiefs in in an effort to mitigate the effects of CS gas.
There’s a funeral tradition in Ireland where the family fill in the grave after the coffin has been lowered and the prayers said. As my dad, my uncle and a few others were filling in Granda’s grave, a man they didn’t recognise came to talk to them. He was from Creggan and told the story of a day during the height of the Troubles that he, then just a young man, asked Granda for a lift. Granda heard him say, “Can you give me a lift, KB? I’m hurrying.”
My grandfather obliged and they were soon stopped by the army, which was a regular occurrence even in the times I can remember. As the soldiers ran through the usual questions – who are you, where are you coming from, where are you going – Granda berated them for constantly harassing the community. They were eventually allowed to be on their way and as Granda drove off his passenger said, “What were you playing at, KB? I told you I was carrying!” Granda replied, “Sweet Lord, I thought you said you were hurrying!”
It was only after hearing the story that my uncle recognised this man as one of the boys who used to be about the shop. None of the family had heard that story before. Granda had never told a soul.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the whole story of what life was like before I came along. The generation who lived through the worst of it often skip over parts of it. The mantra of our culture is, ‘You just have to get on with it.’ And I agree, you do have to get on with it. The resilience of the people of Derry and Northern Ireland as a whole is kind of astounding. But, to me, it also seems important to take the time to understand our past, our collective trauma, and how we’ve been shaped by it.
If I’ve learned one thing from working with people from all kinds of backgrounds all over the world to uncover their stories and make sense of why they do the work they do, it’s this: Our cultural wounds seed unanswerable questions that subconsciously drive the work we do and interests we pursue. Uncovering what questions you carry can be kind of profound and bring a depth of clarity that was previously out of reach. Understanding the work only you can do begins with understanding your cultural context.
