It had been a wickedly wet day, her first day in Ireland, and having flown all night, driven in torrential rain across Ireland, she and her daughter and both their husbands checked into the Victoria Hotel, all of them exhausted. They hit the bed for an hour, to shake off the jet-lag, but they overslept, really overslept.. When they finally got their act together hours later, the rain had eased a bit, so they decided to chance a quick walk around the city and get some dinner. It was to be a fortuitous evening.
After they'd eaten, because of the late hour, only a very few shops were open. Cheryl was looking for a very simple Claddagh pendant, and luckily Liam's 'Galway Bay Gift Shop' stocked just what she wanted. As Liam wrapped Cheryl's purchase, he felt her subdued mood, not quite the usual tourist's high, and then he noticed her top, a printed T-shirt with a woman's photo on it. Liam inquired, to be told that it was the final photo Cheryl had taken of her 40 year old daughter Cynthia, just days before she'd succumbed to cancer, earlier this year.
Her wish, all during her chemotherapy was that once she'd recovered enough, she was going to fulfill her lifelong wish to visit Ireland, a desire she'd had since she was a teenager.
Alas, it was not to be. Life and chemotherapy can be cruel. Later on, Cheryl decided she would go on Cynthia's journey, a hard decision for a Mum grieving her dead daughter, and so it was she found herself in Liam's shop, telling her daughter's story.
Liam asked her what Cynthia really wanted to do in Ireland, and Cheryl told him that she'd talked incessantly about sitting in a pub, listening to an old man telling stories.
After she'd left, Liam called me, wondering could I give the family my 'Fireside Stories' tour in O'Connors bar in Salthill. I like Liam... he gets me, and my stories, so I said yes. It was already 10.30pm, but i called their hotel room anyway, only to be told that they were leaving Galway at ten am the following morning... heading for Killarney, so that was kinda that, no tour possible.
We talked a few minutes, hung up. That should have been it, but the next morning, I had an early walking tour.. at ten am.
When I awoke, at 7.30, I was still thinking about the conversation I'd had with the mum, so I called her back. Told her to be ready at the hotel door at 9am..reassured her I'd have her back to the hotel within an hour. I picked the four of them up... they were intrigued and bemused... and a little reluctant... but decided to go with the flow, and the nutty, enthusiastic stranger, safety in numbers.
I brought them to one of my favourite spots in the city, 'the circle of life' garden in Salthill Galway built two years ago by the Goggin family, after they'd lost their son in a car accident. It's a place of peace and salve, and a place that speaks many languages, heals many wounds.
It's a garden filled with gorgeous flowers and plants and stones, stones from all over Ireland. At the rear of the garden is a park, with a lovely pond. In the middle of the pond stands a bronze statue of a heron, a magical bird, a deadly hunter, but also a bird that represents the healing and other powers of the ancient Celtic druids.
I was telling Cheryl about just that when we crested the path that leads from the garden to the pond.
On another day, under the time constraints that we had, I might have skipped the pond, but something told me to tarry a little longer with Cheryl... no it wasn't a conscious decision, just an inevitable sequence.
Cheryl, I am sure, was just dragging along...half jet-lagged, half humouring the weirdo...and then there she was... waiting for us to visit... a real heron, standing by the heron statue.
Just like that! Bam!
Cheryl and I both stopped... drawn into the most amazing awareness of a 'presence' in the stillness at the pond's edge. The silence was broken only by Cheryl's heaving sob as she spoke her daughter's name.
There is no question.. no doubt in my mind, Cynthia, or her spirit, or her personified memory, was right here, waiting patiently for us, knowing that her mum had asked Liam, who'd asked me, to bring her mum and sister to see her, to get one last group photo, to breathe the same air together, to laugh and cry together, to embrace and hug and say hello, and goodbye together.
We were ten feet from the heron... she never moved... a message-bearer from four thousand miles away, from four thousand years ago, unmistakable, 'hello mom, I'm here, I'm safe, I'm not in pain, don't cry, I love you mom, enjoy your, our, trip to Ireland, I'm here with you, and we are going to have a fabulous time, thank you, thank you for bringing me, thank you, this means so much, I know you are hurting, don't, don't, it's going to be OK, you are going to be ok'.
Not kidding you... the hairs were standing straight up on the back of my neck, the goose-pimples dry, hard on my arms my mouth dry. This was real...yet surreal.
I see herons all the time... on the river, on the canals, on the salmon weir, in the drain at the back of my house. This one was different. This one was here for us.... with a message.
After what seemed like an age, I dropped them back to the hotel and went off to find my tour, but the buzz, the heart-warming sensation, stayed with me all day.
I've had this before, many times in fact, an awareness of a presence or a spirit, but rarely so powerful.
Maybe it was something entirely different... the heaviness of the air , a hurricane had just come through here, devastating Donegal, maybe it was that, a charge in the air, mother nature telling us she's here, or maybe I'd had an after-burn from a late-night whiskey....who knows...but I know... something happened on Friday ... and you know what... it was pure magic.
