The Month of March ... Celebrating the Inner Irish in All of Us - Chapter 8
To whet your appetite and help you prepare to celebrate the upcoming MAJOR INTERNATIONAL HOLIDAY, St. Patrick's Day, I thought I would share a few photos and a wee bit of the story about a trip we made to Ireland. I will post a wee bit each day until St. Patty's day. Hope you will follow along.
I thought it might be a good idea to re-introduce you to the cast of characters in this story. From this point on, this series will take on a decidedly more personal tone. The purpose of this trip was to return the ashes of my wife's mother, Mary, to her homestead in Drumshanbo, County Leitrim, Ireland.
Chris, my wife
Eric, her son, the surfer and aviation student at Western Michigan
Barbara, her sister
Ed, her father, the man who never took a bad photograph
Me, her husband
Wee Bit No.8 - As we leave Bundoran and motor East to County Leitrim, I thought it might be a good time to detail exactly how we intended to return Mary's ashes to Ireland.
Sounds easy enough. Sure. We'll just pack Mary up, in all her white powdery elegance, in one of the suitcases. Now just hold on there. White powdery substance in your luggage or carry-on at an airport? There's a real good chance that could get you plenty of special attention from the TSA, and not the kind you want to tell your grandchildren about. This was post 911 and everything was forever changed for air travelers. Can you say detained? Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do.
We spoke to the Post Office hoping we could mail the package, checked on the TSA website and talked to the relatives in Ireland and received a lot of conflicting information. It was clearly too soon after 911 for anyone to have a definitive policy regarding the transport of remains. We were going to have to get creative.
Ed was, after all, 84 years old. Daily, he must have taken 12 or more different medications; there were blood thinners, to thin his blood; coagulants to make sure his blood would clot; a stimulant to get him up and going in the morning; something to help him sleep; a diuretic to prevent him from retaining fluids; something for his kidneys that kept useful water from leaching minerals from his system. I think you get the picture.
An 84 year old man traveling with 12 or more bottles of medications would not be unusual and would not send up a flare with the TSA. Would they check every bottle? Not likely. And, after all, scattering Mary's remains at the old homestead was "symbolic," and did not necessarily mean the entire contents of the 8" X 8" X 8" cardboard box of ashes that weighed about 12 pounds, did it? We became convinced Mary would understand, and so decided, in the spirit of "honoring her wishes," Ed would fill one of his prescription bottles with some of Mary and we would get her past TSA security and on her way to the thatched roof cottage where she was born.
That was the plan, anyway, as best we could hatch one. This metaphor has the ring of "fragile" as an egg, doesn't it?
Even without my trusty GPS, I would come to rely on four years later, I reckon we'll be arriving pretty soon at Maureen Heron's "Fraoch Ban" Bed & Breakfast, named for a fishing vessel that capsized in 1999.
In case you have missed previous chapters, links are below:
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Life is good when there are flowers to photograph!
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