LETTERS SERIES

My dad died in April, 1967, when I was 20. My uncle and godfather (by proxy) sent a letter of sympathy to my mother in June of that year. My uncle died in November the same year. I wish I had replied to his letter.

Dear Uncle George,

MOM asked me to reply to your letter to thank you for the Mass card you sent following Dad’s death. It feels strange writing to you after all those years, you and Dad were the letter writers.

We met just once, in Cork in June 1957, when I was 10. You could hardly imagine my excitement; at last I was going to meet my favourite uncle and godfather. I don’t know how well you remember our meeting? I was tongue-tied, in awe, my Uncle George from Wrights Place, Scarsdale, New York!

I told my friends all about you, and they envied the DC Comics you sent, with fantastic tales of the super heroes — Batman, Superman and Spiderman. And one Sunday at Mass, I proudly wore one of the wide colourful ties you sent to Dad. My friends teased, but I didn’t care.

You were the best godfather a boy could wish for, often asking about me in letters to Dad, and never forgetting my birthday. The cards were novel and unlike anything we ever saw in Ireland, and the enclosed dollar bills were far in excess of any pocket money I got.

Over the years the letters you sent to Dad were eagerly anticipated and were read aloud, and reread with delight. One memory sticks out in my mind. You wrote about a holiday you had in California, and I was mesmerised by the image of picking oranges off trees on the sidewalk. “Tell me again Dad about the oranges in California,” was an oftrepeated request in my childhood.

You were a part of my young imagination, more than you could know. I was proud of you, and so was Dad. I wanted to be like you.

In your last letter to Dad you mentioned that you were going for some tests. I trust they went well, and that you are returned to full health very soon. Give my fond regards to Aunt Margaret.

My next birthday is my 21st, Dad died too soon, and now maybe I will become the letter writer connecting our two families, writing about happier times to come, and maybe getting to pick oranges with you in California some day. God bless, Greg.

Greg Butler, Douglas, Cork

Dear Auntie,

ISO wish I had been given the opportunity to write this letter to you when you were alive but perhaps it wasn’t the time or place to be dredging up painful memories for you and I didn’t have the life experience then which I have now.

As children my siblings and I were so excited when you would arrive to our house during the summer holidays in your faithful little blue Mini straight off the ferry from Rosslare.

You usually arrived laden down with presents for us and always seemed to know exactly what we wanted — you gave me my first watch, a Timex with a black strap.

You were a smoker and used to arrive with a supply of duty free Embassy cigarettes and unknown to you I smoked my first cigarette, stolen from your stash, which you had left in our spare bedroom where you were staying and I almost set fire to the quilt cover in the process!

You never smelt of cigarettes though — I don’t know what perfume you wore but every time I smell it now I think of you.

You were my Dad’s twin sister and had a special bond with him and us but I could never fully understand why you never married or had children of your own as you had beautiful features and were great fun.

As I got older I used to go on holidays to your house in Fishguard which was very exciting as you lived beside the sea, a great novelty to someone who lived inland and very rarely got to see the sea. When you retired you returned to live in Ireland but it was a much different Ireland to that which you had left 50 years previously.

In 1950s Ireland a pregnancy out of wedlock was very much frowned upon and when you discovered you were pregnant by your then boyfriend it was expected that you either got married or gave the child up for adoption. In your case you probably weren’t given a choice by your parents or society so you gave up your little baby girl for adoption through what was known as the “Bird’s Nest” in Dublin which must have been so heartbreaking and difficult for you. You subsequently split up with the father of your child but when he decided to move to Manchester you followed your heart and him there and resumed your relationship.

A year later you gave birth to a son and desperately wanted to keep him but sadly your partner didn’t want to be tied down so the relationship ended for good.

You fought tooth and nail to keep your little boy but there were no supports and you ended up in dire straits living in poverty so once again were forced to give up your child for adoption. For many years you kept your pain to yourself. It must have been so hard on you to embrace us, your nieces and nephews, and attend all the various family events all the while wondering where your own children were and if you had done the right thing by giving them up for adoption.

It was only when your daughter contacted you after many years of searching that the past and all the heartache you had somehow managed to keep hidden was exposed. It must have been such a surreal yet very emotional day for you when you both met. At that stage you were almost 70 and not in great physical or mental health so perhaps were very overwhelmed by it all. Despite the fact that your daughter was very like you, not just physically but in many other ways, you used to introduce her as your “friend” if perchance you bumped into people you knew and didn’t want them to put two and two together.

When you passed away some time later your wish was to donate your body to science so my parents organised a memorial service in your honour and invited your daughter to the service where she tentatively got to meet all the extended family, and where I met her for the first time. I thought I was prepared for a difficult day but when she arrived I was stunned at how similar she was to you — same features, same laugh, same mannerisms — it was very emotional!

We were never sure if you had told her she had a full brother who had also been adopted and possibly was still living in the UK but I knew it was so important for her to know she was not alone. I managed to log into a UK birth certificate website believing I was looking for a needle in a haystack but I think you were helping me in some way because I hit the jackpot and found your son’s birth certificate very quickly. It was a wonderful day when I was able to hand her a copy of her brother’s birth certificate and give her some sketchy details about him which an elderly relative had managed to remember.

Fast forward a year and your daughter managed to track down your son who was as totally unaware of her existence as she had been of his, and eventually they were reunited. They both travelled to visit my dad before he passed away in what was your birthplace and it was such a pity you weren’t there to witness the homecoming of your two children. But I think you did. I feel that you were instrumental in helping me to ensure that your two children were brought together and find out about their roots and more importantly learn about the mother they never knew. It’s such a pity that your children didn’t get to experience first hand the wonderful person you were when you were younger but hopefully we are managing to fill in the blanks for them.

Another reason I wished I’d had the opportunity to write a letter to you is because I am now an adoptive mother to two wonderful children and have an insight, albeit very small, into the sacrifices you made when you gave your children up for adoption.

I hope that you can rest in peace now in the knowledge that your legacy and memory will endure through your children and grandchildren and you will never be forgotten. Your loving niece, Rosie.

Rosie, Co Wexford

Dear Mary,

AS an elderly brother and sister, with no close relatives, living on a small farm in the west of Ireland in the 1950s you received little if any post and you would have been astonished to receive a letter from me. And if I had sent you one I would have had to read it to you myself as you were completely blind and never saw this neighbour’s child who lived just a hundred yards from you and who spent so much time in your company — in fact the only child who ever visited you, which even then I considered as something special. Your brother too was almost blind but clung to a glimmer of light and never acknowledged his loss.

With small windows almost obscured by hedges your house was dark, but light, or the lack of it, did not matter to you and you never got the electric light — your light was in your mind’s eye and in the sensitivity of your finger tips.

I could have had the run of your little house unseen but never ventured past the kitchen. In that kitchen I felt I had a special place and that the little jobs I did were important: sweeping the hard-packed floor with a broom; bringing in water and turf or gathering up the hazel sticks with which you poked your way about the kitchen (which you never left, your bed being there too) and mislaid in every corner.

I sat on your lap and we played pretend games such as going to town in the pony and cart for the messages and you would ‘hup’ to the pony and away we went. I listened to stories of your girlhood before blindness overcame you and I told you what I was doing at home, school and play. Although you never left the house and day, and night were the same you had interest in everything and liked to hear what was in the papers and, later on, on the radio even though you did not understand the latter. You loved a joke and had such a hearty laugh that belied your circumstances. You never complained and I believe your attitude to the trials of life betokened a clear conscience and a beautiful mind.

The door to the ‘room’, which was never used, was often open but I never dared enter, so dark and cobwebby and mysterious was it to a child. I would stand in the doorway and peep in: an old four-poster bed; travel trunks left behind by a long-gone American relative and a glass-case. The contents of the glass-case fascinated me as I could see, amidst the dust, pieces of china and ornaments and I longed to explore.

As I grew older I was promoted to the job of collecting your old-age pensions and getting your messages in the local shop (your requirements were simple and never varied) — jobs that I took very seriously indeed, and you always rewarded me with a two-shilling piece.

Mary, I unconsciously learned much in your kitchen. In return for bringing the freshness of youth into your home I learned that all lives and families are not the same and that was normal. Even by the standards of the day your conditions and lifestyle were fairly primitive but I did not compare them with others. I did not question your blindness or the way you lived — that was just the way you were. As well as chatting with you and your brother and getting rare insights into old ways I learned to sit in companionable silence. And I realised, much later of course, that you loved me. If a 14-year-old could have expressed in writing what my experiences with you meant I would have had to stop here as that was when you died at the start of the 1960s, your brother having predeceased you by a few months.

But the story does not end here. You did not forget me in your will and when your small affairs were settled I shared a legacy with two octogenarian friends of yours and benefited to the sum of £25 which my father prudently invested in five prize bonds for my future. You had also left me those china items that I had coveted. Your house was closed up for many years but you would be pleased to know that it did not fall into ruin but is today a modern and extended family home owned by a relative of mine where I can visit and occasionally recall the happy times we spent there.

Well Mary, it is getting on for 60 years now. The pretty chinaware is still on display in my cabinet and I shall soon have to consider a suitable person to pass it on to.

How the years have flown. But Mary, in all those years the five prize bonds have never come up — could you do anything about that? With fond memories always, Betty.

Full name and address with the Editor

Dear Mum,

IWAS your first born and your favourite and became your confidant from the age of eight. I was very young to be exposed to the difficulties you had with your husband, my father, such as you carrying the lion’s share of the hard physical workload of a small farm while rearing four small children and how your husband claimed the rewards and praise especially when his examining cousin would visit regularly from Dublin. I was in my final year at school and the Leaving Cert beckoned eight months ahead.

I expected to get a trade after the Intermediate Certificate and hadn’t given the seriousness of the Leaving Certificate much thought. It was now time to knuckle down and do some serious study. I became distracted because I heard your pacing footsteps and loud praying coming from your room at night. One night I got angry with you and insisted something was wrong. You went to the doctor the following day, you were immediately hospitalised and given six pints of blood and shortly afterwards I being the oldest was informed by my father that you were terminally ill and had six months to live. You and the rest of the family were not to be told that you had this terrible cancer disease and I remember the hardness of visiting you in hospital and looking at you for what would be the last Christmas spent together while pretending everything was OK.

My exam results at Christmas of 1973 were shocking and I vowed to start studying. It was so easy to study. I was in pain so I might as well be in pain studying and started a six hour per night, seven days a week study plan after school.

I remember your gentle voice pleading with me that I should go to bed and I had done enough. The long hours of study were rewarded with a good Leaving Certificate and I will always remember your broad smile when I visited you in St Anne’s Hospital in Dublin with the results.

I am sure you knew you had cancer but you fought hard and the six months turned into 18 months when finally you lost your very undeserved painful battle at age 55 on your birthday.

I hope I was good to you and that you confiding in me in my childhood helped you, and I would never hold that against you. I still think you are with me, especially when I chose my wife. I didn’t know it myself at the time but I needed someone very stable, caring and sensible to be my wife and I often think you provided her as this turned out to be the best thing that ever happened me. I am now a father and grandfather in what is a very good life.

Your son.

Name and address with the Editor

Dear Mothers-in-Law from Hell

AS I sit and read Letters I Wish I Had Sent I am going to write this letter for all the daughters-in-law out there, who have the “mother-in-law from hell”. I married into a family which I thought as a 24-year-old was loving and kind. It wasn’t long before I found out who was the boss — my mother-in-law ruled my husband’s life. He gave her everything, as she used to say he owed her as she had sent him to college.

Nearly every day she would come into my house and insult me about my family and run down my children, her grandchildren, telling them they were no good, fat, and insult their grandparents, my parents, who loved them so much. My husband would never say anything; just send the kids down to visit her as if nothing happened.

If I stood up for myself she would ring her daughters and the attack was on, they would arrive and insult me. In the end I stopped letting any of them into my home, and the kids refused to visit her.

The funny part of this story is that she was the priest’s right-hand woman, giving out Communion, fundraising for the chapel alongside her daughters. To every one else she was a lovely lady with lots of religion. My brothers-in-law, her sons, are the exact same as her, bullies, so she has left a family of evil bullies behind her.

By the way, I forgot to say, yes she died, I don’t know where she is, upstairs or down, I wouldn’t think she’s welcomed in either house. Just to let you know, you evil, monster, you haven’t wrecked my life or my kids’ lives, they have grown up to be wonderful, kind, caring people without you or your evil daughters or sons. They haven’t anything to do with them.

This isn’t a joke, the mothers-in-law from hell, they were out there and still are. So all you daughters and sons-in-law, you don’t have to put up with evil people in your life.

P.S. Hope you are very hot wherever you are. Good riddance to you! This letter is for all the daughters-in-law. We win in the end!

Name and address with the Editor

Dear Anyone Concerned,

AMIDST all the bullying, put downs in my life so far, I thank God for my spirit, strength and help received along my journey of life which has led me down many roads, some I’d rather not have gone. Although my faith in human beings has not always been great, my faith in the God of my Understanding, standing with me through thick and thin, has often dipped but never been broken.

I have hurt people (never intentionally) along the way and I deeply regret that. I feel very much for anyone hurting in this world and always prefer to help anyone in need of any kind even though it may be in only small ways. Many thanks to all my teachers, friends, bullies, co-workers, organisations — many of who tried to break my spirit when I felt vulnerable and weak. I learned something from you all.

Name and address with the Editor