After decades abroad, a return to the Emerald Isle

No longer the young lass who left her home in Ireland for a new life in America, she’s now 75, retired from a distinguished nursing career and about to take her daughter, son-in-law and grandsons, Brendan, 8, and Ronan, 5, on a return trip to the old sod.

“Good God, don’t use my name,” she pleaded. “Call me Mary; it’s still my legal name.”

It’s not that Mary has anything to hide; it’s just that this might be an imprudent time for her to have a heightened profile.

“I was on the Cape this past weekend,” she said, “talking with others who came from where I did, and they, too, still have memories of what it was like to wake up almost every morning to news of another bombing.”

Mary’s home was in Woodford, a small village in the south of County Galway, where everyone had an awareness of The Troubles that eventually led to the Bogside massacre of 28 unarmed citizens.

“When you grow up with it you get to a point where you get used to it,” she said. “It’s almost like you take it in stride.”

After leaving for nursing school in Toronto, then coming here to settle down and raise a family, she faithfully followed all that was happening in her homeland, a hallowed place that was never far from her heart.

So what better thing could she now do as a grandmother than take her loved ones back to where it all began for her. The childhood home is still in the family, and a brother still lives in the north of Galway.

But as friends heard of Mary’s plans to fly to London’s Heathrow Airport for a three-day visit there before flying on to Shannon, instead of sharing her excitement they expressed their alarm. Didn’t she realize Old Blighty was in the grips of terrorists as merciless as those she remembers from long ago?

“I kept hearing, ‘Oh, my God, aren’t you scared to be going to London with all that’s happening now?’ ”

She assures them she’s not unaware of it, but neither is she deterred by it, which prompted another friend to suggest she evokes the spirit of the great Civil Rights song, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.”

“That’s exactly it,” she said. “If we canceled it would mean they (terrorists) had beaten us. So, no, I go with the attitude I learned at a young age, just keeping the faith and praying the good Lord will keep us safe.”

Have a great time, Grammy!