“How can I protect you in this crazy world?”
— Crazy World (Aslan)
To Be A Mother
She was three months pregnant when the enormity hit her of what it means to be a mother. What it means to be responsible for a beautiful, innocent, vulnerable human being. Tears in her eyes, she left the Starbucks without picking up her order, and stepped out into the morning madness of Manhattan’s streets.
I’d WhatsApped her a link to a song. And she’d started listening to it whilst waiting for her chai tea. It was a song most Irish people knew well. But, being from New York and not having spent much time in Ireland, she’d never heard it before.
Something in the song – the singer’s voice, perhaps, or the simplicity of his words and their impossible exhortation – cut through the din of that Thursday morning Manhattan rush hour, cut through to her in a different way to how three months of reading pregnancy books, visiting obstetricians and chatting to other parents had managed to do.
That woman was my wife. And the song was Crazy World by Aslan.
Two Things
I didn’t know anything about Christy Dignam till I heard part of an interview he did with Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ Radio in April. As it happened, that interview came out two months before Christy died yesterday – at home, surrounded by his family.
When he did the interview, Christy was receiving palliative care and knew he didn’t have long for this world. Ten years earlier he’d been told that if he was lucky he’d live for ten years. But that didn’t stop Christy asking some spirit, some higher power, if they couldn’t throw in another ten years.
Two things he said in that interview really struck me.
Firstly, he said that he’d seen a man pass his window only a few days earlier. Who was this man? What was happening in his life? Christy didn’t know. But he envied the man and his life, the way he could walk down the street taking his health for granted. It made Christy think that he’d never walk down a street again. And of all the other simple things he’d never do again.
I realized I could’ve been that man. And although I never walked past Christy’s house, I know now that I was that man.
I am that man.
The second thing that struck was Christy talking about the birth of his daughter. He said it was the most beautiful moment of his life. And he wondered at how a “nano-second” after she came into this world, he was fully prepared to kill anyone in the room who might try to hurt her.
That made me think of Crazy World, of Christy writing those words and then performing them. The song I’d known and loved for so many years was deeply linked to this man I hadn’t known; deeply linked to his core beliefs and loves, to what he held most dear even as the end of life approached.
A Beautiful Mark
I’m brought back to Christy’s words today. They make me think how lucky I am to be walking my daughter to school this morning. How I get to make plans for tomorrow, for next week, for next year. How I have the luxury of frowning at emails and at the weeds growing through the tiles in the back yard. How I’ll hurry down the steps in the sunshine later to meet a friend. How we’ll walk by the park, get a coffee and take in its aroma. How we’ll laugh at vital and inconsequential things. How I’ll lift my little daughter into my arms when she comes home from school.
His words make me think how impossibly beautiful this world is. The overlooked and the taken for granted. That unshapely bush blocking part of the footpath. Those two ladies lost in a bubble of chatter. The funny shape of the cloud overhead that will soon disappear forever. The father and daughter on a bicycle waiting anxiously at the traffic lights. A noisy train disgorging two hundred passengers, all dashing and scattering into the city.
His words make me think of my wife and her tears some years ago, that day she left her tea behind and walked out onto the Manhattan street; of her belly burgeoning; of our little girl emerging, crying into this world; of the impossible wish to completely protect the ones you love.
And I think now of what it is to create a song that touches strangers across the globe and cuts to the truth of what it means to be human.
What better way to leave your mark on the world? What better thing could any of us leave behind?
Travel well, Christy. To wherever the spirit and the next journey takes you.
© Alan Healy
