What the Wind Knows(11)

I loved churches the way I loved cemeteries and books. All three were markers of humanity, of time, of life. I felt no censure or guilt, no heaviness or dread, inside religious walls. I knew my experience was not widely shared, and perhaps that was because of Eoin. He had always approached religion with respect and humor, an odd combination that valued the good and put the bad into perspective. My relationship with God was equally untroubled. I’d heard once that our view of God has everything to do with those who taught us about Him. Our image of Him often reflected our image of them. Eoin taught me about God, and because I loved and cherished Eoin, I loved and cherished God.

In school, I’d studied Catholicism, learned the catechisms and the history, and absorbed it the way I’d absorbed all my other subjects, cleaving to the things that resonated and setting aside the things that didn’t. The nuns complained that religion was not a buffet from which I could select only certain dishes. I politely smiled and quietly disagreed. Life, religion, and learning were exactly that. A series of choices. If I had tried to consume everything that was presented to me all at once, I would have become too full too quickly, and all the flavors would have run together. Nothing would have made any sense in and of itself.

As I sat in the old church where generations of my ancestors may have worshipped, where prayers had been spoken and hearts broken and healed, it all made sense for a small moment. Religion made sense, if only to add context to the struggle of life and death. The church was a monument to what had been, a connection to the past that comforted those in the present, and it comforted me.

I climbed the slope beyond the church to where the cemetery stretched. It overlooked the spires and the winding road I’d just traveled. Some of the stones were tipped or sunken; some were so covered with lichen and time that I couldn’t make out names or dates. Other plots were new, lined by rocks and filled in with mementos. The newer plots, newer deaths, rimmed the edges of the graveyard, as if death rippled outward like a rock tossed in a lake. Those markers were clean, the marble smooth, the names easily read. Maeve had warned that the cemeteries in much of Ireland were a mix of ancient and recent, the connections familial, even if the relationship was centuries old. In Ballinagar Cemetery, most of the graves, especially those higher up the rise, stood like petrified gnomes and hobbits amid the grass, peeping out at me and drawing me to them.

I found my family beneath a tree on the edge of an older section. The stone was a tall rectangle with the name Gallagher engraved at the base. Just above it were the names Declan and Anne. I stared, incredibly moved, and touched their names. The years, 1892 to 1916, were visible as well, and I felt a flood of relief that Maeve had been wrong after all. Declan and Anne had died together, just as I’d believed. I sank to my knees, light-headed and euphoric, not trusting myself to remain standing. I found myself talking to them, telling them about Eoin, about myself, about how much it meant to me to find them.

When I was talked out, I rose to my feet and touched the stone again, noticing for the first time the graves around it. A smaller stone, also with the name Gallagher, sat to the left. The names Brigid and Peter were visible, but the dates, two sets of them, were not. Peter Gallagher, Declan’s father, had died before Declan and Anne, and Brigid had passed away sometime after. Eoin hadn’t ever told me. Or maybe I’d never asked. I only knew his grandmother was gone when he left Ireland.

I touched Brigid’s and Peter’s names too, thanking Brigid for raising Eoin, for molding him into the man who had loved and looked after me with so much care. Surely, she had loved him as intently as he’d loved me. He had to have learned it somewhere.

The clouds were gathering, and the wind nipped at my cheeks, telling me it was time to go. As I turned to leave, a headstone, set back from the Gallaghers, caught my eye, or maybe it was the faded name stretched across the dark stone. It said Smith, the word so close to the ground that the grass obscured part of the lettering. I hesitated, wondering if the grave belonged to Thomas Smith, the somber man in the three-piece suit, the man Eoin had loved like a father.

I felt one raindrop and then another, and the skies split with a groan and a grumble, releasing an angry torrent. I abandoned my curiosity and stumbled down the hill, weaving in and out of the now-glistening monuments and promising the stones that I would be back.



That night, back in my hotel in Sligo, I dug through my suitcase in search of the items from Eoin’s locked drawer. I’d thrown the manila envelope into my suitcase on a whim—mostly because Eoin had been so insistent that I read the book—but I’d hardly given it a second thought since his death. I’d been too grief-stricken to concentrate, too frazzled for research, too lost to do anything but search for my bearings. But now that I’d seen the graves of my great-grandparents, I wanted to remember their faces.

I wondered how long it had been since someone had remembered them, and my heart broke again. I’d been fighting tears since Eoin’s death, and Ireland had not eased my pain. Still, the emotion was different now. It was laced with joy and gratitude, and though the tears looked the same, they didn’t feel the same.

I upended the envelope across the small desk, the way I’d done a month ago at Eoin’s bedside. The book, heavier than the other items, slid out first, the pictures fluttering around it like afterthoughts. I tossed the envelope aside, and it fell heavily, making a small thunk as it hit the edge of the desk. I picked it up again, curious, and reached inside. A ring had found its way under the padded lining and was wedged into the corner. I worked it free, finding a delicate band of gold filigree that widened around a pale cameo on an agate background. It was lovely and old—an intoxicating combination for a historian—and I slipped it on my finger, delighted that it fit, wishing Eoin could tell me to whom it had belonged.