Wounded, Not Dead

“Wind up wounded, not even dead.”

That's always been my favorite line from Springsteen, though "you ain't a beauty, but hey you’re alright" is a close second.

It has always resonated with me. What happens, if, expecting to "go out in a blaze of glory," instead you fail in the attempt? You couldn't even get martyrdom right.

How long does the wound last?

We know it never goes away, whatever the wound is. In fact, for years I have savored mine, sweetly. Francine has often said that when she first knew me, if I was meeting someone new, they'd know the whole morbid history within the first ten minutes.

Tending the wounds.

The great thing about literature is there's an ending, maybe even a consolation. And sometimes, real life is like literature.

I got some consolation this past Summer, in ways that I am still processing, and please forgive me for telling the story if you've heard it, or parts of it before.

You all know the extremely difficult relationship I had with my father. To be honest, it really wasn't a relationship. By the time he passed away, we were totally estranged, though through the mediation of Christopher, he occasionally gave me some money those years I didn't work. We were so estranged that I did not visit him on his deathbed.

At the time, I though the only reason my father was trying to patch things up was his fear of Judgment.

I told my Uncle that-maybe it got to my Dad.

I thought I was standing up for some great principle by refusing to see him.

What did that principle even mean?

Fast forward to 1997. One of my cousins from the UK (who I had never met, and still haven’t met), put together a book listing all the-then descendants of my Irish grandparents, Edmond English (who I had known as Edward; in fact, Chris’ middle name was Edward) and Helena (who I knew as Helen) Cusack. I and my father were named after her father, Thomas Patrick Cusack (though I am not a Junior because my middle name is Robert).

I was estranged from that part of my family, so I put the book away without doing anything about it. 

A few years later, my cousin Anne, who lives in Iowa of all places, one of the daughters of my Uncle John (he passed in 2010) contacted me, having gotten my phone number from the book. John and my dad were very very close. What happens in a very large family is that there are three or four siblings you end up being close to. For my Dad, it was John, Larry, Lizzie, and Alice. So, in a sense, it was a descendant reaching out to a descendant, across time.

I ignored her.

The night before Sandy hit, though, Anne called me to make sure I was alright.

This time, I didn’t ignore her.

Over the past few years, I have been in touch with her often and have gotten to know her well. I also learned one hard-to-forget fact about my dad, which I have told some (if not all of you), but that is something I do not want online. It was something that was so shattering, so wounding, that by the time my father was my 27-year-old dad, he was a broken man.

For a certain type of Irish-American, every St. Patrick’s Day is a time to think of Ireland. Though during their lifetimes I loved my Mom more, even adored her, I think the reason Irish culture has always resonated with me was because it was a way to get at the Dad I never had. This year, I again thought of Ireland, but I decided that this was the time to “go over.” (The Irish always say, “When are you coming over?”). I think part of the inspiration was Anthony and Alysa’s trip to the Ring of Kerry last year.

Through Anne, I met her sister Mary Teresa online, who, along with her husband Pat and their daughters Cliodhna and Aisling, hosted me the first day Francine and I arrived, a Friday. They live in a really nice house in Passage West, a suburb of Cork City. As an aside, I found out a lot of my cousins are in the caring professions-Mary Teresa is a social worker/ nurse at a government-run facility for people with autism, and Pat, retired Navy, is a social worker/ psychotherapist with a practice he runs from their house.

That first Saturday morning, he cooked us a full Irish breakfast.

Amazing.

Later that morning, he drove us to Blarney Castle, where we didn’t actually go to the Castle, but had some coffee and shopped for some Aran sweaters. (My Aunt Eilie had made one for my dad about 40 years ago, which I retired about 10 years ago).

In the afternoon he drove us to Kilfinane, a small town in Limerick, where we stayed with my Aunt Ann for the weekend. My Aunt Liz was also visiting with her daughter Clare.

Three months later, I cannot get over how absolutely heart-stoppingly beautiful everything was! The green is just a different green than the green that greens here. If I can swing it, I’d like to live there whenever I “retire.” I started researching how to get dual citizenship last year, and will put it on the front-burner next year. I want to go every chance I can afford to and have the time.

But as beautiful as the land was and is, and how I understand why the Irish love their land so, and how the land just LIVES with the past, that’s not the most important thing, though maybe it is related to the most important thing.

Cullane Middle, about 40 minutes from Kilfinane, is a townland in County Limerick. A townland is basically a crossroads, with maybe three or four cottages next to each other. The nearest actual town, with a current population of 333, is a pleasant little place called Ballylanders. It comes from the Irish, Baile an Londraigh, or “Town of the Londoner.” That might explain my last name. I have always suspected the fact that “English” was an Irish last name was a bit of the Irish humor. It is also about 14 kilometers from Mitchelstown, a town known for its cheese and other dairy products, with 3,300 residents.

One of the cottages in Cullane Middle is the house where my father was born. He had (I think) 14 brothers and sisters, born between 1924 and 1944, though I can’t imagine there were more than 8-10 siblings living in the place at any one time! The house is currently owned by his brother, Larry, and Larry’s wife, Mary. One of their sons is also named Tom English, and he lives in Moscow.

My visit to the old family cottage, Sunville House, was the central reason for my trip. Aunt Ann drove Francine, my Aunt Lizzie, and her daughter, Clare, to the house late on Sunday afternoon. I had heard that Larry was very shy (I think he is a retired prison guard), and not necessarily very friendly. I was a little nervous because of that, and also because he was very close to my father and might be a little angry for my estrangement.

When we first got there, he did seem a little depressed, and was lying in bed, under the covers, watching the Kilkenny vs Galway All-Ireland Hurling Semifinal. (The room where he was watching TV was the actual room where my father was born.) I didn’t want to push it, so I was quiet myself. Uncle Larry said we’d watch the game until the end (about 20 minutes), and then we’d join the women in the kitchen. We talked a little bit, and slowly but surely, he warmed up to me. He gave me a picture of himself with my Irish grandmother from the 60s and a sliotar (pronounced “shlidder”), or hurling ball. It’s a lot like a baseball, but harder.

When the game was over, we walked to the kitchen, where a kettle of tea had been made and my Aunt Mary was serving cake and sandwiches. The Irish drink tea almost all the time; there’s always a kettle at the table and one boiling on the stove.

I sat down. Then it hit me-all the emotions of a lifetime came over me, my relationship with my father, his relationship with my mom, Chris, and me, what it must have been like to live in such a beautiful country, how my family thought it was a bad idea for him to go the States, fragile and broken at 22, what he must have been like before that, when he was a boy, how I treated him when he was sick.

I lost my composure, and had to leave the room. Francine immediately followed me to make sure I was OK, and I was crying, saying “he never had a chance, he never had a chance, I was too hard on him.”

After I calmed down, I went back to the kitchen.

Then, like the Irish often do, we decided to sing. I sang “Four Green Fields,” one of my father’s favorite songs. I had a very palpable sense that he was singing through me, especially to his brother Larry and his sister Liz, and adding and taking lifeblood from my family. I also had a great sense of being part of a stream or a river-my individual existence didn’t matter so much. I was just one expression of the English life-force (Auntie Lizzie said she could tell that I was an English just by hearing the way I talked, and Francine said there was a certain family charisma I shared).

There is something to the Christian metaphor of Heaven as a banquet; I felt as if somehow the Divine cracked through. I did not despair that some day we were all going to die. I knew that there would be other, similar, Tom Englishes, maybe others who fancy themselves Kings of Rock.

Epiphanies end, unfortunately, but when I hugged Uncle Larry for a last goodbye, I felt I was a source of some consolation, too. In me, he was able to see his brother who he missed.

Wounded, not even dead.

Maybe I was lucky after all to tend that wound-from its nagging hurt I was able to create some happiness.

Here are the pictures from our trip.

The first link is to Francine’s album, the second is to mine.

https://1drv.ms/a/s!Ao1bH36neWScmF2rhET2KXD21A-5

https://www.flickr.com/photos/142224243@N04/albums/72157669869437520