Goodbye, Cork

June 11, 2019

Goodbye, Cork

My last day in Cork/Ovens. I’ve spent the day writing, re-organizing my luggage, and figuring out my route to Limerick tomorrow. But mostly, I’ve been listening.

I’ve been here long enough, I guess, for my hosts, Owen and Pauline, to feel comfortable. Owen usually fixes me breakfast and leaves. Today, he did the same, but then he and Pauline had me come down and join them for tea and lemon torte, then they had me come down for an incredible dinner of Irish lamb stew and a strawberry trifle. And I guess they’ve sized me up and decided I’m okay, because they’ve been telling me the most wonderful stories.

For example, Owen showed me an old newspaper article at breakfast. It was a story about the sale of a gold pocket watch, not working anymore, that recently sold for $25,000 at auction. It had belonged to a woman named Nora Keane, a survivor of the Titanic. She had emigrated to the U.S. from Limerick, and she was returning to the States after a long visit with her mother in Ireland. She lost the watch getting into a lifeboat. The watch, found decades later, was inscribed with a message from her mother, wishing her luck and blessings for her safe passage home. Nora was Owen’s grandfather’s nextdoor neighbor and his grandmother’s bridesmaid.

Owen also told me his family’s laundry number was C500W. When he was young, he would sometimes be sent to the laundry in Limerick (the Good Shepherd Magdalene laundry), where he grew up, to retrieve the family’s laundry order. He would go to a small sliding window in the gate and give the sister his number. Every family and commercial account had their own number. The sister would hand out a package neatly wrapped in brown paper and twine. Pauline said the laundry did the best job with ironed shirts and starched collars. She added that everyone knew about the “girls,” but no one knew what went on inside or thought to ask. It was the nuns, after all.

Then she added that she’d grown up in Bishop Eamonn Casey’s parish in Limerick. He’s gone now, but before he died, he was accused of molesting three girls, including his niece. He confessed to abusing one girl, but the Church quietly paid reparations to two of the girls (a quick Google search and you’ll see they couldn’t keep it quiet for long). Anyway, she said every Friday, Bishop Casey would stop at their house just as she and her siblings were getting home from school. She said he made “rounds” in the parish on Fridays, visiting parishioners. As Pauline took up plates and headed into the kitchen, she said, “And we’re supposed to send our kids to mass?” Which she did. And here is that tender struggle again…

I told Owen and Pauline that the woman I stopped in the street yesterday had said “Nellie’s buried in me own back yard,” but I didn’t know what she meant. They explained that Nellie is “Little Nellie of Holy God.”

A quick Google search (and five articles later…), and I learned Nellie was Ellen Organ, who spent the last year of her tragic life in the care of the Good Shepherd sisters, though not in the laundry. She had degenerative dental disease that was disintegrating her jawbone, she’d been dropped by a babysitter as a baby and had spinal curvature and twisting as a result, she had Whooping Cough, and finally, she developed TB. But apparently she so loved God (“Holy God,” was her expression) that she began speaking to Christ and Mary and miraculously knew when sisters skipped communion. By special permission of the Bishop, she was offered First Holy Communion at age 4, just before she died, even though the age limit at that time was 12. Her body is supposedly “incorrupt” and has already been moved once to accommodate pilgrims, and now some want to move her again to a more permanent and accessible spot (and since the Good Shepherd land is now up for sale). She’s known as the unofficial “patron saint of Cork.”

Over afternoon tea, Pauline talked at length about their autistic grandson, who comes to their house after school each day until his mom or dad can pick him up. Sam doesn’t speak, but he can certainly make his wishes known, and he’s a rambunctious kid. Pauline talked about services in Ireland (or the lack thereof) for kids like Sam or with other special needs, and about her worries about what will happen when they can’t physically keep up anymore (she and Owen are probably in their late 60’s or early 70’s). Then she said, “Ah, but someone else always has it worse.” She told me about one single mother at the Rainbow Club (where Sam goes one day each week to hang out with other kids on the spectrum), who has three autistic kids at home. “There’s her whole life,” Pauline said.

Anyway, all of these stories today remind me to look at the bigger, human picture. They remind me that the Magdalene laundries weren’t/aren’t book fodder, or the “thing” I’m doing right now, or my obsession; they’re one small part of a much bigger human story of frailty, suffering, determination, conflict, community, cruelty, kindness, and love. Goodbye, Cork, and thank you.