This is part 2 of a deep dive into my grief through To The Best of Our Knowledge's podcast Our Time of Mourning. This is the second segment of the radio show "How The Irish Talk About Death". Part 1 is here in case you missed it. I love being all Haley Mills in Pollyanna thinking anyone reads my TL:DR posts but the alternative is much too grim.
In this segment Anne Strainchamps speaks with author Gillian O'Brien about her 'dark tour' visiting Ireland's historic sites and memorials of death. Though this segment address larger deaths of staggering numbers the Great Famine O'Brien in the opening says how much she loved during the tour speaking with people about death and mourning. There we go. A movement in my grief journey from my one trick pony grief bores the fuck out of everyone to I find speaking about my grief and Donna rewarding and enlightening.
O'Brien further discusses how those who died the names were not captured because of the rate of deaths and were buried in mass graves. Forgotten over time being nameless and their stories not being told or shared. I have a story to tell as I did in the memoir 'Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss' and in my continuing posting. This story of Donna and me is my light entering me to know more to grow from the mud of death. There is a blooming within me from that pain.
O'Brien notes there are few artifacts of these deaths. Just the hillside and roads and paths. She calls it a landscape of loss. I have all that Donna left behind. Our home and all the elements that she lovingly placed perfectly. I can look at those and hold memories of us of her close to me. It is my landscape of loss in a way with markers and sign posts of memories that hold my attention and love.
Strainchamps and O'Brien share their visits to the 9/11 Memorial. I am a docent at the 9/11 Tribute Museum and I tell my story about that day. About Donna and I before the attack and after. O'Brien says this, "I think it's important that people are remembered. That's all we've got really left. " There it is again that insight from this radio show remembering because that is all I have, memories. O’Brien notes the following:
I always find the things that are more moving are the little things that are stashed away in the back, where you can learn something about a person, rather than stories about the million. Because the million mean nothing to us — we have to find the people.
We must to tell our stories not only for our own wellbeing and knowledge. We must share our stories to help others facing grief and mourning during and beyond our pandemic reality.