Category : Stories

Sub Category : Historical Fiction

These farewells at Irish railway stations, at bus stops in the middle of the bog, when tears blend in with the rain drops and the Atlantic wind is blowing. Two sister's bid their farewell, both with tears and one with a rosary beads clasped tightly in her hand. These were so very sad partings you see this was often the last they saw of their families.
Sure in the coming months the letter's began to arrive with the dollars from America but the relief of the parents was very short lived indeed for the time being anyways as those first few months of dollars was to pay young Shamies passage across the Atlantic to his sister's.
As his grandfather a man who seriously went through the mill he hugs Shamie and stuffs an extra pound in his pocket, Shamie with the cropped hair, the runny nose, the boy is wept over, as Jacob wept over Joseph. These were daily sights across Ireland from the city to the bogs.
The bus driver honks his horn cautiously, he has driven thousands of boy's, girls, and Adults many whom he has seen grow up for himself, the train does not wait and a farewell that is over and done with is easyer to bear than one which is still to come. The boy waves, the journey into the country begins, the little white House adin the bog, tears mixed with mucus, past the store, past the pub where father would drink his pint of an evening. Past the school, the church, a sign of the cross the driver makes one too.
The bus stops, more tears, more fairwells. These journey's would often take many hours and although hundreds came this way from Co, Westmeath, this was just a fraction of the forty thousand who left Ireland every year, labourers, doctors, nurses, house hold help, and teachers.
So many Irish tears mixed with Polish, Italian, Armenian, tears, tears, tears, in London Manhattan, Cleveland, Liverpool and Sydney.
 During my own youth in the 1970s it saddened me so deeply on my way to work in 1975 my boss remarks on two  local lady's waiting for the Dublin bus, ah look he said, matter of factly two more girls heading for London to dump the load ( pregnant ). I caught the lost lonley look on the face of one of these young lady's who I knew very well, she shared her life story with me one time and like myself she had taken awful beatings in the home and I was the only person she wanted to share it with.
I felt sick to my stomach that whole day these girls of 15 & 16yrs alone and afraid, and looked upon with shame at the most vunerable times in their lives, there is no God here for them, at least I had the strength of a bull I fought those ignorant bastard's with a vengeance, I have over 600 stitches in my body from the waist up.
Yet I still cursed God and man that I couldn't do something more to stop this shite animals, fucking animals.
Such is life now many year's later it effects me to write this I have to wipe my eyes and hand my rage over to God, there is nothing else you can do. God bless that young woman and thousands like her, she never came back, but 20yrs ago a letter arrived at my sister's in London addressed to me, she some how found Ellen's address. She told me she had found happyness, was married with two lovely children. That was the most heart warming letter I ever read, and I said thank you God because her face at the village bus stop haunted me, it haunted me because I know fear, rejection, and savage beating's few could comprehend. When I see this in another I have to speak with God immediately, answers don't always come good like this one I'm sick to my face of young funerals we have lost so many young lives, and for us who managed to survive our traumas, these are the saddest tears of all because we know more than most of their suffering.
God bless your soul my great friend the Bunty Mac, rest in peace friend we was robbed of most things, but they never got our hearts, I will carry these times with me forever, I'm still fighting these bastard's it's tough at times as you know I walk alone, but like this once young lady I am as happy as I know to be, but the fight will never stop while I'm still upright.
Never.