When I came across the poem ‘The Journey‘ by Debra Elramey on her blog ‘Pure and Simple’ a few weeks ago, multilayered whispers of light gently touched my soul dispersing the darkness and chill of what had otherwise been shaping up to be yet another bleak St Patrick’s Day.
The words of Debra’s poem took me on a personal journey to a place that I so badly needed to visit at that moment in time. I left a long comment on her blog that day, which she wrote about in a subsequent post, which I in turn have linked to below. I believe that these threads and links of light and enchantment are life’s hidden treasures. They are always there, those ancient signposts beckoning us to abandon the highway for some long forgotten byway where lie the ‘Fields of Gold’. We just need to recognise them.
MY JOURNEY, ST PATRICK’S DAY 2011
Although it’s almost sacrilegous here in Ireland to admit that you do not enjoy Paddy’s day…I DON’T! Long before I gave up drinking I had a tendency to avoid the clamour of nightmarish parades, brass bands and cheery, leery and possibly pissed leprauchauns of all shapes and sizes.
My mother, on the other hand, used to revel in the razmatazz and colour of it all. She loved the drama and she loved to see the children so excited. Although teetotal she was full of fun and spirit. We lived in a tiny seaside village but she was a city girl at heart and she often yearned for the hustle bustle and vibrancy of the bright lights. Every year, when we were kids, she dressed us all in green and lovingly pinned shamrock and badges on us before shooing us out the door to go sing ‘Hail Glorious St Patrick’ at 10am Mass.
Afterwards we would have green soup, followed by mostly green dinner and something like a green white and gold ‘marbled cake’ for desert. The afternoon would be spent watching the Dublin parade on the TV and you could see that she ached to be a part of the fun of it all.
This year I was more miserable than usual. A dense cloud of depression and guilt had settled around me as I hopped around the blogosphere aimlessly. Although the guilty feeling wasn’t new it still managed to carve an extra ridge through my heart as I remembered how my mum had spent her last Paddy’s day on the planet in 2002 (she died nine days later) watching the parade, at home, alone. I, of course, had been far too busy making my ‘I don’t DO Paddy’s day’ point by manically playing spider solitaire on the laptop all day. On my own. In my own house. Just up the road from her.
I have no idea why the regrets hit me so hard this year…after all she passed away nine years ago! However, I listlessly surfed the net, with all the concentration of a disgruntled flea…hop…hop…hop, until I landed on Debra Elramey’s blog ‘Pure and Simple’ …and the image of a simple set of rosary beads on her Home Page beckoned. Although deeply spiritual I haven’t practiced as a Catholic for many decades but those rosary beads stopped me in my tracks for a reason.
You see, on my kitchen table there is a large wrought iron basket shaped centre-piece which holds four candles on its rim. Draped around this ornament, in amongst the stones and pine cones, and now embedded from nine years of candle wax drippings, are three sets of rosaries including my white wedding beads which were a gift from my mother. She was deeply religious and we had battled for so many years over my ‘lack of’ religion that I had placed all the rosary beads from around the house there, in her honour, a few days after she died. An altar to her memory or maybe a peace offering.
As we floundered in the depths of grief about a month after our mother’s passing my sisters and I visited a psychic in the hopes of connecting with her. With a nod towards scepticism, we deliberately chose a psychic woman who we’d heard of but who lived far enough away from us for anonymity. We also took the precaution of using false names.
‘Who is Rose?’ was the first question that she asked me, and a strange high pitched buzzing sound, like the white noise of an old fashioned wireless radio being tuned, began in my ears as I tried to work out how this woman could have known my mother’s name. ‘She’s here with me now,’ she added in her matter of fact voice. ‘And she wants to tell you that she is really happy with what you’ve done with the rosary beads.’ I knew in that moment that Rose, was close by. I also knew that ‘consciousness’ as we know it here in our realm, is only the begining.
While it was the image of the rosary beads on Debra’s blog that drew me in, it was the words of her beautiful poem (below) that reminded me of the importance of stopping off in our mad race to God know’s where so that we may embrace and enjoy the journey with our loved ones. Was it coincidence, synchronicity or something else that we don’t quite understand that took me to that beautiful, healing place in time… and a day when I took the time to stop to smell the flowers? Who knows!
Debra, who is a novelist and has written and recorded a selection of songs, has since written a further post on that incident and the strange but beautiful journey that we’ve shared over the last few weeks. Take a hop over to the Fields of Gold at Pure and Simple…trust me on this. There’s treasure there!
The Journey
By Debra Elramey
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