I’m supposed to be doing an assignment for my photography class. Weary of predictable photographs shot straight on, our instructor has assigned a prepositional scavenger hunt requiring us to shoot from various angles – against, across, beyond, beneath, around, behind, below, between, inside, outside, on top of, toward, through, and upon. And so it was that I found myself wandering the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol yesterday afternoon, eventually sitting below a canopy of shimmering green and pink. I don’t know how long I sat there, but long enough for prepositions and perspectives to give way to gratitude and grace, Amazing Grace and thoughts of Van Morrison in full flow at The Hollywood Bowl, mystifying us with Astral Weeks/I Believe I have Transcended, a song he once described as “one where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
I could say the Thanksgiving Holiday had something to do with my moment of transcendence looking up at the leaves, but that would not be true. Even after living in America for over twenty years, the celebration of Thanksgiving does not come naturally to me, and it amuses me that some of my American friends are still surprised when I tell them there is no such holiday in Ireland. I know whereof she speaks, when Carole Coleman, an Irish woman living in America, apologizes to family and friends, “we will be doing the turkey thing all over again five weeks from now,” because Christmas is the holiday that warms us.
Yesterday, enchanted by looking up and losing track of time, I found my footing once more and perhaps a kind of gratitude like that Annie Lamott describes in Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers:
Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way, that either the cavalry arrived, or that the plates of the earth shifted and that somehow, you got your sense of humor back, or you avoided the car that was right in front of you that you looked about to hit.
And so it could be the pettiest, dumbest thing, but it could also be that you get the phone call that the diagnosis was much, much, much better than you had been fearing. And you say the full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks. It’s amazement and relief that you caught a break, that your family caught a break, that you didn’t have any reason to believe that things were really going to be OK, and then they were and you just can’t help but say thank you.
Remembrance helps us to learn about our shared history, that includes people across faith and ethnic backgrounds. There’s no point in a shared history if we forget about it.
An October 2012 YouGov poll commissioned by British Future, a non-partisan Think Tank dedicated to exploring national identity, the very crux of who we are, reveals that less than half of respondents aged 16 to 24 can identify 1914 as the year World War I broke out. More than half are unaware of the contributions of other countries to the British war effort. Australia, Kenya, India, Canada . . . all sent men, money, and munitions. In fact, during World War I, over 1.3 million Indian soldiers volunteered to fight. In World War II, that number doubled, but over the past century, we appear to have lost sight of what Shiraz Maher describes as a “remarkable template of civic cooperation . . . between different races and religions, united by common purpose.” It has disappeared in history.
As the Centenary approaches, so too does an opportunity for remembrance beyond mere commemoration, an opportunity to consider the poppy, worn proudly by my grandfather who fought The Great War, as a symbol of remembrance. It would never have occurred to him that the poppy pinned to his lapel might cause offense to anyone in Ireland. Lest we forget, the Irish died in the trenches along with the British. But the poppy – like the shamrock, the pink ribbon, the wedding ring, the star-spangled banner – is a contentious and complex symbol, and the debate still roars over whether or not it should be worn in Ireland. For some, it represents British imperialism, and wearing it is akin to endorsing and glorifying British soldiers who, on a Sunday in 1972, during a Civil Rights march in the Bogside, shot into a crowd of unarmed and peaceful civilians, killing thirteen of them. Bloody Sunday. Enniskillen. Omagh. All tragically wrong. How long must we sing this song?
Twenty five years ago, on the night of the Enniskillen bombing, far from home at the McNicholls Arena in Denver, U2 took to the stage with this:
“Well here we are, the Irish in America.
The Irish have been coming to America for years Going back to the Great Famine, When the Irish were on the run from starvation And a British government that couldn’t care less
Right up to today you know, There are more Irish immigrants here in America today than ever Some illegal, some legal A lot of them are just running from high unemployment.
Some run from the troubles in Northern Ireland From the hatred of the H-blocks and torture. Others from wild acts of terrorism Like we had today in a town called Enniskillen Where 11 people lie dead many more injured On a Sunday Bloody Sunday …”
In the middle of the song, sick of the killing, Bono had this to say. I consider it a seminal moment in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, in my own history, and it rings in my ears on this Remembrance Sunday:
And let me tell you something . . . I’ve had enough of Irish Americans who haven’t been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to me and talk about the resistance, the revolution back home…and the glory of the revolution…and the glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution! They don’t talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What’s the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where’s the glory in that?
Where’s the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day. Where’s the glory in that? To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead under the rubble of the revolution, that the majority of the people in my country don’t want. Sing ‘No More!’
A decade later, he sang the song again, turning it into a prayer for Omagh, where the Real IRA loaded a non-descript car with 500 pounds of explosives, parked it in the middle of the little market town, where it exploded, killing twenty-nine people and injuring hundreds. I will never forget the Omagh bombing. It happened during my daughter’s first trip to Ireland. Not quite eight months old, she was the surprise for my mother’s 60th birthday party. I remember that night holding her tight while watching the news in my parent’s house, the accounts from witnesses who were devastated by the blood that flowed in the gutters, the pieces of people on the street: “Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. People were lying on the floor with limbs missing and there was blood all over the place. People were crying for help and looking for something to kill the pain. Other people were crying out looking for relatives. You could not really be trained for what you had seen unless you were trained in Vietnam or somewhere like that” recalls one of the volunteer nuns on the scene at Tyrone County Hospital. A war-zone. A killing field.
If I could find a poppy in Phoenix, Arizona, I think I would wear it every day as a plea to end all wars, as a full stop on the list of dead. The Omagh list of dead “reads like a microcosm of Troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60:40 Catholic:Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive.”
How could Omagh happen after Enniskillen, where twenty-five years ago, at 10.43AM the IRA detonated a bomb without warning, killing eleven ordinary people and injuring sixty:
What have we learned? Today, for the first time, an Irish Prime Minister and Deputy Minister have participated in Remembrance Sunday outside the Republic of Ireland, with Taoiseach Enda Kenny saying, after laying a wreath at the memorial in Enniskillen, “I don’t think there’s a family or community or a parish anywhere in Ireland that wasn’t touched by the great wars that didn’t have family members, members of the community who lost lives or who suffered in those wars. This is part of our shared history and I wanted, and the Irish government wanted to be part of sharing that remembrance.” But every account I have read today, makes the point that Mr. Kenny did not wear a poppy, the wreath of green laurel he laid for the Irish government, incongruous among the crimson poppies.
My grandfather died on June 22, 1977, a decade before the Enniskillen bombing. Had he been alive, I imagine he would have been wearing his suit, medals and poppy attached to the lapels, not unlike those pensioners at the Enniskillen Cenotaph. Granda never forgot the wars. He made sure I remembered too.
Because of Granda, I have always known that “the war to end all wars” ended in 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. He told me so many times on our walks down the Moss Road. At just 25, he had been part of that “template of civic cooperation.” Private James McFadden, No. 15823, he enlisted as a volunteer soldier with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Following his training at Finner Camp in County Donegal, he was shipped off to France, where he fought, scared yet brave, in the Battle of the Somme and at Passchendaele. For untold miles, he crept through the muck, weary, thirsty, lost, and far from home. One of the few, too few, that survived the battle at Passchendaele, Granda carried to safety another soldier, Sammy Campbell, who hailed from The Upperlands, a village outside Maghera. Granda told my mother the story many times. Too, he told of the hunger that drove him to steal chickens from a French farm, of the thirst and weariness that almost broke him.
Private James McFadden
My grandfather did not belong in the muck. He belonged on the banks of the Moyola River, fishing, or cutting turf at The Moss. All these years later, it saddens me to picture him far away from the bluebells and foxgloves that once lined winding lanes to houses along the Broagh road. By the time I was doing O-level English, learning by heart much of Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum est,” I had already committed to memory my grandfather’s own story of the “war and the pity of war,” fought on faraway fields, in particular, of a dark evening that found him and his brothers in arms, afraid, parched with thirst, their billy cans empty. Crawling on their bellies through a field somewhere in France, I imagine they felt something close to euphoria when they came upon the stream, followed by a horror that would haunt Granda into old age. I shudder to think of him cupping the water in his hands, bringing it up to his face, then noticing it was tinged with red. Flowing in the foreign water was also the blood of a young German soldier who had died not too far away. Phlegmatic, my grandfather recounted those details in a voice I can still hear. I can see his beautiful eyes, twinkling the same blue as mine, his checked shirt, and the tweed cap he habitually twirled in the fingers of his left hand.
with Dr. Linda Liu
When Granda died, I was just a girl, the world at my feet. Then, I could never have imagined myself facing fifty on the other side of the world, or becoming so like my mother, or being sick. I would never have predicted a diagnosis of breast cancer, and I am angry that it was handed to me on a Remembrance Day thus forever encroaching on my November memories Granda. There it is, in a diary, angrily encircled in black pen – a simple pronouncement “1PM Diagnosis” defines November 11th 2011. Parenthesized below “genetic testing” on November 30th is “negative.” Such deceptively simple notations on a calendar, their urgency all but disappeared along with the careful concern with which the Breast Patient Navigator initially inquired if someone would be coming with me to those early appointments. Instead, her chatter is cheery and inconsequential, because the news is good this year. The diagnostic mammogram of my left breast is clear, so two days ago, I spent those moments of “solitary confinement” – the period between the nurse leaving and the doctor arriving – not panicking, as last year, but waiting patiently for my brilliant surgeon, Linda Liu, who would reconfirm that all is well. This year, there is no pregnant pause before leafing through my large file to find the mammogram results; there is no need to recommend another mastectomy; and, further genetic testing is unnecessary.
Thus, I am released for another year. I will see my medical oncologist next week and my family physician next week. Between us, we have to come up with a plan to deal with Tamoxifen and its upsetting effects on the way I like to live my life – rested. I will ask him again to tell me I did the right thing to decline chemotherapy, four cycles of Taxotere and Cytoxan based on my Oncotype DX Recurrence Number. And, I hope he will send me on my way into the kind of unscheduled life I led before Remembrance Day 2011, where appointments and anniversaries have more to do with deciding what movie to see and where to go for dinner with a friend I haven’t seen in a while, or what picture I might shoot for the photography assignments that are due each Saturday morning.
In A Piece of Work, the documentary about her life, Joan Rivers shares she is driven still by a need to have “every hour of every day in her appointment book filled.” Holding up a blank page on her calendar, she exclaims “You want to see fear. I’ll show you fear.” For me, I think the opposite is true. Filling up the calendar reminds me that every day is an anniversary of something, a reminder to be afraid or sad or joyful, and sometimes, I think I would far rather just accept the day as it unfolds, minute by minute, no reminders necessary to remember my grandfather, my history, my future.
In this guest post, Cameron St. James writes about caring for his wife, Heather, following her diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma, caused by second-hand exposure to asbestos. Until Cameron contacted me, I knew little of the disease other than that it had killed one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Warren Zevon. Cameron St. James is committed to raising awareness of mesothelioma and exposing the dangers of asbestos exposure. An advocate for the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance, Cameron hopes his family’s story will help provide support for cancer patients and those who care for them.
Dealing with the diagnosis . . .
Heather has frequently said she cannot fathom what I went through upon hearing of her mesothelioma diagnosis. Only once have I opened up to her about my experiences. Now, I hope to share more with her and anyone else struggling through cancer. Just about three months before the diagnosis, we had welcomed our first and only child, Lily, into the world. The great joy of that time sank quickly into sorrow and fear. When I heard the doctors say “mesothelioma” for the first time, I remember looking into my wife’s crying eyes, wondering how we would ever get through this. My mind racing with a million thoughts, I was unprepared for the doctor’s questions about our future medical choices. Heather and I had to make some tough decisions, and I was emotional and overwhelmed by it. I was so afraid and very angry. There were many days, initially, when I communicated only by using profanity. As time progressed, I became able to better control my emotions. Fear and anger gave way to determination. Facing the very real possibility of raising Lily on my own, I refused to make any compromises with Heather’s treatment.
Accepting help from family and friends:
As my days filled with impossibly long to-do lists that included everything from making work and travel arrangements to caring for our daughter and our pets, I learned about the importance of accepting help from others. I had to do everything. I had to learn how to prioritize. I had to ask for and accept offers of help from others. So many wonderful people helped us during this time. I don’t know what I would have done without them.
Setting priorities and being apart . . .
Together, we decided that Heather would fly to Boston to receive radical surgery from esteemed mesothelioma surgeon, David Sugarbaker. Of course, this meant we would be apart. Following her surgery in Boston, Heather would fly to South Dakota to be with her parents as she recovered from the rest of her mesothelioma treatments. Lily was also staying there. During this time, I saw them only once. On a snowy Friday after work, I drove 11 hours through the night to see them. I slept for a bit in my car in hopes that some of the snow would be plowed when I woke up. Although, I was worn out when I arrived on Saturday, I spent the rest of that day and Sunday with them. Then I drove all the way back to be in time for work on Monday.
It was so hard to be away from my wife and daughter, but I realize that it was the choice that was best for everyone. I couldn’t have taken care of Lily and worked at the same time.
I have no regrets. A cancer diagnosis forces us to make many difficult choices. I take comfort in the fact that we still had the ability to make a choice, that we could still make decisions.
Thriving . . .
Through all of our struggles, Heather is still here. She is thriving over six years later. Since Heather was diagnosed, I have worked full time, and also completed a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology in 2010. Lily Rose is in 2nd grade. I hope that our story can be a source of hope and help to those currently battling cancer.
Resources . . . The Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance is dedicated to serving mesothelioma victims and their families with information and resources on mesothelioma. The website is a thorough, comprehensive resource on causes, risk factors, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and research. Additionally, the website provides resources for patients and caregivers related to:Asbestos Exposure, Asbestos Cancer, Veterans & Mesothelioma
In Arizona, the polls closed three hours ago, and the results are coming in. While cable news networks have been pulsating all evening with the preemptive punditry we have grown to expect, CNN is projecting another term for President Obama with 274 electoral votes at 9:45PM Mountain Standard Time, and John King, wizard of the interactive electoral map has just told viewers to “warm up the fat lady.” At the same time, our country remains divided, with Romney currently leading in the popular vote by a couple of hundred votes.
It appears Mitt Romney is not yet ready to deliver a concession speech, refusing to concede Ohio. I am not interested in what Mr. Romney has to say tonight. I’ve heard enough over the last two years, and at the same time not barely enough from him on those matters that matter most to me as an immigrant who believes America is a transcendent idea that belongs to everyone; an educator who believes every child is entitled to an excellent public education and every teacher the support necessary to deliver it; a breast cancer patient who is interested less in racing for a cure and more in finding what cause this epidemic that is killing so many of us; and, a mother who hopes for her daughter a future where she will be empowered to sing her song. I am an ordinary woman with extraordinary people in her life, but I am still unconvinced that Mr. Romney represents my interests. He just doesn’t seem to understand me. I wonder would he understand Gloria Steinem, who just last week shared her idea for economic growth at the YWCA Maricopa County Women’s Empowerment Series. Commenting on the presidential election and the socio-economic issues facing women, she suggested,
Equal pay for comparable work for women would be the greatest economic stimulus this county could ever have.
Such a reasonable idea, it is stunning to know that both Romney and his vice-presidential nominee reject the concept of equal pay for equal work. As the mother of a daughter seated at a table with eight other women, I felt outraged to hear of such extremism, to accept that while we have come far as women, a Romney presidency would ensnare us in a former time.
Watching the Arizona election results come in tonight, the prospect of any meaningful change – let alone a breath of fresh air – seems distant for the state I call home. I am frustrated for friends who have campaigned long and hard to change hearts and minds in Arizona. As during the last general election, I also helped register voters, knowing that voting is perhaps the most important privilege of democracy in the USA. It is granted only to United States Citizens, however, and permanent residents like me may not vote. There are others in Arizona who cannot vote. They have lived here since they were very young, perhaps taken their first steps or spoken their first words in Arizona. Too, they have pledged allegiance to the flag every day in school, but they cannot vote, nor are they permitted to apply for a social security number which would allow them to work, drive, enjoy all the benefits afforded to those who are born here. What about them today?
As election day comes to a close, I am still thinking about these young people, and the resilience and resolve of one in particular. I am also thinking about the promise I made to Gloria Steinem when I had a chance to meet her last week. Following her remarks at the YWCA luncheon, she described to us the deal she has made for years at the end of organizing events. To sustain momentum, she would promise organizers that if, in the next 24 hours they would do just one outrageous thing in the name of simple justice, that she would do the same. She told us it could be anything. Anything we want it to be. Only we know what it should be – pick it up yourself, run for office, suggest that everyone in the office tell how much they make thereby allowing everyone to know who is being discriminated against. In return, Gloria Steinem guaranteed two outcomes. First, she guaranteed that after one day, the world would be a better place, and secondly that we would have a good time. Never again would we wake up wondering if we would do an outrageous thing; rather, we would wake up and consider which outrageous thing we might do today, tomorrow, and the next day. Gloria explains it much better:
What was the outrageous thing I did today? Well, it happened during lunchtime. Not knowing this afternoon if President Obama would be re-elected, I had been thinking about the poignant promise of his “deferred action,” the executive order he signed earlier this year to ensure that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would not deport certain DREAM Act–eligible undocumented youth.
must have entered the United States before the age of 16
must have been present in the United States for at least five (5) consecutive years prior to enactment of the bill
must have graduated from a United States high school, or have obtained a GED, or have been accepted into an institution of higher education (i.e. college/university)
must be between the ages of 12 and 35
must have good moral character
Unquestionably, the President had turned his outrage into action, making sure these these young people would be given temporary relief called “deferred action.”
A young immigrant woman I know completed the cumbersome application, paid the hefty application fee of $465, and showed up for her biometrics appointment today at 1:00PM. With her paperwork and her passport in hand, she sat in the waiting room of the American Immigration and Citizenship Services Office. Her parents could not wait there with her. Knowing she would be alone, a friend and I arrived just after 1PM to find her waiting for her dream to begin. I was struck by the number of young faces filled with hope in that spacious waiting area, and for a long time, I will remember the anticipation of happiness that spread across her face when the bored official finally called her number. Number 48. Within moments, she was photographed, fingerprinted, and sent on her way to wait for a letter in the mail, official confirmation of the President’s promise. Before leaving the building, I told her to ask the security officers if she could turn her phone back on so she could take a picture of herself standing next to the pictures of Barack Obama and former Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano.
If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Telling her, “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Use of cameras or phones is prohibited inside the building, and this was reinforced by one of the young officers. But another, sensing the magnitude of the moment, with a wink and a nod, gave us permission to capture it – a kind stranger acting a little outrageously himself. She will finish high school, knowing that she can work legally, access the dream that belongs to all of us.
When we walked outside, her father was there with his camera rolling, not willing to miss this moment that will allow him to rest a little easier. Silent and stoic, he just kept taking pictures, taking me back to all those moments frozen in the memories of parents everywhere – first words, first tentative steps, first days at school. Not much different from the day I filmed my own daughter, clapping her hands for the first time, saying “mama.” So many times, we miss these moments. Other obligations call. Today, timing worked. I’m glad I didn’t miss this moment today, because it was outrageous, and it was right.
