I’m also hoping when you read these papers you’ll understand better why it was so terrible for me that time when you got yourself mixed up with an O’Donovan. I’ve played that last evening in our kitchen so many times in my mind and I greatly regret the pity of how we both overreacted. At the beginning, I was afraid that if we did make up and you came back home, you’d take up with him again. Your grandmother feared that too, I know. It might be hard to understand now but, at the time, the fear was very real.
Yet I was always expecting something to happen that would bring you back to us. Always, until Mammy died. When you didn’t come back for your Granny Peg’s funeral, I knew I’d go to my own grave without seeing you again. That’s a hard thing to do to a parent, Siobhán, but I forgive you,
