She sailed across in 1882,
From a town in Cork called Skibbereen.
To work and save was all she knew;
Just a lass she was, only eighteen.
She wed a fellow ****, a charming sort,
He sired three children, then he left.
She had no lawyer had no resort;
He left her broke, marooned, bereft.
My mother told me stories of her Irish Gran;
She said the woman had a brogue;
When she got old her hair was white as sand;
The no-good husband was a rogue.
My mother asked her many times about her life;
“What was your childhood like in Skibbereen?”
“Ach, it was nothing but hardship and strife;
The times were harsh, and meals were lean.”
She never went back across the sea;
Never set foot in her country again;
Lost touch with the whole of her family;
Was penniless at her life’s end.
And now my mother too is gone;
She died with one regret;
She never got to see the place;
The house where her grandmother slept.
My mother, I did what you could not,
I made this trip for you.
I touch the stone in the very spot
Where the root of our family grew.
It’s nothing much to look at, a ruin in a field;
But I take a moment and grieve;
This is where our fate was sealed;
When that girl decided to leave.
She left her homeland, all she knew;
Sailed off to the great beyond;
The one thing she could never undo
Was the rupturing of the family bond.
My mother, you made us hold our family dear,
To promise our love so strong;
Was it because you saw so clear
Your grandmother’s pain so long?
I bow my head and say a prayer,
And ask for a portion of grace;
For you and her, travelers over there,
In a foreign, mysterious place.
I hope you’ve met her in that land,
And maybe now you understand.
