Memo to Bridie Flynn (by Terence Winch)

My mother's name was Bridget Flynn.  One of eleven children, she was born just outside of the town of Loughrea, in county Galway, Ireland, on 23 November 1906.  Eight of her siblings stayed in Ireland, so I have many cousins there. The house (greatly modernized) and land are still in the family, owned by my cousin Martin Flynn, with whom I am close.  My mother immigrated to New York sometime in the early 1920s.  She married my father, Patrick Winch, in 1930. I am the youngest of their five children (first came Kevin, then Patricia, Eileen, and James).

Known as Bridie, my mother died on 14 January 1962, at age 55, after a long struggle with breast cancer. I was 16 at the time, and took her death very hard. In many ways that loss has marked me for life, and its aftermath has certainly had an impact on my writing. I had forgotten about the poem included here, which was written in 2005 and has never before been published.

My mother was funny, smart, and tough, with a bountiful supply of Irish farmgirl wisdom: you have to eat a pound of dirt before you die, she'd say. Or: you'll be better before you get married.  Or: you could talk the cross off an ass. I would guess that the photo above was taken when she was about 17, probably not long after arriving in the U.S. But since she came here as something akin to an indentured servant, I wondered about the stylish outfit she is wearing in the photo.  My cousin Mary Winch suggests that the photography studio may have provided it.  My mother missed Ireland all her life, but loved New York and hated going beyond the city limits.  The photo below is one of the last I have of her, taken by the back door of the Dew Drop Inn on 114th Street in Rockaway Beach, Queens, in the summer of 1960. Rockaway was "The Irish Riviera" in those days, and we spent all or part of the summer there when I was growing up. She was already sick when the photograph was taken, but not yet bedridden.     

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Memo to Bridie Flynn

Your eldest son says he is dying fast, but he’s been claiming

that for years and still seems solid and hardy. Your middle son’s life

is an ongoing party of which he is the host. Your youngest son

has a job with his own little cubicle. He walks a lot, listens to music.

Makes tea every hour and a half or so, like all the Irish. 

For your elder daughter, life is a very happy

social event.  She lives in a doublewide  in Florida

with her husband, who just turned seventy-five. She loves

to talk, but her health isn’t too good. Your younger daughter,

the family beauty, is also the most spiritual of us all.

 

  

 

You’d be ninety-nine if you were still alive.  But you found

it necessary to die in 1962.  Jesus, Mom, 1962!  Kennedy

was president. I was in high school. Even I, your baby,

am now older than you ever were.  I knew there was no God

when you died.  I knew there was no afterlife when you

failed to visit me from the beyond.  I know there is food,

sex, music, books, sleep, art, movies, friends, talk, love.

Please tell me that’s enough. Just once, pay a little visit.

Tell me what I need to know before you go.

 

(ed note:  This post first appeared here on May 9, 2010)

Comments

[Laura Orem]

Oh, lovely - both the poem and your mom.

[Caitlin Hotlaing]

Oh, I too wish for a visit. Nothing all these years and now I too am older than my mom when she died. Sigh. Love the older pic of her as a young woman!

[Melinda]

Wonderful, Terence. I remember your mentioning her and her early death when we worked together. She was a handsome, lovely woman and it's great to see her! My mother died when I was five. She was 39. So, I never really knew her, and have always wondered.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Melinda. These kinds of losses shape us for life, for better or worse.

[Terence Winch]

Your mother was a powerful woman with her own special charisma. Her death, which still makes me angry, was a loss to all of us, but to you and Miles, of course, most of all.

[lally]

Tears in my eyes Terence. I heard the poem from you shortly after it was written and am so happy the rest of the world now gets to know it too. It's brilliantly honest and vice versa, as you are, and I know your mother was. I wish I could have known her for just a moment, and though my mother stuck around til I was 23 so I'm more fortunate than you or Cait and Miles, I have felt the same way you do and did all my life as well, thank you for articulating that so perfectly.

[William McPherson]

You said it for me, Michael. "Brilliantly honest" and honestly brilliant. Just honesty is something to aspire to; brilliance is a bonus. A generous man, our Terence, admirable in his devotion to his earthy muse, unique and inimitable in his voice, and an extraordinary poet of the ordinary. And his mother was a beautiful woman.

[Billy Joe Thorpe]

Wow. That adds a lot of dimension, detail, and perspective to a story that's still playing itself out in us. Thanks for sharing this. I found it deeply meaningful and enriching.

[Tina]

Oh how lovely and wonderful - it adds a few more pieces to the pictures of your Mom that I had puzzled together from the book "The Seeing Eye Boy"

[Gerald Fleming]

I just saw this, coincidentally on the anniversary of my own mother's death. Thank you, Terence. Beautiful.