Rite and Reason: They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they, said Jesus of the religious leaders of his day. Teresa Dundon writes about the emotional cruelty inflicted by such a burden.
Standing facing the treaty stone in Limerick in my long, white (borrowed) dress on May 12th, 1967, the day I married John, the love of my life, was the beginning of a journey almost all of which has been happy.
The wedding was a huge success and that evening we left family and friends to spend a six-week honeymoon in New York. We returned to our lovely new bungalow built together with such care and attention in the previous year.
Those early weeks of our new life were wonderful as we played house together, loving every minute of this new grown-up world. Our joy was complete when we discovered almost immediately that I was pregnant. This drew a droll remark from a brother of mine who said that he was sure that the baby would come out with "Made in USA" stamped on its bottom.
Those were the days when women were obliged to give up work on marrying, so I left my job as a bangharda to focus my attention on home. This did not mean idleness, however, as my days were spent knitting every pattern of "pram-suit" I could lay hands on as well as the most beautiful and intricate christening robe and shawl. It was a labour of love as I awaited that much wanted and already much loved baby. Five weeks before our baby was due I felt severe pain in my stomach and went with speed to the hospital where I was told by a very officious nurse that I "most certainly was not in labour", at which point I passed out. A doctor was called and it was discovered that the umbilical cord had broken, causing the death of our precious baby, leaving my own life hanging by a thread for 24 hours.
At one stage John was told that I had just four hours to life. Having spent the night on a drip and been given a blood transfusion I was faced with the awful prospect of delivering my baby, knowing already it was dead. John and I were advised that it was better if we didn't see the baby and found out later that our baby boy was perfect and had ginger hair. As I reflect on it all, nearly 40 years later, I am inclined to think that my reaction at the time was somehow affected, even dulled, by how sick I felt. The baby was taken by my brother-in-law and his uncle to be buried and to this day we know not where. Only in the last year or two has my mind and heart returned to the feelings and emotions of that time, having been triggered by a cousin's invitation to a remembrance Mass for children who died at, or before, birth. There for the first time John and I were given the freedom denied us at the time, to grieve for our little Seán. On that night, along with many others, John and I remembered, prayed, cried and carried our candle, leaving it at the altar in his name.
Since the Mass my thoughts have turned often to that era when babies who died, like our Seán, were believed to have gone to Limbo and consequently were not allowed to be buried with other family members in consecrated ground. The utter emotional cruelty of this on parents, like John and myself, was at the very least unchristian, leaving us without a grave to visit and nothing to mark our son's existence. Being deprived of seeing our son left us believing that we had no right to grieve, that this was something to be gotten over and forgotten.
We must have heard that message very well because we never did grieve for our baby, never thought to ask the men who buried him where we could find his grave, and now they are dead.
Until the memory was stirred at the remembrance Mass we had never thought to approach anyone in an effort to discover where he was buried so we could go and stand there, or kneel and mourn for him.
In truth, the first time I have allowed myself to really cry for our baby is while writing this. Almost 40 years on I have pledged to find our baby's grave and sow a tiny white tulip bulb in his memory.
Teresa Dundon lives in Oranmore, Co Galway, with her husband, John. They have five daughters. Teresa attends a writers' group in Oranmore and read this piece at the Killaloe Hedge-School of Writing. E-mail address: www.killaloe.ie/khs