Stirring up the ashes

It's been just about 5 years to the day since I acquired the gray marble urn. It's about as big as a watermelon but rather indistinct. It sits on the living room windowsill, always in the same position, like John Carradine in The Sentinel. In a rather morbid way I rather enjoy having the ashes of my late father around. It's a chance for us both to have a peaceful relationship that we couldn't have when he was alive.

Sentimentality is not at play here. I don't sit at night and talk to the urn and try to reconcile my feelings for dad. I don't miss him, and in many respects I barely knew him. He was perhaps the most tortured person I've ever met. In the last years of his life I found irrefutable evidence that he was a homosexual, an identity he reluctantly assumed with a great deal of shame and denial. He expressed his feelings of rage and frustration only when he was drunk, which was his normal state of being.

For years I was ashamed not only of my father, but of his whole family. I associated everything Irish, even my quintessentially Irish name, with backwardness and conservatism. My father's brothers and sisters, all first-generation Americans, wholeheartedly embraced Irish culture. They listened to the Clancy Brothers, took up Irish step dancing, became members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, made pilgrimages to Ireland to discover their roots, and of course drank heavily.

I wasn't particularly fond of my father's father. Straight off the boat from County Clare, Ireland, he too was an alcoholic and a disciplinarian. In a drunken stupor one night, my father tearfully told me how his father used to punish him by blackening his eyes and then make him go to work in the family's candy store. It was both heartbreaking and unnerving, watching my father fall apart in front of me. I understood then that he didn't have much a role model either.

About 10 years ago, while visiting my aunt's house, I saw an old family photo. "These are your great-grandparents," my aunt said, "and their parents." The faded black and white picture showed a youngish couple flanked by two older couples, six or seven children, and a lazy dog. Behind them was a plain building, a barn maybe, in what looked like a very modest setting. "That's the creamery where your grandfather was born," my aunt said. "He's not in this picture, but these are all his brothers and sisters. I think it's about 1905."

I marveled at the composition of the photo. I looked closely at the faces. One boy, an uncle, looked just like my cousin PJ, and another looked like one of my brothers. The photo was so faint it was hard to make out details; in fact, I couldn't even see the dog until I scanned the photo in and retouched it. I became curious about these people. They were so far removed from my life. Who were they? I had the photo framed and from time to time would look at it, but my curiosity never went anywhere.

But since then I've been looking at that picture more and more. My curiosity has led to serious reflection and, now, active pursuit of my genealogy. Where do I come from? What were my ancestors like? Where do my personality traits come from? What's the dirt? Maybe this fascination is a function of age. Maybe the smoke around my father's death is clearing and I can do this on my own terms. Maybe I'm sobering up to the fact that I could be the dead branch of my family tree. I always wondered why men were so hot to have kids. Now I understand that the notion that we live on through our children strikes deep. If my ancestors hadn't procreated, I wouldn't be writing this. And if i don't have kids...

I'm now only two documents away from applying for Irish citizenship. Even though I've never been to Ireland, lately I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about it--its history, its future, its politics. I've even started taking Irish language lessons. One thing is for sure: I draw the line at Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance.

Besides having the name, the map of Ireland on my face, and the two main Irish genes--drinking and fighting--I've always wondered why I love milk so much. Now I know; it's because I come from a long line of Irish dairy farmers.