What Could Ever Be Wrong? Surviving the Crisis in Ireland

Today, like every day, I get up to thumb through the news. I read that more deaths due to Covid bring the total in the Republic of Ireland to 444. Over 12,500 cases have been identified. About 2,000 people have been hospitalised.

My thumb presses another icon. In my home of America, over 30,000 lives have been snuffed out due to the pandemic. 

I decide I can't look further. So I get to work.

Like many countries and people across the world, our village of Eyeries, as well as Beara Peninsula and the rest of the country, are under a government-issued Stay at Home order. Living here, it's easy to follow those guidelines because in many ways, I'm already isolated. Only 60 or so souls call Eyeries home. Castletownbere, 5 miles away, has a total population of less than 900, while only 6000 people live on Beara Peninsula. In the off-season, when tourists are absent (as they will for most of the year, I suspect), I can walk miles along the coast without meeting a soul. 

That said, life during Covid, even in the isolation of Eyeries, is marked by worrying disruption. So I maintain discipline to hold onto any sort of sanity. 

I write from 9AM until 1PM. The work - editing a novel that I will submit to a literary agent in the Fall - keeps my head full. For those hours, I think of nothing else except the story, and the words on the page, and which words don't work, and which ones do, and what I need to change or delete or add to tell the story in the best possible way. Hours can pass and I think of nothing else except the problems that plague the characters, and the world in which they live, and the conflicts they must endure. When I break I walk out back to take a breath, and for a moment all seems as it always was: a Spring day, the sun on my head, the distant island of Scarrif rising from the sea a few miles across Coulaugh Bay. 

Then I remember and get back to work so I can forget for awhile longer.

When I come up for air I think again. I feel sorry for so many of my friends back in the States. Politicians and the press - both sides of the division - war with words and pictures against each other, yet the stakes involve millions of lives. 

I think of our own government and press. Here, it seems easier. Ireland's total population is only 5 million or so: maybe that has something to do with it. Here, the government talks with one voice. I have not yet witnessed an Irish politician go after another to score political points. For that reason, perhaps, there is little confusion. We all know what to do and why. I have never heard a word uttered from anyone about any misunderstanding they might have about the advice and directives we have been given from the government. Most everyone is cooperating because we know the stakes are so high.

When I finish writing by closing the laptop, I might work in the garden. I'm painting the back of the house. I can't get more paint because the hardware stores are closed, so I stretch what I have. I concentrate on the brushstrokes that spread blue and white over walls and gates. I can forget with each brushstroke.   

When I finish for the day, I might take a walk with the Partner up through the village where we encounter few, and if we do, stand politely out of the way as we practice social distancing. We gab for a few stolen moments, glad to meet other human beings. Then we'll walk on, passing the closed pubs and the locked door of the village church, and I wonder for a moment about the people I know who I can't see right now: my cronies from the pub and the good mates I have there; the church choir I direct, many of the members older than me, and I say a quick prayer for their safety, and that we'll someday sing again. 

I think of my children and grandchildren in County Meath, and a father locked down in a Florida nursing home. But there is nothing I can do for any of them, not right now, except keep sane so I might see them, and as I think we amble down the hill again toward home.

Even later in the day, we may drive to Castletownbere to buy groceries and go to the chemist, which is still permitted. The visit is short; the once busy town almost deserted. We make our purchases and leave.

6PM. RTE is on the TV, minutes before the evening news, but before that, the Angelus. The devotional prayers play on both RTE radio and television, at Noon and again at six. While the Angelus is not unique to Ireland, the prayer has always resonated with me, even if I never prayed along with it. It resonates deeper with me today.

Sunset right now is about 8PM. After the news, I go outside to sit on the back deck and watch the sun go down. I'll pour a can of Guinness and, taking a sip, think that when things are back to normal I will never, ever again open a can of Guinness. I will always drink my pint in the pub as I always did before. I hope it won't be  too long until then. Canned Guinness is real shite.

The sun sets over a glittering Bay. As I watch it, for a moment I forget again. Then I'll remember and think, 

'How can anything, anywhere, be wrong on such a beautiful evening?'

Plenty, it seems. 


 2020 Edition of A Survivor's Guide to Living in Ireland is out Now!

As I write this, the world's people are facing into the strongest headwinds we have experienced in our lifetimes. This tome will not help. But if it provide a bit of humor, a bit of knowledge, a way to sit back and forget what is  happening for a few minutes... then perhaps I am right to include it here. Find A Survivor's Guide to Living in Ireland, 2020 Edition, here.