William, sitting across the corner of the table from me, poured a shot of Jameson (not the first) into my glass. "Now," he said, settling back into his chair, "I want to hear you say, 'I forgive the British.'"
William Murphy, a fine man, is the husband of my dear cousin Nano. We were sitting in their house in Midleton, East Cork. The year was 2016, and it was my first trip to Ireland.
He wanted me to say that I forgave the British for all the terrible things they had done in Ireland. I think William knew, or at least intuited, that my grandmother, who had left Ireland as a young woman and lost three brothers to tuberculosis because of the harsh conditions imposed by the British, had been fierce and implacable on the subject, and had instilled those feelings into me when I was a boy.
I knew where William was coming from. We don'r want any more troubles like that. We want to get on with life, and put all that behind us.
But my grandmother had taught me too well. I was carrying wounds, the wounds of all Ireland, from before I was born. Those wounds had not healed, did not know how to heal. I guess William was trying to help me to heal them, as they had all had to try to do.
Every emotion went through me. I wanted to satisfy William by saying the words, but those words would not come out, any more than they would have come out from my grandmother. Finally, after a bit more Jameson, I said,"I don't forgive the British of my grandmother's day for the terrible things that they did, but I forgive the British of today, who have done nothing."
This apparently satisfied William, and he let me off the hook. His daughter asked me if I would ever consider visiting Northern Ireland. She said she had done so, and it was very strange to see the red postboxes and all that. I thought about her question, and then I told her no, I would not go there. But I knew that if I had been raised in Ireland, I would have gone there as a young man, and probably would not have come back alive.
