Thread by @poetsoup

In just over a month, I've witnessed two distressing moments in Irish culture, the airing of The Hunger on @RTEOne & the release of the #motherandbabyhomes report. Two gross wounds; one inflicted, the other self inflicted.

Thread.

#TheHunger was harrowing; heartbreaking. I was incredibly moved by it, forced to imagine with much more clarity the struggle my Gr Gr Grandad went through as a child-what he must've seen, smelled, feared, felt. The sadness that must have permeated his life. It's near impossible

to reconcile the great imprint it's made on the story of every person on this island & on the story of those who had to leave. I feel slightly unique in being someone who, in a way, returned from that scar-an immigrant returned from an emigrant departed.

sean-callahan.medium.com/the-ghost-of-m…

Hearing about what was lost, the incalculable life taken in physical & cultural terms was breathtaking. It made you wonder, what could Ireland have been without this genocide; without this scouring of society. What would our language be? How more enriched would our heritage be?

However, like a ghost trying to grasp a door handle, the weight of it is just out of reach.

But the stories #motherandbabyhomes have been much more grievous & torturous. Because we know what was lost. We know what was taken.

These women's stories are scattered around us like the hair shorn from their heads. The great weight & severity of this continued suffering makes us dumb when searching for the right words to express something that is so incoherent to our sensibilties.

https://twitter.com/poetsoup/status/1349766553819086854?s=20

How could this have been allowed to happen, encouraged to happen, desired & designed to happen? It's ghastly. Our connection to the Hunger that is meaningful but temporal & almost gossamer; the Mother & Baby Homes is immediate & heavy, it walks beside us & against us.

Women were incarcerated, abused, denigrated, dehumanised, made bereft by a society of men who abdicated the responsibility of their actions because their dogma insisted upon their right to do so. Because of their disdain. Women enslaved because of disdain.

Children dead because of contempt. & even when freed from these dark mills that ground their bodies & spirit, these women remained in perdition for the rest of their lives; the stolen children lost in a purgatory. We know this too. All condemned by men, all abandoned & failed

by men & women whose directive was to protect & lift up. Failed continually until the last closure in 1996. Failed still when we hear the Commission spent half of its allocated budget -€11.5m out of €23m- with little consideration to the survivors.

https://twitter.com/maeveorourke/status/1350218564771454976?s=20

We know how this says a lot about the desire to complete this work & the abdication of responsibility by successive Governments to address or properly acknowledge this great atrocity. The past is not so distant.

Our Taoiseach was first elected in 1989. The last baby to die in Bessborough, a little girl named Zoei Bonny was two days old when she died on Wednesday, August 10, 1994.

irishexaminer.com/news/arid-4020…

Ghastly. This word is probably the most appropriate; ghastly, ghast, ghost. The ghosts of these institutional abominations should frighten us, should afflict us, should haunt us. & maybe it should be noted that at it's root, ghast also means "to meditate."

What happened in The Hunger was a tragedy of the failing of nature made desperately worse by those who didn't care enough to know us. What happened in the Mother & Baby homes were a tragedy of the failing of human nature made desperately worse by those who knew us the best.

I love this island, my chosen home. I love its history, mythology, folklore. I love how it reaches back in time. Is breá liom an teanga. I love its love for & emphasis on art & literature, on language. I love how it celebrates happiness & tragedy. I love its sensibility.

But at times, I'm overcome with the crowding of ghosts in this country.

https://twitter.com/RTELateLateShow/status/1350199841230630917?s=20

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