Ireland Album
John Brennan’s collection of stories, Don’t Die With Regrets: Ireland and the Lessons my Father Taught Me,
takes us on an adventure to the writer’s childhood in the Irish town of
Crossmaglen in County Armagh. Framed by the ancient history of the Celts and
the indigenous beliefs in Druids and the later history of the protracted war
between the Protestants and the Catholics spurred by the colonization of
Ireland by the British, the author takes us into his family’s history, which
goes back several centuries, focusing on the gifts that his ancestry has
offered him.
Brennan is the quintessential storyteller, keeping us
riveted with the many adventures of his childhood in the Irish countryside. The
boy who roams in the fields and knows the flowers and the trees and is
intimately connected with the animals loves his father and pays attention to
everything his father tells him and constantly plies his father with questions
to which he receives answers that keep his wonderment alive. Brennan deftly paints the father, Mal, with a
brush that makes him a man you would want to befriend at the local pub and
listen to the stories he tells you; just as we would want to meet the author
that recounts his encounters with neighbors, dogs, rabbits, policemen, strange
men in trench coats, spirits, Indians, and tenants.
Family photos, especially of the author as a young boy with
his parents, grandparents, and siblings, augment the portrait of the child that
emerges as the protagonist of the book. Brennan keeps his reader captivated
with his descriptions of the countryside, his cleverness with dialogue which
keeps us hanging until he delivers his punch line at the end of each episode,
and his realistic detail. The child’s voice comes alive in the pages of this
book, and we begin to miss the child, once the adult Brennan appears in the
final chapters giving us a glimpse into his life in New York. Don’t die with
regrets, words from his father, underline every episode, the moral very often
clothed in hilarity or wonderment, as in the father reconstructing the
clock to make it better, or making the stray dog he brings home win the dog
race much to the surprise of the naysayers in the neighborhood.
Throughout, we are aware of the spirit world in the
background that makes its appearance, surprising us and the author who allows
the spirits to reside comfortably among the mundane. I did feel a little shiver
when the wind suddenly blows out the candle when John and his daughter wait for
news about the recovery of cousin Michael’s body after he disappears with other
firefighters in the 9/11 attack in NYC. Or when a strange form confronts the
grandfather at dusk, which makes him a changed man.
Although the volume is predominantly prose, we get to
witness a few poems written in the style of poets the author reveres, such as
Yeats. We hear the voice of Bobby Sands, prison not quelling his resistance or
dulling his spirit. We hear voices from popular culture that the author carries
with him at all times—the Beatles, Bob Marley, Rolling Stones, who show how
life needs to be lived. We do not sink
in nostalgia; instead we are borne aloft by the lessons of the spirit that the
past teaches. If, indeed, you want to travel the many routes into the heart of
Ireland, John Brennan’s book offers the perfect vehicle.
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