Awake for the Dead
Sigh.
I can't sleep, again. It's late and I'm wandering the house like a ghost.
I know you need to sleep, but, sometimes it seems like there's not enough time in this life to do everything you need to. Not enough time to write, to read, to enjoy the higher pursuits of life.
Tonight I'm thinking of many things, I enjoyed Dublin so much.
But the visit to Kilmainham jail: http://www.irish-architecture.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/kilmainham/jail.html
particularly weighs on my mind. Having taken a course in Irish history, and as part of that to have studied about the Easter 1916 revolution in detail, it was so strange to visit the site where the leaders were executed. I felt so cold, and a real sense of nausea when we were led to the stonebreakers yard where they had been shot. Particularly looking at the black crosses really made me feel sick. Upstairs in the museum you can see personal belongings of some of those involved with the uprising, and I was highly interested to see a display case containing some of Michael Collins' personal effects.
Looking at those deceased people's belongings is so strange. In one way it is as though they are right there in front of you. These are objects they held dear to them and now they are available for people of today to see. Somehow that feels surreal.
Particularly moving was the story of Grace Gifford's marriage to Joseph Plunkett, a leader in the 1916 revolution. A scrapbook, with memoirs written in Grace's own hand detailed how she and Joseph were married in the jail just hours before Joseph was taken out and executed. They spent only minutes together as man and wife, how terribly, terribly sad. To have realised your heart's peace only to be parted a short while later must have been unbearable agony.
The visit to the jail was fascinating, and I felt almost a duty to go in order to pay my respects to those who died there who were martyrs. A cold, weighty sense of reverence fills the grey stone walls, and the air seems to be heavy with the weight of time and events that are etched into history.
To walk in the same steps as those who changed the course of time is a strange feeling indeed.