The vacation feeling is gone.
The Pat Finucane Centre is really cool. I work with a couple other people, so it's definitely easy to feel comfortable asking questions about things I might not know or am unfamiliar with. And I've done that. A lot. There is just so much interesting stuff that I am going over that I need to talk about to fully understand it; whether context, background, reasons why one side would have done it, or just to hear someone else say 'That's the point. It makes no sense.'
And it's become very clear even after only the 2 days of looking through all this information and talking with the people I work with that some very terrible things have taken place (Obviously. Most people have heard of the horrors of the Troubles in Ireland.). It's one thing to sit in a classroom and hear lectures, read books, watch movies, and see pictures-it's a completely different thing to hear these people's stories while you're sitting and having coffee with them.
You hear their story and you get the real emotion. The hurt. The anger. The sorrow. The remorse. The confusion. The want to know why. The want to know the truth.
And for what? People get shot, attacked, beaten all because of their religion? Because of the color of your skin? Because you're different? I get it, every culture has had an issue of this sort throughout their history, and maybe it's just the generation I grew up in or the way I was raised, but I still don't understand the why.
The worst part, without a doubt, isn't even the violence. It's the way people are remembered. "Oh, so and so? They were killed here like this by them." Or it's "London Street? Oh yeah, so and so was killed here."
It's very different to be living within a culture that just so...I don't know the right phrase here. I want to go with readily embraces and accepts death, but I feel like that's unfair to say. Maybe used to death? I don't know. But to be remembered by the way you died, or where you died, just seems so...wrong.
I'm not saying the Irish people are wrong and should start doing something else. It's part of their culture, and that's fine. It's just different for me, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle that. It is the complete opposite of my belief: People should be remembered for the life they lived, they relationships they built, the things they loved, the beliefs they held, the issues that they hold so near and dear that they would fight (and possibly die) for.
Which is why I love the Pat Finucane Centre's ROLMA (Recovery of Living Memory Archive) program. Started in 2012, there is 3 phases 1) Advocacy, advice, and support to families 2) Record the impact of the loss and suffering on the families and survivors 3) Combining the investigation with the biography for documentation and archival in libraries.
I got the chance to read one of the books that were made, and I was in shock after reading it. This man was murdered because he was a Catholic who was making a pretty decent living in a Protestant area. To read his life story, his children's (he had 7 I believe) comments on him, to read the aftermath of what happened to his family....I was speechless. I literally didn't know what to say. What do you say after reading something like that?
All of this makes it so much better to see programs that are encouraging the youth to intermingle with each other. We got to go to a community youth center today down in the Fountain, and to be able to play and have fun with these kids just made my day. We didn't even do anything meaningful; we danced and did yoga. But they were laughing and having fun. It was definitely a relief to see that kids in different countries are pretty similar.
"Death lives with us everyday. Indeed our ways of dying are our ways of living. Or should I say our ways of living are our ways of dying?"
"Death lives with us everyday. Indeed our ways of dying are our ways of living. Or should I say our ways of living are our ways of dying?"
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