April 10, 1994

"You don't have to listen to me, that's the triumph of free will, when there are promises to break and dreams to kill."
                                                                   Elvis Costello   -   2% Amnesia

It is a bright beautiful Sunday afternoon. The sky is so perfectly blue, I'm sure postcard photographers are swiftly snapping their shutters throughout this emerald countryside. I am sitting at Our Lady's Grotto on the road to Portmagee. On Tuesday, May 26, 1981, Maggie left her wedding bouquet at this roadside shrine.

I don't remember exactly why we took this side road, but I think it was to get a closer look at Puffin Island and the Skellig Rocks. And as we drove down this deserted road of farmland and fields, we saw this grotto and stopped - and Maggie decided to leave her wedding bouquet at the base of the statue. We took pictures of each other, said silent prayers, made private promises and held dreams in our hearts.

Over the four years we visited this shrine three times. What remained of the bouquet was always there and we would leave notes and money to the people who took care of the grotto. In the summer of 1984 I wrote an article about our story and it was published in the Boston Irish Echo and in The Kerryman. the weekly newspaper of County Kerry. It was entitled, The Road To Portmagee.  About a month later I received a letter from the people who took care of the shrine, and they told their parish priest read the article one Sunday morning at Mass. Today, it all seems so long ago, but I will leave a note with words of hope and love - of a time remembered.

Like the wedding bouquet, the prayers, promises and dreams of that Tuesday morning are gone - discarded and forgotten. The road to Portmagee is still deserted with few travelers, but the grotto has become a cemetery for unanswered prayers, broken promises and dead dreams.

2:00pm   -   Our Lady's Shrine   -  Portmagee, County Kerry, Ireland

contact: fortheheartcries@gmail.com

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