Families Reunited by The Ballindine Post
By Eirene Andrews, nee Flanagan
I looked enquiringly at my mother and asked her again. "Did he ever see me?" Her expression changed and she answered with emotion, amazed at her own realisation. "He was your Godfather!"
Do you know the word serendipity? I expect so, but when it was explained to me as coming upon something pleasant totally by accident, it described exactly how I felt at that moment. Several months earlier, there had been an article in the Ballindine Post featuring stories related by village elders to schoolchildren in 1938. I could imagine that the exercise would be good from several angles - to retain the folklore, to encourage the liasing between the generations and to aid writing and spelling skills.
So what followed was that a small girl with glorious auburn hair who lived near to my family, called to see my grandfather with such a request for a story. The story had to written in best copperplate and I imagined the golden hair tumbling down in ringlets shielding her face and the brow furrowed in concentration. And my grandfather the storyteller - how I longed to understand his character. He was a bailiff and land surveyor, well educated and articulate and my father had told me how he used to read the newspaper aloud to the village men in Shanballybocht who hadnt good skills in that area and how his veterinary skills were often called upon and even his competency in dentistry! From that knowledge, I had concluded that he was community spirited - but the added discovery that he had time and patience with children was tinged with sadness when I realised there was no issue from any of his eleven offspring when he died.
Over sixty years later, I was excitedly opening a letter from a convent in Co. Meath from that little girl, now Sister Mary Rose, containing news and expressions of pleasure at our families reconnecting. Her memories of my grandmother Delia Flanagan, the local midwife, teaching her to dance and all the music of the household - fiddles, melodeons and tin whistles. The greatest joy was reading of the parallel in character between my own father, Jimmy Flanagan, and my grandfather John Patrick - at last I felt I was beginning to know him.
Another pleasure was to come; the rekindled friendship stirred memories in my late fathers last living sibling, my Auntie Delia. Streams of anecdotal stories pored forth, delicious tit bits to quench my hunger for family knowledge. Letters regularly crossed the Irish Sea and strengthened bonds between the families. I made new discoveries and the added delight of information of a close friendship between my own father and the brother of my pen friend. My father already established in work over the water had acted as a guardian when his friend Jimmy OConnor joined him - helping to find work and accommodation. My mother remembered the friendship fondly recalling that he was a welcome guest at their wedding, staying with my other grandparents in Nottingham.
It was during one of these nostalgic chats that I had asked my mother the question Had Jimmy OConnor ever seen me?" It seemed strange that I had never known or seen my Godparents and was only now unearthing this information. From Sister Mary Rose I learned that her brother, my Godfather, had lived in Stamford and died the very year that we moved to nearby Peterborough. So sad to make all these discoveries when both friends had died - but there was yet a bonus.
The happy circumstances of our renewed friendship culminated in my gaining a godparent - for sister took brothers place and a meeting in June 1999 resulted in a kindred affection and mutual pleasure.
You may say I am sentimental, but for the deepest joy was the feeling that my grandfather had given me his blessing and drawn me into my Irish roots deeper and stronger.
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