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Off The Map: Travels Into The Weird (Part 4)
By CJ Hurtt

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The Stuff of Dreams.

My grandparents on my dad’s side came to the U.S. from Ireland. My grandma was a nanny from Belfast and my grandpa was a theologian and pastor from Cork. Both were fish out of water; she was an Episcopalian from the North (which is protestant country) and he was a protestant and Mason from the Republic (staunchly Catholic country). Needless to say, their conversations were often loud and heated. They did not meet until after they had moved to the United States. The political clime in Ireland at that time was such that it would be near impossible for people like them to meet in their native land. The North and the Republic share a border but at that time, they might as well have been on different planets.

After living in Chicago for awhile, they moved to a small California town and settled down. Grandpa became a local minister and grandma resumed being a nanny. Despite my grandma’s refusal to become a full fledged U.S. citizen, they essentially became ordinary Americans. Sort of.

Like many Irish, my grandparents had an ancient buried part of them that could never be touched by the modern world or by mainstream Christianity. There was belief in the trinity and the teachings of Jesus in their house, but there was also the belief in the fairies and ghosts and bad luck. These things were not seen as contradictory.

Every morning Grandma would open up all the windows in the house so that the bad fairies would leave and the good fairies would come in. If someone we knew died, all the mirrors in the house would be turned so that the reflective surface would face the wall.

My grandpa passed away when I was only three years old. I have only the vaguest of memories of him. However, since both of my parents worked, I spent most of the days of my pre-school years with grandma and she would tell me about him. She’d tell me about the books he had written and the church where he used to preach in. One day, many years later, she told a story of a different kind.

Grandma told my parents one evening that she had been in bed one night and she heard the front door open. Then she heard the dog run down the hallway to the door, which was odd since the dog had been dead for quite awhile. Then grandma heard my grandfather’s voice talking to the dog. She sat up in bed as footsteps came down the hall.

Grandpa walked into her room, sat down on the bed, and patted her knee. “It’s ok”, he said, “it doesn’t hurt.” She died a few months after this happened.

It is possible that it was a dream and that subconsciously she knew that she was dying. This could have been her own mind preparing her for the inevitable. But, there isn’t a drop of my Celtic blood that believes that for a second. No matter what kind of rational take I try to apply to the situation, I’ll always believe that grandpa came back that night to visit.

My grandparents, my dad’s parents, have been gone a very long time. They’ve been joined by many other members of our family including my mother’s father. Also, since grandma and grandpa reunited in death, my own father has taken on the family trade of minister.

Each night my dad goes down the hall of my parent’s house to a room off to the left. In that room is all the belongings we own of our ancestors. War medals, Masonic Bibles, quilts, tools, and the sweaters woven with our family knot (a knot pattern used by coastal Irish families to identify family members lost at sea whose bodies might wash ashore), and furniture. He says a few words, maybe asks a few questions, and then tells everyone that it is time for bed. With that, he turns out the light and closes the door without a single thought of contradiction of faith.