Finding our family

My mum lost her father when she was eight years old.

I know that one of the worst outcomes of this - through nobodys fault-

was that she grew up not knowing many of her cousins.

Through the power of Facebook she discovered one of her long lost cousins Joe.

And learnt that the fiddler in the video below is also her cousin Aiden. I believe that he has unfortunately passed.

How amazing is technology that it not only has allowed my mum

to learn more about her family and to enjoy the evident talent the cousin she can never meet

had to offer.

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12 years and counting....

It is that time of the year again, my sister's anniversary. 12 years since we bid her farewell.
Well, tomorrow is her anniversary but I am having a very lazy morning and as a result I am writing this today.

For the past 11 years, the entire month of November has been a struggle for me.
In the beginning it was a raw struggle. Every single day from the 10th (her birthday) to the 29th (her anniversary) was like a hot blade slicing through my heart.
I think it is because the loneliness of not having her with us to celebrate her birthday is intensified by the fact that her anniversary is so close, and there is an awareness and an emotional surge in the three weeks between that just lingers in my subconscious.
Now, I definitely do become very low for those three weeks, but it is much easier to bounce out of it as we approach the anniversary and I realise that my irrationality of the last three weeks was simply bottled up emotion from the remaining 49 weeks of the year.

This year was a t…

The day I got a little sister.

Last night, as I got the bus home from work, I got really choked up as the clock turned midnight. Perhaps because I'd been checking product dates all day, I was painfully aware of what date I was stepping into, or perhaps because I had just returned from a trip to Ireland I was painfully aware of it all. I don't know. It's not important.

When I went to bed last night, I started to think about my sister a little more. A lot more. I remember the day she was born. Isn't that weird? I was only 3 years old but I remember. Mam was on the phone from the hospital to Da, and he asked my brother and I if we wanted to speak to our mammy. Naturally we both jumped at the chance to say hi. Our telephone at the time was in the hallway and was a few feet from the ground, so my brother and I had to stand on a chair to speak into it. As the eldest I went first and gushed and oohed as I thought was appropriate. I hopped off my chair and gave the floor to my brother. I was unprepared for…

Let's talk about mental health

I must admit I am a little bit nervous about writing this blog today.
I am afraid that I will get a little too emotional when writing about a topic that is very close to my heart.
I will apologise now for if I ramble or get lost in a stream of consciousness. I hope you can make sense of what I am about to write.

This week, another life was lost to the tragedy that is suicide. I should correct myself, a famous life was lost to suicide. I have no doubt that this week, many families around the world are grieving and trying to figure out why one of their own has taken their own life.

The reason that I want to write this post is simply down to the number of horrible and ignorant comments that I have read on social media about Chester Bennington's death. For me, it highlighted the lack of understanding of mental health in this day and age.

I'm going to take you back on a wee journey with me and tell you why this is such a personal topic and why I feel that it needs to be spoken abou…

Life of Lu

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