Even on Days when it Rains (8 page)

My happiness didn't last long as the search for work separated us again shortly after Christmas. Francie returned to Scotland, and I went back to the quay in Yarmouth. We were struggling to provide for our future, and the little money we were making was all going into the one purse, his and mine.

One day a letter arrived in Yarmouth for me. It was from my mother, and she wrote that I was wanted back home. My brother James's wife, Peggy, had had her first baby, a daughter called Margaret. My mother wrote how Peggy had developed a blood clot in her leg – they called it ‘white leg' – and she was going to be in bed for the best part of a year. She had to keep her foot in a lobster pot to avoid movement because the clot could go to her brain. I was needed back home to look after baby Margaret. I folded the letter, stuffed it in my pocket and made immediate plans to return. Back home, it was a very busy time for me. I was milking the cow and doing all the washing and baking and cooking. My mother had a sore knee, and I was looking after her, helping her in and out of bed.

As the months passed, Peggy recovered and
Margaret
blossomed into a fine, healthy child. She is also married today with children of her own. But as Peggy was recovering, I was being very foolish, even reckless, about my own health – as I was about to discover.

FRANCIE WAS DELIGHTED
when I wrote and told him my news: we had a baby on the way. Now we were going to be a real family. Like every woman, I regarded the prospect of becoming a mother as the greatest gift from God. Each day I prayed that we would be blessed with a healthy child. And Francie told me in his letters that he was praying for me too. In the latter stages of pregnancy I really needed the benefit of those prayers because I became very ill.

My poor mother took a bad turn around that time, and we all feared the worst. She looked for all the world like she was at death's door. My brother Owen and his wife, Muriel, came over from Dundee to see her. Muriel took one look at me as she came through the door, and I could see by her expression that she was shocked.

‘Are you not well yourself, Julia?' she asked.

‘I'm not myself, but sure I'm pregnant,' I said.

‘Oh, Julia, being pregnant is not an illness, and
you
don't look very well to me,' Muriel replied, and I could hear the concern in her tone.

I didn't know there was anything wrong with me. I didn't feel great, but I'd put it down to my condition. After all, I was seven months gone at the time.

‘Your face is swollen, Julia. I think you should see the doctor,' Muriel advised.

‘Ah, I'll be just fine when I get a rest,' I protested. When you're young you think you can fight the world on your own.

‘You're going to the doctor,' she insisted. ‘You're not well.'

Mother was feeling a lot better, but I was now in trouble. I knew that by the expression on the doctor's face when I went to visit him a few days later, after giving in to relentless coaxing from Muriel. He examined me and said, ‘Mrs O'Donnell, I think we should get you to the hospital straight away.' The sombre tone of his voice wasn't what I wanted to hear.

Apparently my blood pressure was as high as it could go, and my kidneys were failing. I was rushed by ambulance to hospital in Donegal where I was immediately hooked up to all kinds of contraptions. I was gravely ill, they told my family. Francie was contacted and told about my condition. They informed him that I was going to have to be operated
on
when all the tests had been carried out, and there was a danger I might not come through it. Needless to say, poor Francie was in a terrible state.

When Francie came home, he went up to the local priest, Father Glacken, and asked him to bless me. Poor Francie was distraught and in tears.

‘Francie, I thought you were a stronger man than this,' Father Glacken said to him.

‘I don't want to lose her,' Francie sobbed.

Father Glacken opened the drawer of his desk, took out a small portion of salt and gave it to Francie. ‘Go up to Julia straight away and give her a taste of this salt,' he ordered him.

Without question, Francie did as he was told. He arrived at the hospital and put a pinch of the salt on my lips. ‘Now taste that,' he told me.

‘I've been fasting for thirteen days and you're giving me salt,' I said, managing a smile.

‘Take it, Julia. It's from Father Glacken,' he said softly. Francie had great faith in the priest.

The following day, Francie arrived before they took me to the table to operate. He asked for the doctor to see how I was.

‘Mr O'Donnell, she's doing very well. There'll be no operation,' said the doctor.

Francie was delighted.

‘Where this change came from I don't know,
because
your wife was in a critical condition last night,' the doctor added.

Francie crossed himself and thought of Father Glacken.

There was still a lot of concern about my condition, however, and the medical staff decided that the best course of action was to induce the birth. They gave me injections, and I suffered for 19 hours in labour before my first son was born. Being two months premature, he was so small I could hold him in the palm of my hand.

We called him John Bosco, and I'll tell you now how he got his name. The night before John was born, there were a lot of visitors to the hospital, and the nuns asked them to pray for me. They said that I had a hard battle ahead of me, and it was a case of trying to save the mother, but there was no hope for the baby.

John Bosco was born on a Saturday, and the following day the same people came to see me. They told me what the nuns had said to them, and how they had gone away, gathered in one house to pray, and made a novena to St John Bosco, praying that both myself and the baby would survive. They then suggested that I should call the newborn John Bosco after the saint who had intervened with the man above to let us come through the ordeal safe and
well
. To be honest with you, I didn't even know at the time that there was a saint called John Bosco.

Many years later, I read that St John Bosco was an Italian priest who came from a poor background. His father died when he was only two years old, leaving his mother, Margaret Bosco, to support three young boys on her own. Don Bosco went on to become a priest and founded the Salesian Society in 1859, in response to the poverty and desperation he saw among young people in his home town of Turin. He went on to found homes and schools to help them. Today the Salesians are the third-largest order in the Catholic Church, with more than 17,000 priests and brothers and 17,000 sisters in most countries in the world. They are recognized everywhere as leaders in the field of schooling for the poor, looking after the needs of abandoned and neglected children and youths. It was his unselfish dedication and work with the poor youngsters that earned Don Bosco a sainthood: he was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

Our firstborn child was duly christened John Bosco, and we resolved that if we were blessed with more wee ones, they would be called Bosco as well. It's a nice name. It saved my life. I thank God, and I thank all who prayed for me that night.

When we took John Bosco home, he was the
tiniest
wee thing you ever did see, being a seven-month baby. You wouldn't find him in a basket or a cot, so we put him in a shoe box. To this day, if you ask him, John will delight in telling all and sundry that he was reared in a shoe box. He was so small we were told not to bath him as he had just a film of skin; he didn't even have fingernails. We rubbed olive oil on him until he was three months old, and he didn't need a pram until he was six months. Now John Bosco is a fine man who is married with two sons – and he's a grandad. So miracles do happen.

Francie and I set up home in Kincasslagh on the mainland in a house that had been owned by one of my uncles who had passed on to his eternal reward. His daughter, being very kind and thoughtful, said to me, ‘Why don't you move into the house and look after it because we don't want to leave it lying empty.' She already had a home of her own. We took her up on the offer, and I would go on to spend the next 20 years there. My mother, who was from the area, had actually helped with the building of the house. It's a stone house, and the stone was carried by hand during the construction. They used to mix the ashes from the fireplace with lime and sand to cement the stones. It was a very solid, waterproof house. As good as anything you'll find in modern times.

Our daughter Margaret was born one year and nine months after John Bosco without any drama. Kathleen was the next one to come along. Francie always came home when one of the children was due to be born.

When I was giving birth to Kathleen, I had Nurse Bridie Doherty with me in the house. Francie was outside with John Bosco, Margaret and relations of mine called Biddy and Neilie McGonagle. They were marching up and down the road outside our home, with Francie playing the flute and the other four drumming on tin cans while they were waiting for the new arrival.

James was born four years after Kathleen. When he was born, the nurse called them in to see the child. John Bosco crept slowly up to the bed and had a peek at his tiny brother. By the look of him, he wasn't too happy with the latest addition to our little clan. He turned to Francie and asked, ‘Daddy, are you sure he's ours?' Francie and myself had such a laugh.

And last, but not least, came the boy himself, Daniel, who was born on 12 December 1961. He ended the show – the last of the Boscos. If I have one regret about my married life, it's the fact that I spent most of it being separated from my lovely husband while the children were growing up. Unless you were
a
fisherman, husbands had no choice but to go away in search of work. It was either that or emigrate to America in search of a new life. We wanted to keep our roots in Ireland and rear the children there, even though we accepted that it would mean me living the life of a single parent while Francie was away.

Like so many other husbands, Francie spent all of our married life working his way around Scotland year in and year out. It was a never-ending cycle of heartbreak, not just for couples but for their children as well. The truly sad thing is that Francie didn't get to see much of his children, and he missed out on the wonderful experience of watching them grow and develop their own little personalities. They loved him dearly, though, and pined for him when he went away. I don't think they ever heard him raise his voice to them, and, despite being a big, strong man, he was gentle and kind. Francie loved those children, and he'd sit them on his knee and tell them stories, or play them a tune on the flute. He was like the Pied Piper when he was in the house. They followed him around wherever he went.

Their excitement would grow and grow in the weeks before Francie was due home on holiday. We'd be lying in bed and Margaret would ask, ‘When will Daddy be home?' Then Kathleen would ask the same question. It might be four weeks, and I'd hold
up
four fingers to them and they'd count: ‘One, two, three, four. Will that be long, Mammy?'

‘Not too long now,' I'd reply. Every day it would be the same.

‘How long more will it be before Daddy is home?' James would ask. And they'd all look at me. As the fingers began to disappear, you could see the excitement mounting and their eyes twinkling with delight.

The night before Francie was due, I'd announce, ‘Your daddy will be here in the morning.' And sure they wouldn't sleep a wink with the excitement. Santa Claus never got such a reaction. From sunrise, their little heads would be in the window, patiently waiting for their daddy. When he arrived at the door, they'd be out of the house like greyhounds after a hare. No man ever got a warmer, more loving welcome.

Often he'd only be home for a week in July, and again at Christmas for another week or two. In the spring he'd come home to cut the turf, and we'd all go to the bog with him to help with that job. When we'd arrive at the bog Francie would ask us to go down on our knees and say a decade of the rosary that the weather would stay good until we got the turf home. And when we got the turf home, we had to go down on our knees again and do another decade of the rosary in thanksgiving.

Children being children, the little ones weren't big fans of prayer.

Brief and all as it was, those were happy days when Francie was around the house. Sometimes he'd get a couple of months' work doing fish-processing on the pier in Kincasslagh, just down the road from our house. He'd be able to come home for his dinner in the middle of the day, and that was a real luxury. I lived for that time, but inevitably it would end in sadness and heartbreak when Francie had to leave. I always packed his case when he went away, and it would be full of tears as well as clothes as I cried my eyes out.

It was a terrible life. Before he went away, Francie would ask us all to go down on our knees and then we'd say a decade of the rosary that God would save him and us and that he would come back again. When he returned we'd do the same again to thank God that Daddy was safe and that we were all there to meet him.

Francie, as I said, was a very religious man. He was an exceptionally devout Catholic, and his faith was always a great comfort to him. Father Keegan, a priest we knew in Scotland, tells the story of how Francie braved Arctic weather to attend Sunday Mass when he was away at work in the wintertime, digging ditches and doing drainage. When Father
Keegan
woke up one Sunday morning, there was a foot of snow on the ground and the blizzard was still blowing. In the far-off distance he could see a couple of black dots at the end of a field.

Who has cattle out on a day like this? he thought.

A short time later, as he was going into the local church, he realized that the dots were the two familiar figures of Francie and his brother James. They'd walked miles and miles in awful conditions to attend church.

‘There was no need for you to come out on a day like this,' Father Keegan told them.

‘I wouldn't miss Mass,' Francie replied.

‘Father Keegan, on the day I die, and on the day of my funeral, I hope it's snowing,' James remarked. The strange thing about that is, years later when James died and Father Keegan was standing over the grave as the coffin was being lowered into the ground, it was snowing.

Francie also had the cure for what was known at the time as ‘the Evil'. This was a lump the size of an egg that came out on the side of a person's face. Francie became a faith-healer when he was given a special prayer by an old man who lived near him. He passed it on to Francie before he died. A seventh son is said to have special healing powers, and even though Francie was an eighth son, there
was
a set of male twins in his family and that was counted as one.

The special prayer he'd been given went on to perform miracle cures through Francie for many, many people. It was well known that he had this gift, and people would flock to him from near and far with their ailments. No matter how hard his life was at the time, Francie never refused anyone. He had to see the afflicted person over three days. Part of the cure was that he had to attend to the person after midnight and before the sun came up, so he would have to go to them in the middle of the night. And there were times when Francie came home from Scotland to attend to people and he'd stay for the three days. Nothing was too much for Francie. He was very, very good. He would go out in the middle of the night to help anyone. The special prayer was to be known only to Francie himself. He wasn't allowed to tell me or anyone else what it was, and I never did ask him. If he so wished, it was within his gift to pass it on to someone else when the time came.