Ancestors Past and Present
I see them all assembled there, beyond the veil, the family bloodline like a hyrda with many heads. I feel the weight of their silence and their monumental struggle, their battle to survive. I see the black and white photographs hung in a neat collection in the living room, a space so ironically titled given that it houses ghostly spectres from lost centuries. I examine their clothing and their stalwart faces, peering into the future with hopeful eyes. I contemplate various degrees of privilege, from the scruffy and unkempt to the dapper and well to do, from the bright and very young to the old and weary.
I travel back in time on the wings of a photograph. My destination is afforded to me with uncanny immediacy. I am suddenly standing in the ghettos of Poland, my brothers and sisters arrayed in rag tag congregation, with the dust of the street kicking up into the sun, and my wizened grandparents poised behind like stern gargoyles. Little do they suspect the advent of Nazi terror and the sudden diminution of family numbers. Little do they anticipate the gravity of the new decades, birthed of conflict and political upheaval. I sit with them a while, in silence, like a knowing psychologist with a real capacity for empathy. My hidden heartbreak, knowing the end of their story, means I am almost unable to breathe.
My eyes move to the next mode of teleportation, a sepia capture from fin de siecle Ireland. I am my great grandfather, a member of the mounted police, chasing thieves and blaggarts on the streets of Dublin. I admire the sheen of his well groomed steed, the shapely muscles and the well brushed mane. I live the commitment he represented in a telepathic flash, the duty to uphold the law. I navigate the accustomed course along River Liffey and relive the wild escapades in pursuit of criminal activity, the foot chases and the arrests, the heated altercations and the journeys to Kilmainham Gaol and the barracks at Mountjoy. I feel the enervation and exhaustion at days end, wending my way on horseback to my family and my wife (my great grandmother). The women I apprehend go to Grangegorman Female Prison, and while I pity them, I am but a servant of blind justice.
