In his soft Cavan brogue, storyteller, performer, playwright and memoirist, Michael Harding shares stories about his Father and reads passages from his new book, I Loved Him From the Day he Died: My Father, Forgiveness and a Final Pilgrimage.
Fifty years after the passing of Michael senior and seven memoirs that don’t mention him, Harding decides it’s time to address that void and where better to invoke the ghost of his dad than on the Camino. Setting off in a woollen suit he found in a charity shop, unsuitable shoes and carrying a yellow backpack, “I will bring my Father with me. I will talk to him. I will write a love letter to him by remembering him.”
Tonight’s performance is far more than the sum of its parts. The Seanchaí’s rich tapestry of stories and song is an organic, unwieldy, hilarious miscellany of youthful shenanigans, buddhism and christianity – “Dozing is an Irish version of meditation”.
The mountains of West Cavan where “every drumlin had a church” and “deeds were epic” “seduced his heart.” In Glengavlen ‘Hairy Harding’ hung out with other Albany cigarette smoking “Gabhairín (wandering goats)”. He danced with girls “from the neck up” even though they all really wanted to marry a Guard, and tried to impress Deirdre with his hand-painted green Cortina. To woo her was to put on the kettle, throw turf on the fire, and with Philomena Begley on the record player, lay the blanket on the ground.
But the thread that weaves through all the yarns is the search for his father. He returns time and again to ruminate on how his dad was over fifty when he married. That he had an aged face. And because he died when Michael was just twenty two, there was “no time to ask him interesting questions”.
The title of Harding’s book was inspired by a Michael Hartnett poem, Death of an Irishwoman. The Poet remembers his grandmother’s ignorance “in the sense she ate monotonous food” but also that “She was a summer dance at the crossroads” and that he “loved her from the day she died.” Somewhere along Harding’s physical, spiritual, emotional and metaphorical journey, he recognized that while his father was another country, there was love there still. Looking in the mirror today, Michael senior looks back at him. Same hair, same glasses, same ticks.
‘Forgiveness’ in the title suggests Harding is forgiving his dad – for being too old, too authoritative, too solitary and too removed. He wasn’t the kind of father a young boy could be proud of, i.e. a vital and vigorous man who would kick a football about with his son. But perhaps Harding speaks to forgiving himself. Did he have enough compassion for his father’s difficult history or for his frailties and vulnerabilities? Did he fully appreciate the bookish writer his father was? In the pilgrim’s own words – “You don’t have to understand him. Just love him. And wish him well.”
Runs Until May 29th 2025.
