Whenever our Aunt Rosaline came home to visit, it inevitably caused quite
a stir.
Rosaline, my mother’s younger sister, had gone to live in Boston
when she was just eighteen years old. And we, being just kids, had never known
her as a person who came from our home town of Sligo. She was America through-and-through
and when she came to visit, she turned our world upside down in all the best
possible ways.
As I recall, from a distance of over 55 years, Her coming
was foretold in strange ways. My Dad, who never veered into poetic quotation
beyond a stray line from Lake Isle of Innisfree, started randomly reciting the
opening lines from a poem by James Clarence Mangan, “Oh my dark Rosaleen, do
not sigh, do not weep. The priests are on the ocean green, they march along the
deep.” All my life since, I have secretly almost-believed this poem was
about Rosaleen coming across the ocean green to see us. I also firmly believed
that the song, “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes,” was
about the arrival of Rosaleen and the surprisingly circuitous route she might
take to get to us.
Rosaline brought with her a blast of warm air from a newer
world. She set herself up in the front room of Granny’s (her Mother’s house)
and lived out of a set of white suitcases that overflowed with cartons of Pall
Mall menthol cigarettes. My Dad took a moment to acclimatise to her American
accent, sitting on the winders of Granny’s stairs, looking out the front door over
Sligo Quay below, and quietly repeating the affirmation ‘Riiight’ after every time
Rosaline used it.
I don’t know what age I was when Rosaline first came home. I
know I was small. I thought she was a celestial being of sorts and I was in awe
of her. She taught me things that have stayed with me all my life. How to use a
nail brush to keep dirt from gathering under my fingernails. The taste and texture
of Yogurt (completely unknown to me before that) and most resiliently, the importance
of always walking on the outside of the pavement when stepping out with a lady.
This is something I still insist on doing in my everyday life, as a given, and Rosaline showed me
that.
My beloved Aunt Rosaline passed away on 28th December
2025. May she rest in peace.
When Rosaline got married, I would say around 1970, her
Mother and Father, my Granny and Grandad, travelled to Boston for an extended
stay around the time of the wedding. This was an unheard-of excursion for two
people of their vintage. My grandad, a stevedore on the Quay below his house, may
have dispatched many ships in that direction but could not have dreamed of ever going there himself. Rosaline lifted them across the ocean and showed them her
world and, upon their return, they seemed to my young eyes to be bigger and
stronger and easier in themselves, having struck out into the wide world and
seen their youngest daughter so excellently wed.
Granny and Grandad returned with an album of the most
amazing wedding photos. Grandad tall and proud in a white suit. The bride and
groom resplendent. They also brought an eye-watering array of gifts for me and
my brothers. A cassette tape recorder for one, a Polaroid camera for the other
(back when each of these things were James Bond-level exotic technology) and for
me, as the youngest, an unthinkably special thing. The story I was told, at
seven, was that Rosaline and Evan couldn’t think what to send me until, one
day, Evan went out and came back and said, “This is for Kenneth.” A gold watch.
A real gold wrist watch. I wore it everywhere for many years. A sign that I was
special, all the way from America.
Rosaline’s husband, Evan, was an extraordinary man. He was
very tall and strong and handsome while also being very gentle and thoughtful
and kind. He came to visit us with Rosaleen and we had never seen his like in
Sligo. He struck up a quiet, special, friendship with my late older brother Michael.
They were both quiet, special, guys. He scoured the town of Sligo for a
bottle of wine because, being Yugoslavian, he liked a tiny tipple with his
dinner. He found one of those bottles of Chianti with the straw covered based to the bottle.
Years later, I remember reminding him how he enjoyed that type of Chianti and he
smilingly whispered how he hated it but it was the only red wine he could find in
our town.
After Rosaline and Evan had Evan Junior and then Amy, they
all came home on several occasions and it was always a whole new breath of a different
air. They were beautiful children with auburn hair and brown eyes which stood
out among the Sligo brown hair/blue eye mix. Evan Jnr. ate Ravioli, which we had
never heard of, and drank apple juice, which we had never tasted. He had a games
console back home called ColecoVision and it annoyed him that the episodes of
The A Team on TV in Ireland were months behind his. But he really liked our white sliced
bread with butter on. We couldn’t imagine how something so ordinary could
elicit anything more than the most basic response… but it did. Amy was littler
and didn’t express her likes or dislikes so memorably at that time.
In December 1989, my fiancée Patricia and I set off on a year’s
trip around the world and our first stop was in Boston with Rosaline and Evan
Snr and Evan Jnr and Amy. We spent three weeks with them, on the run-in to
their Christmas. I have never felt more welcomed or comfortable in another
person’s home than I did then. I skiied with Evan Jnr and his friends in New Hampshire, gaining an interesting injury and a lifelong scar. I helped Amy with a book project deadline, showing her how reading the first line of every chapter might get her through. I drank Evan Snr.'s Draft Mickleob from the little bar in the corner of the kitchen. This, I feel, was when I got to know Rosaline
best. The excellent cook, the ultra-generous host, (which was always echoed by
gentle hard-working Evan), the feisty defender of her family and her beliefs. We
sat up late into several nights in her kitchen, conversations ranging across all
kinds of broad subjects. Her energy never waned, no matter the hour. Her light was always burning brightly, from where I was sitting at least.
To my regret, I lost touch with Rosaline after my Mother –
her sister – died. No good reason, just life and perhaps stasis on my part.
Although I will continue to regret that falling off of
communication, I will know that Rosaline Mihaich has always been, and
will always remain, a very large influence in my life and in how I deal with
people and challenges.
My Dad’s ancient recitation of ‘Dark Rosaleen’ may not offer
much ease, at your sad passing, but his fall-back material of ‘Inishfree’ may
offer us some word or two of solace.
“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes
dropping slow…”
Rest in peace, Dear Rosaline.
You were very special indeed.
K x
