Sunday, May 8, 2011

A Mother’s Day Remembrance of the Pulse of Our Hearts

In Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Million-Dollar Baby, his character, crusty Frankie Dunn, is reluctantly persuaded to train young female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald. Eventually warming to her, the Yeats-loving Dunn nicknames his protegee “Mo Cuishle." It’s an adaptation of a Gaelic phrase, A chuisle mo chroí, whose translation, Dunn reveals toward the end of the film, is “My darling.”


I, however, prefer something far more poetic, and closer to its literal meaning: “Pulse of my heart.”

For more than 50 years, the "pulse of my heart" for me and my brothers was our Irish-American mother,who died this past September. (My eulogy for her is here. )


On this first Mother's Day without her, we can say that death might have ended her life, but not the love for her that rests in her sons--a love sure to endure, in fact, to the last pulse of our hearts.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Very nice Mike. As you know life still goes on and she is in a better place.

MikeT said...

That hope gives me great comfort, Donal. Thanks.

AJC said...

Love is stronger than death and your mom's legacy lives on in you and your brothers.

MikeT said...

Thanks to both of you for the kind comments.