Visions Of You

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Sinéad O’Connor by Thomas Ryan RHA. 1974.

Sinéad O’Connor writes:

Message For My Mother On the 29th Anniversary Of Her Death.
Hey Mother,
I miss you.. though I never had you.. I have had you since you were gone. I can’t have your picture on my walls or shelves.. I can’t look at your beautiful face.. Because it reminds me of what you did. But I miss you. I would have liked to take care of you as an adult.. show you some of the love perhaps that you, because of Ireland in my opinion,were unequipped to show.
I can’t bear what you did to and can’t forgive you on behalf of my siblings. But I can forgive you on my behalf.. Not that I am not decimated by what you did to me personally.. .. on many levels… But my spirit didn’t get got.. (Neither did my siblings’) and that’s lucky. And even as you were sitting on me… I could see your soul through the violence of your countenance and feel desperately sorry for it and would wish upon no one the torment it suffered while upon this earth.
I had mixed feeling when you died… mostly I was blasted apart.. brokenhearted.. Not only by the violence of your death in your car.. and the loss of you.. But the loss of the chance that anything would ever be OK.. fixed.. sorted.. acknowledged. Healed… We would never have the mother we never had…
We would never also get to take you to court.. Which would have been inevitable .. My brother Joseph said it best in I believe, in Magill Magazine.. or similar… that “If my mother had done to an adult what she did to us, she would be behind bars”.  Such were the 60s and 70s in Ireland.
But true the overriding loss to me all since you’ve been gone is that I didn’t get to be your daughter as an adult and buy you things with red roses on.. as you loved red roses so much. I see white thimbles in shops. with red roses.. or Cotton hankies such as you loved.. embroidered table cloths.. The Yeast Co in town.. as you loved to bake and were such a master chef.. I have to pretend I don’t see them… But inside my heart throbs despite my ability to make my eyes blind.. I can never buy these things for you… I can never make your life better.
I wondered when I went to the Grammys on my first album.. was I glad or sad you weren’t there?… I had a nightmare once.. one of the worst of my life… that I had left [son] Jakey with you as a baby.. to mind him while I went somewhere.. I woke screaming and sweating… I would never have left my babies with you even for a moment.. I couldn’t in truth have risked you ever seeing them unsupervised by social services.
They ask about you. Shaney especially… I haven’t told them much. They’ve never asked why don’t we have pictures of Granny.. They see my soul (like I saw yours) … despite Oscar winning efforts.. shadow over when they mention you.. and change the subject.. I can’t tell them .. as it says in The Book Of Job.. which I have lived.. inside my soul … .. that you tore up my hope like a tree. Just as I can’t answer when they ask me “Why is that man on the cross?”.
I .. as you probably know.. went to your grave on September 10th with my friend Joe.. We bought like a hundred small red rose plants and met a grave minder who planted your grave over the next few weeks so that it is a bed of roses.. so very far from what your life was..
At the back of my garden I have an Immaculate Conception grave ornament same picture you used to give me on my birthday.. which was the Feast Of The Immaculate Conception… the image of a better mother.. it helped me know I could be a good mother when I grew up.. I always wanted since I was a child.. to be a mother.. and because your mother was so gentle and so kind and so good to me.. and loved me so much .. I have always wanted to be a granny..
If not for that image you gave me I wouldn’t have known I was sacred as a female.. because you so much drilled it into me I was unwanted for the very fact of being female.. and did what best you could to decimate everything that made me female.. Yet your subconscious gave me the sacred female.. God is so good and kind.
If not for God I wouldn’t have survived you.. or being in the world managing the effects of you.. along with the triggers of the world.. which are so very painfully many.
But you liked me to sing to you… it was the only time you were ever peaceful.. it was like singing the devil to sleep at one’s feet.. only you’d be on the sofa.. quiet and still.. your violent body not a threat for at least a short while… perhaps you might love me .. if I sang gently and quietly enough…
You loved ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’.. (Freud would have a field day).. I sang it so gentle and quiet so many many times.. and made you slumber…and then as an adult I recorded it.. and guess what???? you’d be SO proud of this.. Tim Rice wrote to me and told me it was THE best version of the song he had ever heard in his life I was SO fucking proud…. No one sings it gentle… but small Sinead…
I wrote a song or two about you obviously… Several in fact…My favorite is ‘If U Ever’… I can’t sing it though.. I tried to sing it at a show about five years ago and had to stop and cry for a full thirty seconds (while the audience clapped… I was a bit weirded.. not sure if clapping a good thing since I had said what the song was about beforehand.. your death..).. I’ve never sang it since and never will.
But every time I sing ‘Nothing Compares’ I think of you.. I won’t always be imagining it’s you I’m singing to.. I’m a Stanislavsky method singer… I pick who comes… But I always get a little lump when I hear the intro and sing the first line… then I have to let you go.

I’m glad I sang to you so much.. and that you loved John Lennon… I wouldn’t have been the kind of artist I am if not for all the scattered parts of you.. I have lived because of you .. that is certainly true.. and had the shit kicked out of me for being the outcome of the likes of you.. People don’t understand at all.
Anyway… I’ve never spoken to you really since you died.. maybe at your grave but never like this.. I’ve never written you a letter.. or said a word beyond Deansgrange
I hope you like the bed of roses. I hope God has had compassion on your soul. I hope you are somewhere being loved. When I pass over I used to think I wanted you to meet me.. at the edge of the beautiful river… But I want John Lennon to come.. and take me to see Joe Strummer… and I’m gonna hang with Howlin’ Wolf.. and Peter Tosh… They gonna chill me out for a while so I won’t be frightened.. and then my beautiful granny.. your mother will come… and tell me everything is ok.. and that yes.. you have been somewhere safe.. gently resting.. and that it is my choice to make.. when or if I am ready to look upon your face.”

Sinéad O’Connor

Reproduced with permission.

Sinéad O’Connor (facebook)

 

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