The Craic
In Ireland we use dark humour to cope with the tough stuff. We call it the craic - and the craic will pull you back from the edge faster than a therapy session. My hero was Billy Connolly; he got me through more rough nights than I care to remember. Therapy matters (I’ve had it and I recommend it). So does a laugh that cuts through the shite.
I never signed up to be a poster child for resilience, yet here I am, a bereaved mother, a breast cancer survivor, a heart transplant recipient, and living with Parkinson’s disease. ‘Craic’, as we call it back home, means ‘fun’, but finding it amidst all the shite, well, that takes a special kind of stubbornness. My daughter, Kenzie, was diagnosed with a childhood cancer at the age of three and I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time. Kenzie died, and I didn’t. Years later, my broken heart failed me and I needed a transplant, then Parkinson’s waltzed in like an uninvited guest who refuses to leave, and still people say to me, ‘Everything happens for a reason’.
Aye, right. You can fuck right off.
This is not a story of ‘triumph over tragedy’. It’s about living when life doesn’t go to plan, grief that has no expiry date, a body that keeps breaking down, and a life that doesn’t follow the script. It’s also a story of refusing to be defined by death, illness, or the expectations of others, of stubbornly carving out joy — even when the universe seems hell-bent on making that impossible — and finding laughter in small, precious moments.
“What the actual fucketyfuck!” I exclaimed.
The hours of wine-fueled brainstorming had passed by without anyone noticing, and Conor and Kimmi were back early. I scrambled to my feet and tried to head them off. Too late.
Conor saw the coffin in all its glory, a bright pink, gleaming spectacle in the sunshine, surrounded by a group of startled and inebriated women covered in pink splotches.
"Oh, look, Mummy!” he said, pointing at our creation. “Can I get in it?”
