Remember my last post? Ah nah, it was actually my second to last post. This goes to show how scattered my mind has been lately. But, what are the chances of you writing a joyful blog on your commute to work that carries the title Monday has sent a jewel, only to have your contract ended prematurely before the day is ended.
And yet…
And yet, it was a good premonition. I suffice to say, my previous employer and I were definitely not a match… So my contract was ended the following Monday, on August the 10th. Luckily, we have a good safety net here in the Netherlands and for the first two months of unemployment I am receiving 75 percent of the average of what I earned in the previous year, I think it is. Better still, I have found a new job that starts on Monday 5 October! I already had an informal lunch with my future colleagues and some team leaders last weer, and I felt very much at home.
At home
Back at home, after the lunch I felt exhausted again. I have been feeling like this since my contract ended. That’s how it goes, doesn’t it if you’ve spent months in the wrong environment… On the positive side, I also just felt so relieved. From Day 1, I had felt I didn’t belong and when it was finally out in the open, relief was instant, even though a lot of practical and financial problems popped up as well. I dealt with them, and then exhaustion set in.
I couldn’t work on my novel, only jotted down stuff in my journal to offload. And I don’t know how it started, but my granny started to fill my mind:
Bridget Bett-Hickey
(1905 – 1969)
She was 64 when she died, the same age as me now. They lived near us in Auckland, New-Zealand at the time and were visiting my uncle Gerry in Melbourne when she died. My aunty Marie got the call from her brother, waking her up from a nightmare she’d been having, aunty Marie told me, years later. She had been dreaming that her brother had died, but her brother was calling to tell her that her mother had passed away.
I cried so much when I found out, I even picked up a dead mouse in the garden that day and started stroking it. “Oh, you must be a grandmother too!” I wailed until my father put an end to that.
But it could have been worse. When she was only four years old, my granny nearly drowned in the Grand Canal in Leixlip, near Dublin. She was saved by my great-grandmother but my great-grandfather Peter Hickey drowned when he too tried to save her.
If my grandmother had drowned, I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. So I want to tell as much as I can and am setting out to find out all I can about my granny’s life, and that fateful day on the 22nd of March 1909.
There are still pieces of the story I’m trying to find. If you have any knowledge of the Cummins, Hickey or related families around Leixlip/Kildare, please leave a comment or email me.
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