Seconds later Brendan came over to me looking very solemn.
‘Marie, there’s an urgent message to call your brother, Seamas; your mother has taken a turn,’ he said.
I immediately rushed over to the hotel, but it didn’t cross my mind that she had gone.
It was Seamas who broke the news to me. Mum had died an hour earlier. Staff at the hospital told my other brother, Brian, that her passing was very sudden.
She had just closed her eyes and slipped away.
It was a terrible shock to me because there had been no warning. She had been on top form when I left. Afterwards, when I had time to take it in, I came to the conclusion that Mum had somehow known her time was near, and she’d deliberately sent me away to make it easier on both of us.
* * *
As soon as the news filtered out in Limerick, I was surrounded by my second family, the people in Irish dancing who where there for the World Championships. The Irish dancing crowd are very competitive, but anytime anyone is in trouble and needs help they are the first to rally round and support each other. And that’s the way it was with me. All the teachers who were there from around the world had been busy up to that moment preparing their dancers for the competitions, but they immediately dropped everything and came to see me.
One of my friends, Isabella, then stepped back from her adjudicating duties and took over the responsibility of looking after all the young people from my school, while Brendan drove me back to Dublin. My two friends from Chicago, Laverne and Patrick Showalter, whose daughter, Julie, I had taught on a one-to-one basis in America, also accompanied me on the sad journey back to Dublin.
I will never forget the kindness of everyone at that time.
In life, Mum had never been on a stage, but we gave her a send-off fit for a star. We organised a beautiful funeral Mass, and the church in Kinsealy was packed with family, neighbours and old friends from all over the globe.
Then we took Mother on her final journey through her beloved city of Dublin, crossing the River Liffey as the cortège made it’s way to the south side, where we laid her to rest alongside my father in Mount Jerome Cemetery at Harold’s Cross.
In the aftermath, when everyone had gone back to their own lives and I was left to grieve alone, it was hard to believe that she was gone.
However, I had the consolation of knowing that, despite our ups and downs, there were no regrets; nothing had been left unsaid.
Mum knew that I loved her.
And I do believe that Mum had a hand in what happened next …
The Mystery Man
Waiting at the check-in desk for a red-eye flight out of Newcastle in the UK on a dark, chilly February morning in 1992, I noticed a distinguished-looking gent heading my way.
I remember thinking: ‘Now, there’s a very handsome man!’
It was just after 4.30 a.m. and I was the first and only person in the queue. There was nobody on duty at the check-in as it hadn’t opened. The airport was almost deserted at that moment, apart from the two of us and a few people here and there.
The good-looking, smartly dressed stranger with a head of beautiful silver hair stopped at the desk where I was standing and then sidled up beside me.
‘It’s not open yet,’ I said in a tone that staked my claim to pole position in the queue.
My opening salvo broke the ice. We introduced ourselves to each other and got chatting.
‘Ian Messenger is my name,’ the stranger said.
We made some chit-chat and then, as the conversation developed, Ian told me that he was going through a bereavement. His wife, Iris, had died suddenly a month earlier while waiting for a lung transplant.
I could see that Ian was absolutely heartbroken; the tears were welling up as he spoke. Although our circumstances were different, I could also empathise with the pain he was going through, having lost my mother the previous year.
I would later learn that Ian and Iris had enjoyed a blissfully happy marriage, and had reared a son and daughter, Barry and Lynda. Then their world came apart when Iris was diagnosed with a lung disease some years earlier. Ian had remained totally devoted to Iris as they battled through this horrible period in their lives.
On the morning I met him, Ian had taken time off from his job to mend his shattered life, and was heading abroad to spend some time with his friends, Paul and Ruth Meyn, in Kansas, USA. The early part of Ian’s working life had been spent in the British army. When he retired from the army, Ian then found employment with the Newcastle regional government where he was then working in the housing department as chief procurement officer.
Something else had happened to Ian that broke him completely in the immediate aftermath of Iris’ passing. They had a lovely poodle called Lady that they both adored. Lady was like another human being in their family, as people who own dogs or other pets will understand. Ian lived in a place called Prudhoe outside Newcastle, and a week earlier, while they were out walking, Lady ran on to a road and was struck by a passing car. The little dog died in Ian’s arms at the side of the ditch.
Losing his pet, and this very tangible connection with Iris, was just too much to bear. Ian decided to take off. That morning he was flying to Manchester to catch a connecting flight to Kansas.
As we finally checked in and waited to board our flight on that wintry morning, Ian asked if I would be returning to Newcastle at any point in the future.
I had told Ian about my work as an Irish dancing teacher, explaining that I had been over to do a workshop.
‘Actually, I think I’m coming back in a couple of months,’ I said in reply to his question.
‘Maybe I could take you out for a pizza then,’ Ian suggested.
‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ I told him.
I had only known him for an hour, but already I felt very comfortable in Ian’s company.
Then we exchanged our home phone numbers before going our separate ways.
* * *
The strange aspect to meeting Ian is that I shouldn’t have been in the airport that morning.
One of my longtime friends Mary Lyndsay McMaster, an Irish dancing teacher and adjudicator from Newcastle, had asked me if I would be interested in doing a workshop there for a local dancing school run by a lady called Barbara Slator. It’s an easy journey from Dublin to Newcastle, so I took up the offer.
On my first weekend trip over in November of that year, 1991, I brought along one of my dancers, Derval O’Brien, to demonstrate the steps.
Barbara Slator’s class turned out to be a very talented group of dancers, and many of them would later end up in Lord of the Dance. Barbara asked me back the following February, and this time I was on my own.
As I was going to be in Newcastle for only a couple of days, I decided to travel light with a carry-on bag. I went over on the Friday, and my return journey was Sunday evening on an Aer Lingus flight. We did classes until the afternoon on the Sunday, and then I went for a bite to eat and a good chat with Barbara in one of the airport hotels before the flight.
I was in a very relaxed mood because Newcastle is a very small airport and I knew that I didn’t have to check in until an hour beforehand, especially as I had a carry-on bag. Eventually I said goodbye to Barbara and went off to get my flight home after a very fruitful weekend with the young dancers.
I was on top form as I approached the Aer Lingus desk. I gave the person on duty my ticket, and produced my passport.
The young ground stewardess checked my details, and I could see her smiley face change to a look of concern.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a long pause. ‘I’m afraid you don’t have a seat.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, confident that she was making a mistake.
‘I’m afraid your seat has been allocated to another passenger,’ she informed me.
At this point I could feel anger welling up inside me.
‘How could that happen?’ I blurted out, incredulously.
‘We thought you weren’t comin
g, so we gave it away,’ she explained, shuffling in her seat.
I tapped my ticket on the counter, insisting, ‘I have a ticket that’s bought and paid for; how could you give my seat to somebody else? I was here in plenty of time, I’m totally within the rules, and I have carry-on luggage.’
Then I began to panic.
‘When is the next flight?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid this is the last one out of Newcastle tonight,’ she told me in an apologetic tone.
Now I really felt a sense of panic.
‘I have to get to Dublin tonight. I have a very important job at nine in the morning,’ I insisted, telling a little white lie.
I usually kept Monday mornings free, but I didn’t want all the hassle of staying in Newcastle that night, and having to get up in the middle of the night for an early morning flight the following day.
‘I’m afraid our first flight doesn’t leave until nine tomorrow morning,’ the stewardess then informed me.
Now that I had worked myself up to a state of indignation, I insisted that I had to be in Dublin for my meeting at nine in the morning and I refused to budge until I got a satisfactory solution from the airline.
After some further checking and conferring with a colleague, the stewardess then gave me the option of staying in a nearby hotel overnight at the airline’s expense, then taking a flight to Manchester at six in the morning to catch a connecting flight to Dublin, where I would be in lots of time for my 9 a.m. meeting.
‘Okay, that’s fine,’ I said.
As I walked out of the airport to the hotel, the thought suddenly struck me.
‘What have I done! I don’t need to be in Dublin at nine. Now I have to get up in the middle of the night to get the first of two flights.’
Be careful what you argue for!
And that’s how I ended up being the first in line the following morning for my flight to Manchester … when Ian Messenger walked into my life.
Strange coincidences happen, but later Ian and I would say that perhaps
Iris and my mother had a hand in my being bumped off the flight the previous night.
* * *
In the immediate aftermath of my mother’s death, I finally decided that the time was right for a move to America. It had been Mum’s wish for me in my early adult life, but I didn’t have the courage or the conviction at that time to take the leap out of my life in Ireland. I had never given up on the idea, so now the time felt right for me to start afresh in the States.
I had lots of connections there, of course, from doing Chicago workshops with the Showalters, and with Trinity, a big school run by Mark Howard. I had also worked with Maureen Hall in California, Peter Smith in New Jersey, Mary McGing in Cincinnati, Ann Richens in Daton, Ohio and at Helen Gannon’s school in St Louis. Helen was born and raised in Limerick city where she grew up learning Irish dancing with a lady called Mrs LeGeer. When Helen got married, she emigrated to St Louis in 1967 with her physician husband, P.J., and went on to become the first commissioned Irish dance instructor in the state of Missouri, and a huge figure in Comhaltas over there.
It was Helen who said to me that if I was interested in applying for a visa to America she would help me through the cultural sources there. As I was financially independent and well able to support myself in a career in the world of Irish dancing, Helen didn’t foresee any obstacle to me being granted a visa. So I went through the whole process, doing the red tape, filling in all the forms from the American Embassy, getting my medical examination, and everything else that goes with it. I was then expecting to get my final clearance in April of that year, 1992.
* * *
A few weeks later I came home from an evening dance class in Dublin, and there was a message on my phone. It was a voicemail from Ian, which began by reminding me that we had met in the airport.
‘I’m just wondering if you are coming back to Newcastle, or maybe I’ll take a weekend trip to Dublin as I’ve never been,’ he said.
I wouldn’t say my heart skipped a beat, though I was quite excited to hear his voice. But to be honest, I hadn’t given my encounter with Ian at Newcastle Airport much thought when I returned home as I was so caught up in my work, and my mind was also in a whirl about starting a new life in America.
When I returned Ian’s phone call, the conversation flowed easily, like we were old friends. At the end of it, we had arranged to meet up in Dublin. I suggested the nearest hotels to where I was living in the city.
This was my way of setting the ground rules, keeping it formal because, really, Ian was a stranger to me. He booked the Skylon Hotel, which is not very far from Dublin Airport, and came over the following weekend.
The time just flew in Dublin that weekend with Ian. He was a great conversationalist, interesting, attentive, entertaining and with a great sense of humour. Ian was also a very good listener.
I really enjoyed his company over those couple of days, and the feeling was mutual. I know this, because the next time I got a phone call after he returned home, Ian asked me to marry him!
I didn’t see the proposal coming and I was speechless on the other end of the line. ‘Hello, hello …’ Ian said.
‘Yes, I’m still here,’ I told him, not knowing what else to say.
Eventually I spluttered, ‘We don’t know each other very long.’
Ian was confident. ‘I’ve always made up my mind very quickly on things that I know are right,’ he explained.
He told me that it had been the same with Iris. Ian knew very quickly that they had been right for each other. Now he felt the same about me.
I didn’t say yes straight away, but neither did I turn him down. There was something about this man that intrigued me. I believe I have good instincts, and my impression of Ian, in the short period of getting to know him, was all good. He was a lovely, kind, gentle man. And, of course, very easy on the eye.
I went over to Newcastle and spent some time with Ian. He introduced me to his friends and work colleagues, all of whom were decent, friendly, welcoming people. I could see that they were all so fond of Ian, which was no surprise considering his lovely nature. And very quickly I formed the same opinion as
Ian: that the relationship felt so right.
After waiting a lifetime, I felt I had nothing to lose.
‘Okay, let’s go for it,’ I finally told Ian in reply to his proposal.
This was coming up to the World Championships, so it was within a year of my mother passing away.
I truly believe that she did her little job.
* * *
In the meantime, I was notified that my American visa had been approved. I just had to do the final trip out to the States to sign off on it. Even though events were now moving very fast in my personal life, I decided to keep my options open. So I headed off across the Atlantic in March and got my visa to work in America.
When I returned to Ireland, I was immediately caught up in all the demands of the World Championships, which were being held in Limerick again that year.
At this stage, I still hadn’t confided in any of my close circle of friends about Ian because there had been so much going on at the speed of a Grand Prix race.
Down at the World Championships in Limerick, I received a call from Ian to say that he was travelling over to Dublin to see me. I arranged with my brother Seamas to go and pick him up at the airport and take care of him until I got back a day later. It was during this visit that Ian suggested we should explore the city’s jewellery shops for an engagement ring, an expedition that concluded with the purchase of my sparkler.
Now that I had made an official commitment to Ian, it was time to tell my family and all my friends in the world of dance near and far.
You can imagine the shock waves among my friends at home and abroad. They had waited for decades to hear that I had found someone to share my life with. Then they had assumed, as I did, that I’d missed the boat to find a husband. Now here I was, in my middle age, announcing out of
the blue that I was getting married to a man nobody had ever met, or even heard about!
I’m sure that some people harboured concerns for a time about the turn my life was taking, but that would have been out of love for me. Once people met Ian and the word spread about the lovely man in my life, any worries people had about the ‘mystery man’ instantly went away.
Once I had accepted Ian’s proposal and the ring had been purchased, we both agreed to marry at the earliest opportunity. I joked to friends that I was now forty-seven years old, so time wasn’t on my side. I also said I wanted to make sure this fella didn’t get away. It was a very exciting time and I had a lot of fun with it.
I never thought for one moment that organising a church wedding would then spoil my party.
Wedding Blues and Riverdance
My mother’s prayers had been answered the day Ian asked me to marry him; I know she was smiling down on me at that moment.
In life, Mum was religious and, as I mentioned earlier, she believed in the power of prayer. Both of us had been regular churchgoers in Kinsealy during the period that we lived there together. And we were known to the local priests, as they visited my mother when she was ill.
Ian and myself decided that we would get married there in August, which would be six months after our first encounter in Newcastle Airport. As I was living in Kinsealy, my dream was to have my wedding ceremony in the lovely local church.
Ian wasn’t a member of the Catholic faith, but he had expressed his wish to convert. He had never been baptised. As the youngest of a very large family, Ian’s parents had given him the option of choosing his religion when he was old enough to make that decision.
I went up to the priests’ house in Kinsealy to book in a date and make arrangements for our wedding.
The priest, a man in his forties, looked concerned when I told him that I wanted to get married as soon as possible. This priest had been to my home numerous times visiting my mother when she was sick and of course he would have noticed that there wasn’t a man around the place that I was likely to wed. But I remember laughing to myself: ‘Surely to God he doesn’t think I’m pregnant and this is a shotgun wedding at my age!’
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