Shadows On My Shoulder

By Con Hurley

In this memoir Con Hurley gives hope to all those who suffer from addiction. Through the pain of his own addiction he slowly came to the realisation that there is no cure but that the path of recovery is a path of constant renewal and celebration of life. Shadows on my Shoulder details his courageous journey from the poverty of a Cork childhood to addiction and finally to a life in recovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limerick Writers Centre
• Release date: Jan 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463244470

Con Hurley

Con Hurley was born in 1961 and lived in the Northside of Cork City, along with 21 siblings. He started work at age 10 selling newspapers around the city before joining the Irish army at 17. After leaving the army he fell into a life of addiction which saw his life spiral out of control. Following counselling he was offered a job at a centre in which he was a volunteer. In 2017 he graduated with a diploma in drug and alcohol addiction from the University of Limerick. He is married with 2 children and lives with his family in Mallow, Co. Cork.

Book preview

Shadows On My Shoulder

The heart-warming memoir of a

larger- than-life Irish family

Con Hurley

Limerick Writers’ Centre

Publishing

Copyright © Con Hurley 2019

First published in Ireland by

The Limerick Writers’ Centre

12 Barrington Street Limerick, Ireland

www.limerickwriterscentre.com

www.facebook.com/limerickwriterscentre

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Book/Cover Design: Lotte Bender

Cover Image: Jim Furlong

Ebook Formatting: Máire Baragry

Consulting Editor: J. Vincent Moran

Managing Editor: Dominic Taylor

ACIP catalogue number for this publication is available from The British Library

To all those still suffering with addiction

Shadows on my shoulder

Rain clouds overhead

Silence steals across a lonely room

A distant door swings open

Blackbird wings on high

One more day to rescue

One more dream to try …

J. Vincent Moran

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the help and assistance of the following:

Mr Brian O’Connell (author) Rotary Club, Limerick

Fr Pat Fogarty

SuperValu Kanturk (Twohig's)

Teach Mhuire Staff and Residents

Jack Spratt Butchers, Roxboro Road, Limerick

My wife's family and friends

Shannon Bowman, Graphic Designer

My editor J. Vincent Moran

Dominic Taylor, Limerick Writers’ Centre

Everyone who contributed to the benefit night on 15/12/2018.

Foreword

Here is a remarkably honest narrative the intention of which is to help humanity. It’s a very big book for this and it reads as an eloquent one. On these pages you find a man who had a lot going for him and who lost things but who has been touched by life in a way that brings through special awareness of life’s complexity, its experiences good and bad and the manner in which a human being can win over adversity. Alongside Con Hurley; the man who is the author, we find the people and especially the family who’ve supported him and given his life the rich quality it retains. These are huge gifts with the book in your hands. Con`s intention with ‘Shadows on my Shoulders` is very simple and direct. This book exists to help people; to help any individual, and to that there was only ever going to be one approach. Honesty. It was everything that interested Con when time came to put pen to paper.

The author reasons that anybody can write their own life story and all it takes is consistency. What’s abundantly clear from `Shadows on my Shoulders`, which is brought forth by the Limerick Writers Centre, is the fact that Con is a gentleman and family man and it is his consistency that’s brought Con to where he is now. Through each page turn what becomes most clear is that love of family; provided to Con and given by him, remains a constant and is kept in the hope from his heart. I knew Con many years ago, and I’ve always been taken with the love of the family that they share. It’s an abiding strength about them. I find Cons noble desire to help any individual going through any stretch of life to be typical of the man and am delighted that `Shadows on my Shoulders` is finally among us. It’s a beautiful book the intention behind which is exceptional and wonderfully appropriate to these changed times. I can’t recommend it more highly. He now has angles on his shoulders.

Catriona Twomey of Cork Penny Dinners.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1

Growing Up On Margarine Hill

Chapter 2

Life Begins In Earnest

Chapter 3

Love Lost – And Found

Chapter 4

Scourge of Addiction

Chapter 5

Road to Recovery

Chapter 6

My Forgotten Children

Chapter 7

Walking Back To Happiness

About the Author

About the Limerick Writers' Centre

Chapter One

Growing up in Margarine Hill

One of my reasons for putting pen to paper was to take a long hard look inside myself, to reveal not just who I was but who I have become, and how, beyond the scourge of the twin-addictions of gambling and alcohol, I found the road to redemption, dare I say honour, among the Hurley’s of Cork city environs. Another, equally important reason was, as a matter of record, to document the ups and downs of an exceptionally large family of brothers and sisters (some of whom died in childbirth), and from which invaluable life experience would be gleaned from the school of hard knocks, for which there is no substitute.

I was born on 15th of July, 1961 at 04.10am, and my twin sister Rosealine ten minutes later at 4.20am in St. Finbarr’s Hospital. Located at Douglas Road, the hospital, which is now a care home for the elderly, was designed by George Wilkinson, a British architect who worked largely in Ireland, and was completed in 1841.

Before I arrived, my mother, whose maiden name was Mags Quinn, would suffer tough times rearing a very large family, and her life as I recall, confirmed by my siblings, would turn out to be a turbulent and extremely difficult one.

My elder sister Kim, the oldest of the brood, informed me some years ago that she had also decided to put pen to paper about life growing up in Spangle Hill, known to them as Margarine Hill, and what it was like for mum and dad. Growing up in that neighbourhood was hard for some, and easy for many, she told me. We, of course, were in the former category, the pariahs who had nothing. Moreover, as if to make matters worse, jealousy would play its part. Most of the houses were painted every weekend, windows sparkling, gardens trim and tidy. Not ours for we had very little of anything. Some residents had toilet tissue but we had to settle for undignified newspaper! This was cut into squares and placed on steel coat hangers on a block of wood alongside the toilet. If you ran out of paper my dad would say: wipe your arse with a sod of grass!

During those hard times we used papers for the tablecloth, and drank our tea from half pint bottles of Guinness or Murphy’s stout, as my sister Kim recalls. We didn’t have knives or folks or spoons and we were told to eat with our fingers.

Notwithstanding these straightened circumstances, mother was a very proud woman and never let on to anyone about how bad things really were. She would make a big pot of stew on Mondays and make it last for days. That was her modus operandi, to ensure things remained imperishable for as long as possible, the milk, for example, being diluted with water. On weekends we were served rabbit stew, and other days, chicken. If we were lucky!

Tupperware was utilised for pretty much everything on the kitchen table, and when it came to clothing we wore hand-me-downs, acquired from generous neighbours. Even the nuns and priests took pity on us!

Of course, in that atmosphere of impoverishment, very few friends were allowed into our home, especially because of Kim, who as the eldest, felt more conscious of our domestic deprivations.

Dad was from the country and mum was from the north side of the city. They got married against everyone’s wishes. This was after my mother had returned home after having run away to London. Kim was born in 1955 and the family lived over a shop in the marsh in a one bed roomed flat.

When mum became pregnant again with our brother Gary our aunt decided to live with them. She was dad’s sister from down the country. It was very crowded, and everyone was squashed above the shop. It wasn’t long before mum became pregnant again on her third child and it was then that they were offered a nice house in Spangle hill. It had four bedrooms and gardens front and rear.

Going to town on weekends was brilliant, heading to places like Coal Quay where mum sought bargains everywhere she went - from Bradleys in the north main street to Peggy Toomey’s, and then over to the English market. After they got settled in their new home it was like clockwork with mum being pregnant virtually every nine months, with more and more mouths to feed.

Kim didn’t know what was happening being so young and having to look after her siblings.