Awakened by an Unexpected Gift

By Fergus Cayr

As we go through life, we meet, work, socialize, or attend meetings and religious services with people who we only know casually.

But there is a story that could be told about each of them.

Here is one of those people.

Her hidden life will take your breath away if you really get to know her. She is more than just an ordinary acquaintance. There is a depth to her that only the most intimate associates know.

Here is your opportunity to really know that person with whom you rubbed elbows. It will provide you with insights that you had never known previously. It will make you a better person in the bargain. Her life can be a catalyst for you to begin to find ways to love and comfort your suffering brothers and sisters.

Our broken world certainly needs more people like her. You can be such a person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512723847

Fergus Cayr

Fergus Cayr is the pen name of a first-time author, educated for a career in mathematics and engineering with four years each of Latin, French, and philosophy. His real education came from the person with whom he walked hand in hand for fifty-eight years, sharing with her all the pains and joys of this story.

Book preview

Prologue

The Awful Gift

It was a dark and stormy night.

Actually, it was not, but I had promised Paige that this was the way her story would begin.

It was a cold and dreary late-February evening in the suburbs of New York. The snowstorm two days earlier had left an unsightly mess in the parking lot when I dropped Paige off at the meeting. The footing was difficult, and I offered to walk her to the door, but she was intent on going it alone.

When I returned to pick her up an hour or so later, I was in the presence of a person completely different from the tentative young lady who had exited the car earlier. I didn't know it at the time, but this fact would grow more apparent to me in the days to follow.

But more about that as her story unfolds. I must begin the story many years back, more than fifty years earlier.

A family---of what an observer would see as just another group of Irish immigrants---arrived in New York City on a ship from what we now call Northern Ireland. The family members were mother and father, daughter and son. They had come to find a new life, as so many others had done, and they had left behind in Ireland another daughter who would marry an Anglican seminarian and travel with him as a missionary to South Africa, never to return to her Irish homeland.

Having no particular skills, and beset by a terrible disease, the father was unable to establish himself in his new country. They had made no prior arrangements for living in this city, in a land that was completely new to them. They knew no one and had no support system in place, and they did not have the spirit of pioneers. They just could not get a foothold to build a long-term family life in America. Abruptly, the mother and father returned to their native land, leaving behind their daughter and son, both of them barely past school age.

The son was Jeffrey, named for his father. Like his father before him, Jeffrey was not gifted with any particular skill or trained in any craft. With the United States immersed in the war in Europe, there was a recruiting effort under way for soldiers. In order to find a niche in his new country, Jeffrey enlisted in the US Army. He was to spend his entire tour of duty during the waning days of World War I in New York State at what was then Camp Upton on Long Island. In the army, he learned no skills. To the army, he was just a grunt---and a foreigner to boot.

World War I ended, and the army immediately started thinning the ranks. Jeffrey was among the first to be discharged, which presented him with a serious, even life-threatening, challenge. His only asset was excellent schooling in the British school system in Northern Ireland. He could read and write, and he loved to do both. It would be well to recall that reading and writing were not common among the average New York youths of the day. Bolstered by this single, simple talent, Jeffrey found employment with a major book publisher in New York City. The job was that of a clerk, but it was to be a start in life on his own.

Reduced to living in a rooming house, he led a lonely existence. The only contact he had with his family, now back in Ireland, was a rare, brief letter. He and his sister drifted apart, as she was likewise challenged to make it on her own.

After some time had passed, he met an attractive half--Irish American lass, and they planned to be married. Maude was Catholic, and Jeffrey was Anglican, but they didn't find that to be an obstacle to their marriage. For Jeffrey it was like a miracle had happened to him. He could barely take care of his personal needs and sorely needed a mother. As for Maude, she had found a prize in this six-foot-four, redheaded, good-looking man. She had no hesitation in providing him with all the care that he sorely wanted and, indeed, needed. She would be a mother to him, and that would be her role in the family for the rest of their life together.

Upon hearing that Jeffrey was marrying a Roman, his father and mother disowned him, and he would never receive another letter or hear of them again. To a staunch Anglican Orangeman living in Northern Ireland, there was no compromising the bitter hatred for Catholics. It was unacceptable that the son of this family was marrying one.

Jeffrey did, perhaps once a year, receive a letter from his sister in South Africa, but she never spoke of their father and mother. Perhaps she too had little contact with her parents. The letters were just a description of her life as a missionary. While they were interesting stories, they told him nothing about the family that was now lost to him.

Meanwhile, his sister in New York had met and married a man who would take her to a faraway place called New Jersey. She and Jeffrey lost track of each other, and his final family tie was broken. Jeffrey no longer had any family except for his wife.

Jeffrey and Maude proceeded to start a family of their own and would raise five children. Actually, Maude raised the five children. The disease that was the bane of Jeffrey's father had been passed down to Jeffrey. He had no understanding of himself or his disease, and he couldn't make sense of the feelings that were tearing him apart. Jeffrey handled his disease by becoming increasingly reclusive. His life consisted of working at his job, listening to New York Yankee games on the radio during the summer, and reading constantly whenever he wasn't working or listening to the radio. That may appear to be a trivial way to describe his life, but this was the reality of how he confronted every day, and confrontation it was.

All responsibility for the family was left up to Maude. Finances, clothing, food, religious observance, schooling, social activities---none of these were in his field of vision. He made none of the decisions that a father should rightly make for his family. He spoke kindly to his wife and children but made no effort to be the father figure, the head of the household.

Maude had been raised by a very stern mother who was very much in charge of her own family. Maude's father was a henpecked husband but one who was successful in his own small business when he was away from his wife. Maude had lived with her parents in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where Maude's mom had taught her to be self-reliant and to always do the right thing. Her mother was definitely the matriarch of her family. So Maude was well prepared to be the head of her own household when the time came.

The story that you are about to hear is the story of one of those five children of Jeffrey and Maude. This is the story of Paige, the third child, the sandwiched child, who would suffer many emotional wounds in her early life.

Chapter 1

Early Years

The first two children of Jeffrey and Maude were a boy and a girl who would be named, as was natural in an Irish family, after their father and mother. These first two children were their parents' pride and joy. At that point they were the perfect family, except for the inroads that Jeffrey's disease had started to make in their lives. Maude raised the children and saw to every responsibility in the home. Jeffrey brought home his weekly paycheck. That was all he could manage, and as time went on, that was all that Maude expected. She asked for nothing more than a stable household and healthy children.

Jeffrey never learned to drive a car, and the family never owned one. But Maude could visit her parents by riding the local bus. Maude's father did drive and did have a car, so the parents could come to visit.

After a few years, Maude was pregnant with her third child. Another girl was born, who would be named Paige. Her arrival was received as a mixed blessing, for she was in some ways a burden. Paige disturbed the makeup of the perfect family. A family of one boy and one girl would have suited Maude. Paige was not lavished with affection, as were her older siblings.

Her recollection of growing up in those early years was that it was without any highlights or upbeat moments. She grew like a garden shrub. Life just happened, and it was very dull. Her older brother, Jeff, became a good buddy and showed her affection. In turn, she became his gofer and happily did his bidding. Her older sister, Maude, kept her distance, lest she become Paige's full-time babysitter. So Paige and Maude never had a warm relationship in the early years of Paige's life.

Paige reacted by resorting to pouting as a child and she would become obstinate to gain attention. It didn't work well with her mother but somehow her father began to show her affection. He may have sensed in Paige the beginnings of the feelings that were eating away at himself. And he enjoyed having a friend even if was just a child.

Paige was brought up strictly in the Irish tradition of cleanliness, respect for others, punctuality, good manners, and diligent completion of assigned tasks. As she grew, so did her father's disease. It was a subtle and almost unnoticeable progression.

Jeffrey was a soft and gentle man. He never spoke harshly to anyone, child or adult. But he was a man of inaction, never taking the lead in any area of life. It seemed that he never lifted a finger to assist in any of the activities that surrounded him. One very significant detail was that Jeffrey never called his wife by her given name, always saying Mom when he spoke to her directly or referred to her. He continued that practice until his death many years in the future. It was a hallmark of how he identified himself within the family.

He began to rise very early in the day and leave the house before anyone else had risen. He just wanted to be by himself, even if it meant sitting alone at his job for hours before the other employees arrived. He spent all his idle time reading any book that he could find. He also began to go to bed very early for the same reason. He wanted to shun all human contact. He didn't understand himself, because the disease was insidious and baffling. By his own resources, he could do nothing to conquer it. The only control he had was his wife, Maude.

Maude, on the other hand, needed to be with people. So they began a ritual of weekend house parties at their apartment. They never owned their own home, always living in rented apartments. Maude found a secondhand piano, and she began to play all the old songs while she and Jeffrey sang along. Of course, these kinds of parties were more enjoyable with a few drinks of alcohol. For Maude it was just a pleasant weekend party. For Jeffrey, it was the start of a bitter downhill slide.

Paige remembered the parties vividly. They were the only good part of an otherwise regimented and dull life. Paige had few friends, even though they lived in a very crowded city community. Her only permanent girlfriend lived nearby, and she too was sorely in need of a companion. So they stuck together, riding bicycles or just hanging out and talking about boys and what they were going to do when they grew up. They would ride their bicycles down along the Belt Parkway walkway until they reached Fort Hamilton. They had a view of the water in the bay, and it was a pleasant outing for them. One time they even got up the nerve to go horseback riding at the stable that was