“Be sure to spend time with your parents while you can. Because one day when you look up from your busy life, they won’t be there anymore” – Anon.
When I tell people the name of my blog, initially they’re taken aback. Seeing “death”, “dying” or “dies” in a sentence is often seen as something sad or taboo but BeforeMyMamDies.com or BMMD for short, is anything but that. We are keen travellers, celebrating life.
In 1991, I was adopted as a newborn from Hanoi, Vietnam by a single woman from County Kerry and six weeks later I was flying thousands of miles to my new home in Ireland – you could say that that was my first journey and perhaps even what fuelled the travel bug.
I was brought up in an incredibly loving home with just myself, my Mam and my Grandad where a love of creativity, education and the Irish language was fostered, as well as wanderlust for far-flung places. Mam, now a retired teacher, was always a well-travelled person, having taught in places like Papua New Guinea for a few years, which let me tell you was very different to my hometown in rural Ireland.
While every year we headed back to the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht (one of the Irish speaking locales in Ireland where our relatives were from), it was when I went to Canada and Greece at five years old that I really knew that I loved being away from the norm. Even at just five, I remember sitting at the edge of the sea and dipping my toes into the clear ocean as the water gently flowed over my feet. I remember chewing on dolmades with a great eagerness while a bit of oil fell and lodged itself on my classic nineties fringe t-shirt.
And those adventures continued throughout my school years. By the time I had finished my primary and secondary school education, I had 11 visited countries with my Mam including Egypt, Turkey and a trip back to Vietnam in 1998.
We had a brief lull in our adventures while I was making my way through university and working life but it got to a stage where I just knew that the nine to five office jobs weren’t for me and so I jumped ship. I decided to become a freelancer, working in content creation and travel writing.
Mam and I were back on track and leapt back on our adventures and between us now we’ve been to 29 countries.
One of the most memorable experiences that I had was walking the Camino de Santiago with Mam. The Camino, also known as The Way, is a network of pilgrimages that led to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. There are several routes to take and you don’t have to be religious to make the journey. We did it for spiritual reasons. Mam was astounded when I expressed interest in doing it. As a child, while I loved travelling, water sports and Gaelic Football, I loathed walking and the Camino was essentially a gigantic walk.
On our first trip, we did the Portuguese route to Santiago and would start the day at 6am, haul on our boots and backpacks and set off with our walking poles in hand. Following the yellow arrows, we would weave our way through quiet suburbs and even quieter farmlands, listening to when the cockerel would awake and passing people with a cheerful “buen Camino!” as we walked on.
The sun would rise, and we would see a rural livelihood awaken step by step, something that you would never see from the back of a tour bus that goes to the most famous of attractions. We appreciated every moment of that journey and though we were absolutely exhausted by midday, the feelings of accomplishment were immense. On those walks we too would have moments in silence and of moments of being together.
While we haven’t trodden the full length, the 200kms that we have walked on two separate journeys were very special and brought us even closer. I documented each step of our journey on the blog as well as through film.
BeforeMyMamDies.com went live to the world just as I decided to go freelance. I created our blog with that name in mind not to shock people, but it was what sounded natural to me and the theme of what we were creating together. Sure, I could’ve gone with something like The Bucket List but where’s the fun in that?
For Irish people, we have a massive tendency to leave everything to the end when it comes to talking about end of life matters. We leave it until the end to talk to our parents to talk about their life and dreams, what they wished they had done and what we wished we had done with them. This is not the kind of relationship I wanted with my Mam.
Many people presume that either Mam is dying or ill when they hear the name of the blog and I’ve even gotten messages of sympathy but really, it’s nothing like that. As you can imagine, Mam and I are thick as thieves, but years of travelling together have helped us understand each other more and indeed has brought us even closer. Sure, there are times where we want to tell each other to get lost and there are other times when undoubtedly space is needed, but in the end, we have learned to communicate. I am no longer a child; we can speak to each other as adults and resolve issues as adults too.
Since my Grandad passed away in 2006 it has been just the two of us. We have spoken frankly about life and death, and of what’s to come. Fear doesn’t hold us down and we want to keep going.
Our blog is truly is a celebration of life, travels, adventures and our love for each other before my Mam dies.
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