The Irish diaspora is vast and our heritage is now fragmented though it is by no means lost. All of us are fully integrated into American society, living in different parts of the country, rather than one small village. Yet, every time family members gather, there is still spiritual kinship. Family, because of its continuity, is where memory gathers. Few things survive in these cynical days to remind us of a past from which so many of our personal values flow.
Family provides the most significant answer.
Nothing in our daily lives offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a clan, the powerful sense of home and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our family. Yet, without the ability to speak precisely of our origins, we have an enormous potential to forget our common humanity, lose recognition of each other and become disconnected souls. Since some of this material is clearly interpretative, perhaps it belongs to the tradition of the seanachie. When the true voice of the participant of past experience is unable to relate his own history, the cost of ignorance can be very high. When an entire culture is shattered, with enormous loss of life, loss of language and generations of social values shattered for political expedience, the descendants suffer a horrible rupture that can seldom be restored.