Culture

In a Word . . . Worse

Stop complaining. It could be worse, because it has been worse

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 4 2021 - 00:30

Oh dear. Woe is us. Almost two years on and we’re still dogged by this pandemic. Ochón agus ochón. What did we do to deserve this? Poor us.

As my mother would say to us kids when protesting at outrageous miseries such as homework, hated chores, or being sent to search for our father’s ever-roving cattle again, “…well, aren’t you the pity!”

(About said cattle, a neighbour arrived back from Dublin one day to say he had met them in Maynooth thumbing to Dublin! It was a joke, but we weren't sure at the beginning.)

And then there was our ever-optimistic grandmother who, when confronted by any crisis, would pronounce “…sure, it could be worse.” If she met Noah after he’d been told to build an ark as the world was to be drowned in a great flood, she’d have told him “...sure, it could be worse!”

READ MORE

Our grandmother’s equanimity when confronted by any disaster known to humankind – past, passing, and to come – was as much the product of the long life she had lived – and when – as it was due to her own calm nature.

In her long life – she died in the early 1980s – she lived through wars, rumours of wars, epidemics, pandemics, and whatever you didn’t yourself if you’re under 35.

Her life spanned much of the last century and for most of it she lived in a world without electricity, running water, or phone of any kind. (I know. Impossible to believe there was life before the mobile.)

She was a teenager when the first World War broke out, leading to the deaths of more than 35,000 young Irishmen – 333 from the county (Roscommon). No sooner had that ended in 1918 than the War of Independence began here in Ireland followed quickly by the Civil War, and in parallel there was the Spanish flu in which 23,000 Irish young people lost their lives.

By the time her youngest (twins) were born, the Great Depression had begun and soon Hitler was on the rise in Germany with the second World War beginning in 1939. Meanwhile, Ireland limped through poverty, unemployment and emigration during those decades, against a background of TB and polio epidemics. Phew! So stop complaining.

It could be worse, because it has been worse.

Worse, from Old English wiersa, wyrsa.

inaword@irishtimes.com