IN SEARCH OF DEAD RELATIVES Late afternoon... Sunlight breaks through the overcast sky and strikes the landscape, which sparkles bright and green. I walk down O'Connell Street People offer to sell me cigarettes as the rush hour crowd hustles up and down the avenue. A horse drawn cart slides down a side street. I sit by a statue and watch a city alive. A teenage panhandler hounds me for money. I give her a couple of pounds, but she harasses me for more money to feed her poor starving family or so she says. I must catch a train to Athlone. The train is crowded with folks headed to the coast for the weekend. A little, old nun talks me out of my newspaper in exchange for a stale candy bar. She asks me where I am from in America. I tell her St. Paul, Minnesota. Never heard of it, she replies. She will pray for me, and goes back to reading my paper. I take a taxi to Roscommon. and check into O'Gara's Royal Hotel. There are no washcloths in Ireland. St. Patrick must have driven them out with the snakes. I take a stroll around the town. As I walk by a local bank, a small, old man calls to me and asks if I can help. The tiny gentleman is the spitting image of my dead grandfather. Perhaps, he's a leprechaun giving me a greeting or he's just playing with my mind? I tell him, I am but a visitor in this land myself, but it's strange, I feel like I'm home. My soul is here. You see this is where it found refuge when it left me during the war. It was late one night, when my grandfather's ghost came to visit me. and took my soul for safekeeping. Now I know what drew me to Ireland I need to retrieve my soul and get on with my life. It's tea time. I order a diet Coke from Chris the bartender. I tell him about myself. The war and lost soul. He says I should see a holy woman who lives in town. She could lay the glove of St. Padre Pio on me and ease my pain. He gives me a holy medal of the Virgin Mary Oh, I don't know... The holy woman is sick. Thank God! Chris will take me to another holy woman he knows in Galway who will touch me. Great! Chris blesses himself as we pass churches and graveyards. We drive down narrow country roads as he tells me about his broken love affairs. He won't let a woman use him again. In Galway, we stop at a pub and call the holy woman. She is busy, just my luck. Strong winds blew off the bay as the Spanish Arch still stood guard. Looking off into the distance, I longed to hear Donna's voice. I miss her so much. The snow flurries remind me of home as I walk the narrow streets. A young woman sings for coins in an alley as the sun is setting, a man reads tarot cards in front of a gift shop. A claddagh ring shines bright in the window. Another sign from the ancient ancestors? I feel in my heart Donna is to be my wife. I stop into a museum The guide asks me where in Ireland I am from. I tell him Minnesota. He says my name in Gaelic is Tadg Conghaile. He says I have a connection to this country going back hundreds of generations. I found my soul. The dead relatives were holding it for safekeeping. -- Tim Connelly