A small story

This has stayed long in my mind.

Yesterday at the market, a trader who is local pointed out a small hunched up oldish man scurrying to the bus station.

When he was very small ( and clearly he is mentally disabled which makes it worse) his mother got on a bus and abandoned him.

Now he still spends all day every day at the bus stop, watching for her. As he has done since she left him there

He was raised in an orphanage and he lives now in a special housing unit cum care facility in the town. He is safe as everyone knows him and keeps an eye out for him.

Sometimes we wonder re humanity. But then we pick up the pieces, and care as so many care and work to do that. The lost, the lonely... all to be loved nd cherished.

Blessings and peace this Christmas Eve

What a sad thing Rose....

The poor little boy, what a dreadful thing to do to him. I still can't understand why people do the things they do

I know, but here the great thing is that he is cared about and cared for. Wonder though what happened to the mother... how old she was etc.. may have been a teenager etc herself

We cannot stop people doing terrible things but we can make right much of that they have done.

He was spoken of with affection, and everyone knows him.

But it tears the heart thinking of that vigil year after year.

I can't even be late feeding the girlies and babies because I worry about them being worried, leaving a child alone in a bus station would tear the heart out of me, anything at all could have happened to him, so glad he had the good fortune to fall amongst people that cared, the alternative of what could have happened doesn't bear thinking about

Small town and the bus place is central and opposite a very busy Church so she chose well! He would not have been alone long

IF she was going to do that.

Ireland 50 years ago was a harsh place in many ways but children are cherished. Poor wee scrap though.

Yes, I know how harsh Ireland was on unmarried mothers, in fact England was the same in the 50's and 60's. One of my friends suffered the loss of her daughter by going to a home for unmarried mothers and her daughter being adopted. She never got over it, became and alcoholic and died alone in a garage. Every time I see these programmes about children searching for their mothers and vica versa I think of her. I kept my son, despite my father refusing to have me at home with him, I managed somehow, when I look back I have no idea how, but I did it. I worked for a company for over a year and they had no idea I even had a child, because they would never have employed me, you could get away with that in those days.

God love you for that and I am sorry if I stirred up bad memories and yes I had just come to the same conclusions.. Had she asked for help they would have slammed her up in a Magdalen Laundry. The Report on those is due out any day.
It was far worse here than in the UK as Ireland was almost totally RC so they had huge powers. Gardai etc were in their pocket also
They illegally imprisoned girls simply for being too pretty. There are two films online but not Christmas viewing at all.. sorry again if I have awoken bad memories.

Will ask the PP when I am next there if he knows the fuller picture on this. I am by way of being a historian and working on these things .

No the memories are always there, and the slightest thing brings it back. I broke down one Christmas and told my youngest son everything that had happened, we were on the way back from dropping my mother off after Christmas dinner at mine, and I just told him the whole lot, start to finish and he now understands why I feel the way I do about my parents, and he is obviously unable to understand why it was that way, and not that many years ago either. My eldest son doesn't know, and never will know from me, he knows who his father is and saw him reasonably regularly till he was around 12 when his father just simply never turned up one day and we never heard a word ever again. He thinks we were divorced when he was very young. Hey I kept my boy, against everything, and when I see those programmes and those poor women still searching for their long lost babies, I can only cry for them and their children. Like you say the Magdalen Laundry was infamous and the Church has a lot to answer for. All those damaged people

If you need I am at anchoress cj at yahoo dot com. Always here for you.

You did wonderfully and still do to stay near your mother like that.