People are asking...Where is The Land Of Cudhabeen?

People who are talking about The Knowledge Seekers & The Land Of Cudhabeen are asking where is that land? What is it?

The Land Of Cudhabeen, I suppose, is a personal place each of us have where we dream of what could have been – if things had worked out differently.

For me it's...if Kate had been able to stay with us. On the Little Lifetime Foundation Forum,  a few years ago I wrote:-

Trying to respond to a subject I can't possibly know how to respond to - because we dad's are totally lost when it comes to handling the loss of a baby. We don't know what to say, at times we even don't know how to HUG properly, we are afraid to break our partners into small pieces. At least that is the way I was. But what has become clearer to me reading the posts in all the forums is simply that the loss of a being you carried inside your body, a being you gave part of your life force to for months must be far more terrifying to endure as a Mum, that to watch it happen as a dad. If we feel lost and powerless then Mams must feel devastated, abandoned, confused, and why me.....why us...

My wife and I understood finally, that what happened happened. We didn't cause it, we were not at fault, we didn't do anything wrong. It just happened and what was most important it was outside our control.

Call it the wishes of a superior being, God or whatever.....accept that that may be so..or not.

But then have a serious conversation with that being... that God and tell them they were wrong if they had any part to play in what happened. Get them to realise they owe you and you are going to call in that favour in the future. I know I DID.
Imagine being able to say God owes me.......

Then for one of the gatherings at The Little Angels Plot, in Glasnevin, I wrote and recited ….

The Land of Cudhabeen: a Bedtime Story.

In the land of Cudhabeen

You could ask for a bedtime story

And I could tell you one.

What would it be about?

What would you ask for?

Would you ask for life?

Would you ask that

It never happened:

That you came and went

So soon. So very soon.

I don't know and I will

Never have the answer:

It's your answer that you

Never got to give.

And can't now.

At least not in words,

Or a language we understand.

Did you answer in the wind?

That time, I thought

I heard you whispering.

Did you sweep the gentle rain drops

Onto my cheeks?

To wash away my sad tears.

Sad tears not just for you

But for all who went too soon.

Did you send the heat to comfort my bones?

My stooped back creaking and sore.

And then: the warmth.

Was it your warmth?

Healing me. But only my body.

My mind in the land of Cudhabeen,

Will never stop asking why?

Why me? Why us? Why them?

There is no happy ever after

In this story.

And yet sometimes you chase that darkness

And show the new light,

The new season to me:

That for now, my child,

Will keep me hopeful.

And in time perhaps,

In another telling

Of the next story. You

Will get to hold me

In your arms.