Essays and reported stories often about Irish, Southern, and queer identity.

I’m currently writing the story of my parents, a Roman Catholic priest and a nun, both from Ireland, who met in Alabama during the height of the Civil Rights era, fell in love, married, and endured exile.

The Beauty That Will Last is my Substack newsletter, where I post weekly essays inspired by my parents’ lives.

This excerpt from the flagship essay reveals the origins of the series name:

One morning, she called me over to where she sat in her wheelchair by the large glass door overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains. Watching God’s grandeur stretched out before us, a cardinal among the birds gathered at the feeder, the morning sun burning away the milky mist rising from the river gorge, she began reciting verses the Irish schoolteacher Patrick Pearse wrote just before the English executed him for his role in the 1916 Easter Uprising:

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,

This beauty that will pass;

“But ya know, Fergus,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the beauty ever really passes.”

A few weeks later, in the early hours of Easter Monday, I stroked the white wisps of hair on my mother’s head as the beauty that is Elma Tuohy passed from this world, as I can see it, joining, at long last, her beloved Jim in eternity.