Can you be homesick for somewhere that you have never lived ? I have visited Ireland twice in my 35 years on this earth. I remember after my first visit at 19 thinking if I die tomorrow then I can be happy because my eyes have never seen such beauty.  For me Ireland has always been a place to heal your soul, at 19 during my first visit I was healing from some health issues that left emotional scars and it was with some students from my university and I came home more whole than I left. My most recent visit was with my husband, the year I turned 30, I felt like I was coming home and I couldn't wait to show him MY Ireland. The place that I fell in love with and hoped that he would love it like I had. We had to postpone our trip many times because, in 2010 we lost 4 close friends or family in a span of 4 months. We though we were going for sure the weeks before Thanksgiving and my grandfather who was loosing his battle with cancer took a turn for the worse so we waited and we buried him the first week in December. Finally we settled on a January date and my husband's uncle also lost his battle with cancer and we postponed the trip to be able to attend the funeral. We landed in Dublin one of the last weeks in January 2011, a couple of crazy americans who were going to vacation in the west counties of Ireland in January. I am sure all the locals that we met thought we were a little crazy. All the B&B's had only 1 guest, us. It was magnificent, I showed Dan my Ireland as we began in Clifden and Connemara, and worked our way down to Doolin and the Burren, then onto Killarney, and finally back to Dublin. We drove on the right hand side of the car, on the opposite side of the road that we were used to. We drank pints every night in pubs with mostly locals as we listened to traditional music. During the day we drove, everywhere and let our eyes and souls drink in the scenery. Until you've been to Ireland you have never seen so many shades of green and the sight of it brings tears to your eyes. The beauty of the scenery and the kindness of the people helped heal our hearts, heavy from loss. We visited the house my great great great grandfather was born in, in a tiny little town called Belcarra that was 3 hrs of driving out of our way. We navigated roads with the help of "Carmen the garmin" GPS and boy she took us on some adventures, down roads barely 1 car wide, hedge rows 10' tall on either side of the car and sometimes we met another car trying to navigate in the opposite direction.  The grandfather that passed away and we originally postponed the trip for was named Joseph Heneghan and his family was from Ireland. The strangest thing happened while we were there, at least 2 times a day no matter where we were, we would see his name, Joseph Heneghan. Lots of times it would be on the side of a building like "Joseph Heneghan Hardware" or sometimes on the side of a lorry " Joseph Heneghan Plumbing". I like to think it was my grandfather smiling down on us, with his blessing that we finally made it to Ireland after changing our plans so many times. While we were gone back in Connecticut, my grandmother passed away. Our families made the decision not to tell us and ruin the trip but someone accidently emailed us a copy of her obituary. We buried her a few days after we arrived home, our families told us not to come home early but to enjoy the rest of the trip, even though there were only a few days left it still put a bit of a cloud over the rest of it. In the years since our trip things have changed, we had a baby and, I have had many health issues since then and it has put a strain on our family life and our marriage and left lots of physical and emotional scars. If I won this trip, I would hope that Ireland would once again heal our souls as well as our marriage.

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