A JOE reader’s heartfelt letter to the Tuam babies

Bob Carley manages to pin down how we're all feeling this evening in the wake of the news from Tuam.

Much as we've tried to distract ourselves on Friday, our thoughts keep turning back to Tuam and the discovery of "significant quantities" of human remains at a site in Galway. It's an incredibly sad day in Ireland, and that sadness is reflected in the words of Bob Carley. Bob - whom we've written about under happier circumstances before - posted the following words to our Facebook page on Friday evening. Here they are in full...

I've been quite disturbed and deeply saddened by the news today of the find of the mass grave in the convent in Tuam. To think that nearing a thousand tiny infants were laid in shame with no acknowledgment of their tiny lives. No mark to say their little feet and tiny hands and dimpled faces had been among us. Time can never erase injustice. My heart is with the poor mothers who went to that space of Bons Secours, or 'good help', thinking that it was a safe space for them and for that amazing life that was forming within them. It's as if the little mites didn't matter. They were 'insignificant!' Ironically, today, the report stated that 'significant' remains had been found. I know this was speaking to the quantity of remains but I allowed my heart to imagine a tiny baby who had been watching since, maybe, 1930 to hear someone use the word significant beside their name. So I guess from a space of sadness I wrote these lines perhaps as a kiss of love into the eternal resting space of these beautiful significant babies and their beautiful mothers. SIGNIFICANT Today I am significant That day I was not Taken from warm mother’s arms Laid in a cold hard cot I lay cold afraid sad ignored The cold convent air Wrapped its blanket of judgment around me And soft eyes looked away That day I was not deemed significant, I am significant today In dead of night when Chubby cheeks kiss pillows soft When lovers entwine in caring knots When darkness covered convent walls They took my cold lost body From its cold host cot And laid it in that Cold lost plot No plaque to mark the place where insignificance lay Not significant then But called significant today And there I lay having hurt no one Having no crime but that I came From love that oughtn’t speak its name And hatred hurtfulness and shame And spite were poured out in His name And Bon Secours or comfort’s grace Was never written on their face As they laid the sod above that space And prayed that insignificant me Would always insignificant be But as my white bones laid in rest And decades covered deep distress My soul adjusted to the gloom And saw in this subterranean room Which suffers neither night nor day A thousand Insignificants lay And then a caring heart spoke out Compassion love and care broke out They came to see could it be true Done on behalf of You It’s love for justice screamed to say You’ll be significant some day And in another room of hush Eyes avert the gaze of us A thousand sets of eyes look down On chain wearing members of our town And folk with folders pens and files Given furtive glances frozen smiles And hearts that never beat now pound “Significant remains have been found”