Tuskar Rock is where my father’s plane came down in March 1968, killing all sixty-one people aboard. It was an Aer Lingus flight from Cork to London, and most people today do not even know that Aer Lingus ever crashed. I was thirteen. For thirty years I assumed it had not affected me. Then I understood that it had. Then that it had affected me a great deal. Then that it defines me — I live my life in a hurry in case I have to feel it again, and even my signature starts slowly and finishes at a gallop. I am facing into it now, and facing into it is causing disruption, but I would far rather turn and ask this apostle what it has to say than keep running from it.
On the twenty-fourth of March 1968, an Aer Lingus flight from Cork to London came down at Tuskar Rock, off the Wexford coast of Ireland. Sixty-one people were on board. Sixty-one people died. My father, my dad, was one of them. Most people today don’t even know that Aer Lingus ever crashed. I find that strange. It was a long time ago, mind you, and the country has had a great deal to be getting on with since. I was…