#148 In ár gCroíthe go deo
All my t-shirts have two basic themes. There are a few given by Janne about being a dad. The rest are music-related t-shirts that I buy from bands I like. I read that bands don’t get enough money from streaming. However, they do earn from touring and selling merch. I decided to support them in that way.
I started my collection when Janne and I went to an Editors concert in Hamburg in 2018. I’m still drinking coffee daily from one of their cups. That day I started a second habit: I always bought a t-shirt for her too.
I wasn’t sure what she’d make of it, but she liked it. She’d wear t-shirts even for bands she didn’t like as much. It wasn’t about the band but about the color, design and, of course, my love.
That selfie she took just two months before they found something in her liver says everything. She is relaxed, happy, wearing the t-shirt I had bought for her just a few days before with the release of the latest Fontaines D.C. album, Skinty Fia. She wasn’t in love with the album, but she liked the t-shirt.
The opening song for this album is about a grieving family in a legal battle against the Church of England. They wanted an inscription in Irish, “In ár gCroíthe go deo” (in our hearts forever), but the church didn’t allow it in the cemetery as it considered it a political statement. The family won the battle while Fontaines D.C. were recording the song. It’s a haunting tune.
I have a selfie I sent to her two months later during the twilight month when we didn’t know what she had. I am wearing a t-shirt for my very favorite album, “Unknown Pleasures” by Joy Division. The lines in there are a ridgeline plot emitted by a rotating neutron star, a pulsar, created by a radio astronomer for his doctoral dissertation (Janne would drift off when I explained that to her).
Janne had also her own Joy Division t-shirt. Every time she was wearing it, I’d compliment her taste in music to which she would answer with a “ha ha” in a monotone voice. She died wearing it. I got it back from the mortuary assistant who took her away. That ridgeline plot is not only about a pulsar now, but also about the love I send out searching for Janne.
In ár gCroíthe go deo.
