Saying Goodbye at the End of the World

The Parting Glass

Happy St. Patrick’s Day all!

Just found out this morning that St. Paddy’s is now celebrated in more countries than any other national festival. To me, it’s begun to feel like the real kickoff of the new year, perhaps it’s because it’s so close to the spring equinox. Which reminds me,

Megan Youngmee

has a fascinating post about the traditional start of the year historically being April Fool’s Day. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in ancient (and honestly more sensible) methods of tracking time.

Of course, all beginnings and endings are always relative to perspective. My own New Year’s post also speaks to this — I believe our collective experience of time is accelerating, with endings and beginnings happening faster and faster in 2025 and beyond, to the point where they begin to blur together, giving us a chance to see how they have always coincided.

Having recently returned back stateside from a visit to the Emerald Isle☘️, I wanted to share a few pictures of our travels, but more than that, I wanted to commemorate it with an Irish duet that my daughter and I recorded together for my wife’s recent birthday.

The song is actually of Scottish origin, with the earliest versions cropping up some four hundred years ago. But it’s been popular in Ireland for centuries now, to the point where they’ve made it their own, yet somehow preserved its essence. Typical Irish.

The Parting Glass is traditionally sung at the end of a gathering of friends — honoring the past with gratitude toward experience both good and bad, and blessing all assembled with an eye to the future, uncertain as it may be.

With the spring equinox approaching in three days, the northern hemisphere says goodbye to winter, as sprouting seedlings depart the cold embrace of the soil enticed by sky and water and sun. And in the southern hemisphere, the exact inverse is occurring, at the exact same time!

One last fun fact for today: that for all the liveliness and cliché and stereotypes and general raucousness of St. Patrick’s Day — let’s face it, it’s become an international excuse to eat drink and be merry — the actual date commemorates the March 17th parting of Saint Patrick from this earth. How fitting.

No one celebrates death quite like the Irish.

Hit the Play button ⬆️ while you head down the rainbow road! ⬇️

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Travel commences:

A beautiful overhead steel bridge for highway signs on the M50 bypass out of Dublin

The striking concrete shoulder of the M7 highway, heading west

Joking aside, I have never seen so many rainbows in my life. They hit us hard and fast right out of the gate, and we lost count on the first day. The first few we were able to catch on camera are shown above on the drive from Dublin to Dingle.

On a side note, I like how it’s not really possible to tell which side of a rainbow is the beginning and which is the end. Some come pouring down out of the sky, rising up out of the earth, and some splice through the air like massive arching light spectrum bridges.

It’s like the sky is raising you a glass for a toast, for making it through weather rough and fair.

Is the pot o’ gold in the ocean, or is it up in the sky?

An arch bridge rainbow supported by green earth on each side

Look closely and you will see double — the faint outline of a twin

Me at the end of the road, the westernmost point in Ireland (and arguably mainland Europe) — where the Atlantic begins

My daughter L singing back to the mountains of her ancestors

My son T in silent powerful awe

My wife at the edge of the world at Dunmore Head on Dingle peninsula…

Is she at the beginning? Or the end? Or both

A final Parting Glass, courtesy of the Dublin airport.

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Of all the money that e'er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e'er I've done
Alas it was to none but me

And all I've done for want of wit
To memory now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Goodnight and joy be to you all

Of all the comrades that e'er I had
They're sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e'er i had
They'd wish me one more day to stay

But since it fell unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I'll gently rise and softly call
"Goodnight and joy be to you all"

So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health where'er befalls
And gently rise and softly call
"Goodnight and joy be to you all"

Fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health where'er befalls
And gently rise and softly call
"Goodnight and joy be to you all"

Goodnight and joy be to you all