Uncle Tim   Timothy was indeed my father's uncle, yet everyone called him Uncle Tim when I arrived at his family farm in Donabate. He leaned on a crooked wooden cane as he moved carefully around his family's tidy cottage, his long silver-grey hair swaying in the spring breeze. Most of the time, he remained in his small room, settled before the glow of the fire, perched on the edge of his wide bed in silence. I kept my distance, spending my days working on the farm with his spirited son, Jack, who was brimming with charm and quick wit. After three days of milking cows, feeding pigs, baling hay, and fixing fences, I was more than ready for a shower. Of course, there was no shower, and the water for my bath had to be heated over the fire in Uncle Tim's room. He patted the bed, gesturing for me to sit. Based on the lack of conversation so far, I assumed we would pass the time quietly, staring at the fire. Without warning, Jack slid into the room, balancing a thin tray with three large shot glasses filled to the brim with whiskey. "Have another sip now, Michael,"  Uncle Tim said quietly. Once he finished his whiskey, he was ready—to talk, to remember, to tell a story. "Ah, Denis was a grand man, a fine man. I knew me brother well. I knew them all. Mary—Mary Duggan—oh, she was a fine woman. Your grandmother, she be. Mary Duggan from Shrone, she be a fine woman, yes she was." Like any good Irish storyteller, Uncle Tim spared no detail as he spoke about his brother. Denis was nine years older—one of Tim's 16 siblings—but I could tell they had been close. "Ah, he'd put me on his shoulders. I was but a wee lad. We'd walk the hills above da house, into Gneevgullia to go to da shops, oh dose summer days, glorious days they were…. We'd go out into the bogs to cut peat, just Denis and me. We'd laugh when the heavens opened up to pour rain. Oh we laughed, it would be just me and himself, soaked to the skin….." Ah, Denis, I knew him well. Denis be a fine man, he was." His voice had a deep affection and a quiet reverence when he spoke my grandfather's name. He reminisced about Mary Duggan as if it were just last week, recalling how he drove the horse with her back to Shrone after the late-night dances in Coom stretched into the early hours. Until that moment, I had never heard a single story about my grandmother. Like Denis, she had passed away before the age of 50. Tim's voice wavered as the warm memories drifted away, his words catching in his throat. A slight tremble crept in as he turned to Jack and asked for just a wee bit more whiskey. "Denis was 20 when he left for America. There was always a big due when someone left. All the neighbors came. We were up all night. It was great craic. A bottle of whiskey was only seven pence back then. In the morning, we showed him off to the train. He went alone—by boat trip—it took eight days." Uncle Tim stopped momentarily, took his last swig of whiskey, and then looked me straight in the eye, his pale cheeks streaked with tears.   "He went off to America… and he never came back."