Islip Stat State Hospital, NY - Marion Byrne
The above picture is the hospital where my grandmother Maron Byrne died. I never met her, never heard a word about her from my father (his mother), didn't know when or how she died. She was born in Killybegs, Ireland, county Donnegal. Left Ireland when she was a teenager for New York, roughly turn of the century.
Looking at her death certificate, it appears she died of "acute myocardial infarction" which is another way of saying heart attack. Appears she also had "rheumatic heart disease,"a condition caused by a weakening of the heart due to rheumatric fever.
But the question is, why did she die in a mental hospital? It says on the death certificate that she had another condtion called "involutional depressive reaction" which as far as I can gather is a form of depression.
The story is that my grandmother was a mean person - tough, hard, heartless. When her daughter Eileen (my aunt) got married to my uncle Bobby Devito, they say Marion said she vowed never to speak to her daughter for marrying an Italian, and so it went, for years on end, Marion living in a house across the street from Eileen, never saying a word for 20 years up unto her death. The art of holding a grudge, a Grdduge Artist.
My aunt Joyce, who is by all measures a sunny and genial person and has a pretty optimisitc outlook on life, once told me that Marion was the darkest, most bitter person she'd ever met. This was my father's mother.
The story I heard last summer, whlile visting the little sheep shack where her homestead once stood in Killybegs, Ireland, was that her entire family of ten lived in that small house all together. One year tuberculosis became general over the region and people were dying by the scores. Their fmmaily was safe until the day they decided, being good Catholics, to take a visiting priest who had TB into their house, who eventually infected them all, killing off the entire family except Marion and her sister. A family of ten reduced to two in two year's time. It was after that when Marion was given a ticket to America, to leave the green land of much suffering.
After living in Brooklyn, meeting and marrying Albion Nolan (my grandfather, whom I never met, whose parents were from Ireland), they moved to Patchogue, NY, where I used to visit as a young lad. From the little snippets of the past my Dad has told me, his father Albion was a classic Irish drunk. He only remembers his father when he would see him pased out drunk on a sidewalk in town, looking down, ashamed at the shell of a man.
The above picture is the hospital where my grandmother Maron Byrne died. I never met her, never heard a word about her from my father (his mother), didn't know when or how she died. She was born in Killybegs, Ireland, county Donnegal. Left Ireland when she was a teenager for New York, roughly turn of the century.
Looking at her death certificate, it appears she died of "acute myocardial infarction" which is another way of saying heart attack. Appears she also had "rheumatic heart disease,"a condition caused by a weakening of the heart due to rheumatric fever.
But the question is, why did she die in a mental hospital? It says on the death certificate that she had another condtion called "involutional depressive reaction" which as far as I can gather is a form of depression.
The story is that my grandmother was a mean person - tough, hard, heartless. When her daughter Eileen (my aunt) got married to my uncle Bobby Devito, they say Marion said she vowed never to speak to her daughter for marrying an Italian, and so it went, for years on end, Marion living in a house across the street from Eileen, never saying a word for 20 years up unto her death. The art of holding a grudge, a Grdduge Artist.
My aunt Joyce, who is by all measures a sunny and genial person and has a pretty optimisitc outlook on life, once told me that Marion was the darkest, most bitter person she'd ever met. This was my father's mother.
The story I heard last summer, whlile visting the little sheep shack where her homestead once stood in Killybegs, Ireland, was that her entire family of ten lived in that small house all together. One year tuberculosis became general over the region and people were dying by the scores. Their fmmaily was safe until the day they decided, being good Catholics, to take a visiting priest who had TB into their house, who eventually infected them all, killing off the entire family except Marion and her sister. A family of ten reduced to two in two year's time. It was after that when Marion was given a ticket to America, to leave the green land of much suffering.
After living in Brooklyn, meeting and marrying Albion Nolan (my grandfather, whom I never met, whose parents were from Ireland), they moved to Patchogue, NY, where I used to visit as a young lad. From the little snippets of the past my Dad has told me, his father Albion was a classic Irish drunk. He only remembers his father when he would see him pased out drunk on a sidewalk in town, looking down, ashamed at the shell of a man.
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