Something has left my life

And I don’t know where it went to

On this cold January day, Dolores has died. In her death she comes to me once more, like she did when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Thrown into the swirling chaos of adolescence, trying to find something to hold on to in my miserable awakening to womanhood, I found myself in the presence of Dolores.

There I was, 16 years old, studying in an elite New Delhi school, as far from Belfast as one could imagine. Singing songs in an American accent because that’s how cool music went. There we were, making cruel fun of classmates from poorer homes, who spoke English so thickly it fell on our prejudiced ears like a foreign language. Here she was Dolores, Irish as Irish came, singing in brogue so un-American it was as alien as the kids we ridiculed. But we didn’t mock her. No we couldn’t mock Dolores.

Here we were, us girls in 1990s India, taught that men rocked while girls fawned. Believing that only a Robert Plant or Axl Rose could screech, grunt and orgasm on the microphone. Girls made for pretty popstars, Brittanys with baby voices. But not Dolores. Not never-in-a-good-mood Dolores. She wasn’t going to smile on demand or give a damn about pretty. Here she was, Dolores, full-throated and growling, sometimes guttural and on rare occasions off-key. Other worldly perhaps. Intimate always. These were the sounds of no one but Dolores.

 

 

Dolores helped me build a bridge to my best friend. We would gather to try out her songs at break time or over nights spent at each other’s homes. My friend could yodel like she did. I did some cool harmonies. We would go on to win competitions with Dolores. At night, I would listen to her on my Walkman, clicking the cassette into place and burying myself under sheets so that no one witnessed the rollercoaster of emotions I was about to experience.

 

 

On this day that Dolores has died, I plug her voice into my ears once again. I’m now at a safe distance from my past. I allow myself to feel it all again – rage, loneliness & fear. If I could, I would tell Dolores I’m a different person now. I am grown.

Nevertheless, there are memories still hidden in the nooks of her songs, not always in the obvious places. They’re hidden in background strains of ‘Ode To My Family’ that I once mistook for vocal harmonies. They’re tucked into the transformative break in ‘Daffodil’s Lament’ as dark plaint turns to soft decision: ‘I have decided to leave you forever, I have decided to start things from here.’ They’re embedded in the longing of ‘When You’re Gone’ once reserved for a boy, now shockingly, for Dolores.

 

 

But it’s not just memories that are hidden, there are notes of love & solidarity. Women, after all, have a way of breaching all kinds of boundaries to embrace each other. We form chains of empathy that link across vast oceans to prop up a sister. There she is Dolores, as she always was, in gentle whispers and hi-octave clarion calls, pointing me to the truth in my heart. Staying now as then, when everyone is gone. Even she.

I try not to cry as I raise the volume up a notch. There she goes now, Dolores, deep into her cosmos, her time with us over. I remind myself to keep an ear open, just in case her voice rings out again. Unmistakable in Irish trill & yodel, recognizable on the darkest of nights, Dolores will not die.