KILMAINE, Ireland _ Ireland is a proudly haunted island, its landscape defined by ancient cairns and standing stones, by ruined abbeys, castles and cottages.
The spectral comes in many famous forms: the ladies _ the White Lady of Kinsale (who threw herself off the walls of Charles Fort after her husband was shot); the Waiting Lady of Ardgillan Castle (on vigil for her drowned husband); the Faceless Lady of Belvelly Castle (survived a siege but went insane upon discovering she was no longer beautiful) _ the incarcerated (Cork District Lunatic Asylum, the Wicklow Jail); and the casualties of war (the Jacobites of the Battle of Aughrim and King James II who is said to haunt Athcarne Castle six miles from where he died in the Battle of the Boyne).
So if you are looking, there are plenty of ghosts to be found in Ireland.
Or you can do what we did and just bring them with you.
My family and I traveled to Ireland in June 2017 to scatter my parents' ashes at Downpatrick Head in County Mayo. We knew the exact spot because Mom and Dad, who spent many of their post-retirement summers in the land of our ancestors, had brought us here almost 20 years ago.
Downpatrick Head is one of the world's more dramatic edges, where the wildflower-studded grass runs in sweet green benevolence until it hits the wild wind and a 140-foot drop onto black rocks and white foam.
We have pictures of my then-1-year-old son Danny sitting in the grass picking daisies while my parents showed my brother, Jay, where they wanted their ashes to go: right in view of the towering sea stack called Dun Briste (Broken Fort) and a few yards from a blow hole where, my father informed us, British soldiers had thrown local villagers during the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
So not, you know, Rose Hills cemetery back home.
For a year or two, Downpatrick Head was something of a family joke. We would not make that crazy drive to that crazy cliff, but if we did, we would pitch the ashes down the blowhole. Then far too soon, it wasn't.
My dad died four years after that trip; when we offered to take Mom and the ashes to Ireland, she said she wanted to wait and be scattered along with him. When she died a few years later, neither my brother nor I had the heart to make the journey.
For years.
After that once-upon-a-time 1-year-old went away to college, my brother and I realized we had to get moving, busy schedules and mixed feelings be damned.
My husband, Richard, Danny and his sisters Fiona and Darby, and I flew to Dublin a few days before Jay and his husband, Franco. After what I can only hope was our very last argument to end with "Well, you're the oldest," Jay persuaded me to carry the cremains.
It was a bit unsettling to travel with your parents' ashes. My mom was always fashion conscious, so I had to find a stylish carry-on, but it was still disconcerting to shove it in the overhead.
In Dublin, we stayed in a lovely flat near the General Post Office, which now houses an excellent museum devoted to the 1916 Easter Rising. We put the bag in a nice alcove where I could nod to them as we came and went.
