And if there ever is gonna be healing

There has to be remembering

And then grieving

So that there then can be forgiving

There has to be knowledge and understanding

- Sinéad O’Connor, “Famine”

“Oh, Sineady, I love you. I’m ever so fond of you. Oh, you’re tender. Your name’s a whisper.” 

This was my ongoing prayer for Sinéad O’Connor starting in January 2022 when her son, Shane, went missing. He died by suicide. I didn’t create this prayer, I combined one of her previous Twitter handles, @OhSineady, with the song lyrics from “John, I Love You.” That song has always sounded like prayer to me.

I don’t pray in the way I was taught in church, asking for things from a distant patriarch. I’ve been exploring my faith my entire life. So did Sinéad. She had big reasons and I’ve had my own. 

*

My mom was a German Jew, entering the US via Ellis Island in 1939 at the age of three. Her father had been imprisoned by the Nazis, but was released when their immigration papers arrived. They had taken his business and his life savings, but not his life—there was no need to keep him as long as he’d leave Germany. This was before the extermination.

My dad was raised by a Southern Baptist Sheriff and tobacco farmer. Both of my parents came from backgrounds they wanted to leave. When mom and dad married in 1960, they selected a compromise religion. Something that would keep Jesus, but be less controlling. I’ve come to think of it as a safe place where they could blend in. Neither of their families understood the other’s faith or appreciated their choice to leave them.

My brother, sisters, and I were raised on and off as Presbyterians. Compromisers. Laying low with faith. I was exposed to the traditions of both sets of grandparents on visits—matzah ball soup and Hebrew blessings in New Orleans, country ham and snapped peas under a Bible on the wall in Tennessee—both seemed foreign to me. 

I tried to be a Presbyterian. I went to church on Sundays, the communion classes, and occasional lock-ins. But I was going through the motions, even attending church a little on my own when I started college—partly as a search for meaning, but mostly because I knew my parents would feel safer about me being away.

I was a pleaser. Sinéad was not. 

*

During her own life, she was ordained in different religions. She studied religion to find an answer she could live with. A religion that focused on God without an intermediary. Through the years I’ve done my own share of searching, mostly through books and study of the major religions of the world. 

Over time I came to realize that music is my church and prayer. It works. It cuts deeply. And if music is my church, then Sinéad has been my cleric. I came to a similar conclusion: you don't need an intermediary, but a medium can help. 

*

It started simply with a great song. In the beginning of 1987, I was a DJ at a student-run college radio station called KANM, working from 4:00 am to 8:00 am on Saturday mornings. A few weeks into my tenure, I noticed a new vinyl single in the stack of new releases. On the cover a bald woman was screaming and clutching her hands against her chest. Who the hell was that? I announced that I was playing a new release from an Irish artist named Sinéad O’Connor. The song was “Mandinka.” I loved it.

When I saw her CD release shortly after, I bought it immediately. No one else seemed to know who she was, which made me feel important as an early adopter. Growing up in Austin, I was never the first person to discover anyone, but in College Station, Texas? It was hard to find a Pretenders fan, much less someone who had heard of Sinéad. 

Shortly after buying the album, I needed to return home for an occasion I no longer remember. With the radio commitment, I couldn’t leave until 8:00 am on Saturday. It would be challenging to stay awake while driving the 100 miles home. I put “The Lion and the Cobra” into the CD player. I had listened to it a bit, but now I had the chance to listen in my preferred setting: the car. 

At the time I drove a 1967 pea green Mustang that I had upgraded with a high-end stereo system, CD player, and carefully selected Babb rear speakers. I started the album and pushed the buttons to get straight to “Mandinka.” I let the album continue, but I was not patient in my listening. I needed to stay awake! More Mandinka! 

I played that song during the entire drive. Within a few repetitions, I was howling (incorrectly, I learned later) along with Sinéad. “I don’t knoooooooow no shame, I think I’m playin’ a gaaaame!  See the flaaaaaaaaame!’ I screamed and howled that song for 100 miles and almost two hours. When I arrived in Austin I was a different person. I had no idea at the time that I had transformed, but somehow Sinéad had liberated me into feeling more feminine. More primal. Just more…me. Some part of me woke up.

*

Sinéad and I were only six months apart in age. While she was having a child and releasing her first album, I was graduating from Texas A&M and heading for a corporate job in Dallas at IBM. Perhaps she represented the part of me that didn’t want to conform. I howled and howled and howled. That began a journey with Sinéad as my spirit guide, though I didn’t think about it that way at the time.

Her first album is etched into my heart and connected to that time in my life when I was establishing my conforming, dependable, corporate adult identity while also trying to stoke my inner flames of resistance. Sinéad represented a part of me that I was unable to express or experience in my own choices. She was my rebel.

A few years later, she released her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” That album and “Universal Mother” are two of the most transcendent albums I’ve heard. My love is not for the popular “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but for her empathy and advocacy in “Three Babies” and “Black Boys on Mopeds.” And all the anticipation she builds in “You Cause as Much Sorrow” that she delivers with the haunting chorus. And the tension of “Jump in the River.” The sound of the texture of her hands strumming the strings in “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” before the band smashes near the end to deliver stunning blows. (Can I get a witness?)

Listening to the album, I remembered once sitting in the back of my parent’s car as a small child. On the road in front of us was an old pick-up truck. A group of children was riding in the back bed of the truck; I think at least one child was sitting in a small lawn chair. It was hot outside and the sunshine felt harsh. I felt bad that I was riding in a nice car with air conditioning while those kids were stuck in the back of a sweltering pickup truck, hair whipping in the hot breeze. I told my mom, “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

“Why are those kids having to ride in an old truck in the hot sun?”

She said, “They probably don’t have much money. But don’t worry. They don’t know any differently. They look happy. Don’t worry about them.”

I can’t decide if my mother’s comments were wise or indifferent. Perhaps both. But that memory stayed with me. It allowed me to be indifferent or even unaware of the struggles of others. “Don’t worry. They don’t know any differently.”

When I heard “Three Babies” and “Black Boys on Mopeds” it released those years of empathy that I had been told to contain or dismiss. It did matter that I was in the air conditioned comfort while other kids traveled unsafely in the back of the pickup.

Sinéad’s music continued to inspire the best parts of me over the years. The parts of me that are sensitive. Gentle. Concerned. Sometimes fierce. Sometimes inappropriately funny. I was stunned but supportive when she tore up the Pope’s picture, even though I didn’t initially understand why she did it. I teared up when she was booed at Dylan’s birthday. 

Sinéad made me better. She had courage that I did not. She continued to nourish me with her advocacy, but at some point the tables turned. I worried about her as she openly struggled. I felt the need to nurture her. I prayed for her in my own way. I wanted to meet her some day. Not to gush and tell her of my admiration, but just to look into her eyes and give her a hug.

So I became a Twitter creeper, following the various Twitter handles she had over the years, including @OhSineady. She allowed herself to be so raw, so accessible to her fans, communicating with them frequently. Then she’d disappear. 

*

When I saw videos of her 2020 performances on her mini-tour of the U.S. west coast, I was both astonished by her brilliance and saddened that I hadn’t been there. She looked well. She looked ready. I wasn’t going to miss her on the rest of the tour.

I looked at her schedule for the remaining tour and paid exorbitant ticket prices for flights to Chicago and seating near the stage at City Winery.  I imagined that hearing that voice directly in the room would move me in the way some people are enraptured during a church revival.

But then the pandemic happened. The show was not canceled at first; it continued to be postponed. During this time Sinéad announced she would not tour anymore, then she retracted. At some point I realized that the show would not happen. I requested a refund upon the third or fourth rescheduling; I worried that I might never see her.

Although she seemed strong in 2020, I had been concerned in the past. I could only imagine what it would be like to have Sinéad in your family or friend circle. You’d love her but she’d probably do things that would piss you off. She’d be predictably unpredictable. “There she goes again. Oh, Sineady.” I loved that Twitter handle and her own humorous acknowledgement of the reactions of others. I followed her over the years as she’d disappear from Twitter and return under a new handle. 

Only now, I wonder if my growing need to follow Sinéad was tied with my inability to consistently connect with my brother Steve. He would similarly disappear and reappear in my life. He didn’t use text or social media, and lived far away, so I did not communicate with him often. He died in early 2021. 

Was I taking my frustrations with him, and eventual grief, and turning it toward Sinéad instead of facing my feelings for my own brother? That’s my self-judgmental view of it. A kinder perspective is that the more sensitive parts of him joined my heart and encouraged me to look out for her. He might have known what was coming. Nearly a year after Steve’s death, and upon the zeitgeist of Wordle, my 5:00 am routine was something like this. Check on Sinéad. Wordle. Gratitude. Quick email check. Shower.

In January 2022  Sinéad’s son Shane went missing. I followed in real time on Twitter. Had she posted again? Had Shane been found? I had a sick feeling in my stomach. And then we learned he died. She was angry and accusatory toward the public health system that failed Shane. Then she’d apologize. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I am with cops now on way to hospital."

I wondered if she’d be able to survive this. I couldn’t allow myself to consider her situation too closely. Could I survive the loss of my son if, God forbid, something like that happened? If he were gone? If he had taken his life during a mental health episode? I like to think I’d survive it, with a lot of help and support, but I couldn’t even carry that thought forward. So I prayed. I also considered the complete verse of “John, I Love You” and it had a new meaning. Perhaps this was now her verse for Shane, or my verse for Steve.

“Shane, I love you, I’m ever so fond of you. Will you wait for me, ‘til I am heavenly? Oh, there’s much work to do. Oh, I love you. Your name’s a whisper.”

*

One morning, eight months after Shane died, I woke up and began to cry. Sinéad losing a son touched on a mother’s worst fear. My desire to comfort her, and perhaps comfort myself over the loss of my brother, lingered. I was thinking about all of it again. That would happen now and then. I wanted to reach out. Sinéad was not on Twitter. I opened my email, looked for a link to her management and wrote a short message.

Prayers for Sinead always and still thinking of her grief. Just wanted to say so. ❤️

Then Musk bought Twitter; I deleted my account. I thought, “What did I use this for anyway? Just Sinéad, and she has been silent for quite awhile.” I figured she wouldn’t rejoin with Musk in charge. Without Twitter, I simply Googled her frequently. I was aware of her appearance in March this year at the Irish Times Music Awards. I became hopeful. I thought, “Maybe she’s going to make it.” I posted the picture on social media.

Since I had quit Twitter, and hadn’t done a deep dive in a month or so, I hadn’t seen her reappearance on Twitter, posting cries of grief just before we lost her. I didn't know she had moved to London in search of peace and comfort. 

A month before she died, I wrote the following: 

“I can still get lost in that album. It makes me cry with compassion and sometimes I need a hug when I listen to it. Sometimes I want to hug the world. These days I want to hug Sinéad.”

Why was I writing about Sinéad a month before she died?  Over time, my view of her changed from the young ferocious singer of “Mandinka” to the sensitive creature of “John, I Love You.” I had a deep relationship with her music that connected with deep recesses of my soul. The best parts of ourselves must be nurtured with care, and Sinéad’s music did that for me.

*

On the day the whole world learned Sinéad had died, I was driving home from work to meet my son for lunch. I glanced at a text from my friend with the news and felt the shock through my body. When I walked in the door, my son could see something was wrong. I told him the news and he hugged me. He said, “Is it okay if we don’t go to lunch?” I hugged him. I sat down to follow the news. I lit a candle.

Two candles, actually, because I happened to have two in a jar. I could say now it was for Sinéad and Shane. Or Sinéad and Steve. But those notions came later. I had to take my son to work and I didn’t want to sit alone with this. I needed a long drive. So I drove to a friend’s house 25 miles away and cranked the album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” I knew that listening to “Universal Mother” would be too much for me.

I received texts all day. They were all of the variety, “Have you heard? I thought of you immediately.” I received such tender messages from many. While responding to a friend, these words came to me. 

“Her wounds were bound up with her gifts.” 

The exchanges were comforting. As I shared my feelings with others, I realized, with such heaviness at first, that Sinéad was now linked to me in death in a new way. She had tried to commit suicide before. She was 56, almost 57. She was found “unresponsive.” The autopsy would take some time. These are the same facts of my brother’s death. Like his, I suspect an autopsy will provide no definitive answers. With Steve we could only learn how much medicine was in his body. His intentions would be left as a mystery, but my experience is that when someone you love is at peace, the details don’t matter much. I won’t anxiously await the coroner’s report on Sinéad’s death, although I’m sure it will be newsworthy for others.

I have known for years that my feelings of protection for Sinéad had somehow become intertwined with my own motherhood. When she lost Shane, I thought of my own son, Zane. But now I wonder if her vulnerability had always connected with me because of my brother, too. Is there something about her music that allowed me to deeply experience my love for Steve by connecting with her? Sinéad said in an interview once that she was a “people whisperer.” She said, “I have a certain gift with frightened people, as long as I’m not the one that made them frightened.” I believe in her gift. In my heart she is somehow intertwined with Steve, who could be very afraid of the everyday expectations of life.

I created walls of self protection around my brother. It was hard to live the ups and downs of his world and I’d feel almost numb thinking about him at times. A few days after Sinéad died, I wondered if I was grieving more for the loss of Sinéad than I did for my own brother. Is it easier to love a troubled person from afar than the one who is at hand? I suspect the answer is yes. But I also know that love is infinite, and perhaps we can all grieve together now, having been provided a musical legacy from a sensitive soul. It’s not an either/or situation. Perhaps “John, I Love You” can expand for my family.

*

Oh, Sineady, you have been my minister since 1987. I just didn’t put a name on it until you died. Your absence on this Earth has created in me an intense, unexpected sense of loss. If your first album woke me up to passion, the next few nurtured my empathy. I needed that because the best parts of ourselves can be snuffed out so easily and unintentionally. 

Oh, Sineady. Oh, Steve. Oh, Mom. Oh, Dad. Oh, Oma and Opa. Oh, Mamaw and Papaw. 

I love you. I’m ever so fond of you. Will you wait for me, ‘til I am heavenly? Oh, there’s much work to do. Oh, I love you. Your name’s a whisper.