Your O'Cobhthaigh eyes are smiling

Thinking yesterday about this twenthy-third-month anniversary of Timm's passing, it being St. Patrick's day and all, a traditional Irish-immigrant song kept crooning in my ear, "When Irish Eyes are Smiling."  

Timm chose, late in what turned out to be his full life, to legally change his last name back to the old Irish spelling of O'Cobhthaigh, for reasons he never fully articulated. The irony of the act is that, as the last-born yet first of our nuclear clan to leave this life, he departed bearing the oldest clan name of all. 

Our Irish eyes are blurred perhaps with melting-pot vision, yet Timm I think strove for purity: out of devotion to his God, his need for redemption, his belief that the world's beauty had the capacity to not only astonish but heal. 

So to accompany that song I include Timm O'Cobhthaigh's smile, a smile which lingers on in our memory. A happy smile, a comforted and comforting smile, a loving smile which never seemed to lose faith that the long Irish trek westward would some day find a way home, if only in our dreams.

So here's "When Irish Eyes are Smiling," accompanied by our brother's and Timm's own essential smile, overarching all the difficulties and troubles of a life, his long wandering, end-point perhaps of our clan's long westward wandering (no one will bear the name Cohea into our next generation), curving upwards to God with the momentary and fleeting certainty that one is always home exactly where one smiles ... 

There's a tear in your eye,

And I'm wondering why,

For it never should be there at all.

With such pow'r in your smile,

Sure a stone you'd beguile,

So there's never a teardrop should fall.

When your sweet lilting laughter's

Like some fairy song,

And your eyes twinkle bright as can be;

You should laugh all the while

And all other times smile,

And now, smile a smile for me.

When Irish eyes are smiling,

Sure, 'tis like the morn in Spring.

In the lilt of Irish laughter

You can hear the angels sing.

When Irish hearts are happy,

All the world seems bright and gay.

And when Irish eyes are smiling,

Sure, they steal your heart away.

For your smile is a part

Of the love in your heart,

And it makes even sunshine more bright.

Like the linnet's sweet song,

Crooning all the day long,

Comes your laughter and light.

Chorus:

For the springtime of life

Is the sweetest of all

There is ne'er a real care or regret;

And while springtime is ours

Throughout all of youth's hours,

Let us smile each chance we get.