An Irish Trip of Remembrance to Celebrate Keith Gregory

In late September of 2024, my father, Harold Keith Gregory passed away in his sleep in hospice in Dallas, TX, with my mother by his side. It had been a long goodbye for our small family. We honored my father's wishes for no service, no burial, no obituary, but it has felt uncomfortable to not have a way to commemorate his life or an event to honor the profound impact his love and kindness had on ours.

Do know, my mother does not know I've set this up and if she did, I can assure you that you'll soon be going to MY memorial service... Please allow me to explain the hope here and why I'd like to surprise her and help celebrate my parents and their (almost) 58 years of marriage and recognize the partnership and friendship, with a thoughtfully designed, eight-day trip to Ireland this September.

My mother and I had discussed taking a trip to Ireland together once my father passed, to make a pilgrimage to honor his literary heroes in a country he'd fallen in love with through the written word and my tales of five years of professional work life calling many parts of it 'home'. We knew it would be an important way for us to connect and process the grief of his absence while exploring a place they could never afford to visit financially, and with his heart transplant recipient body that couldn't tolerate travel of any kind, near or far since the summer of 2001.

I've spent the majority of my professional life as an experience curator, trip designer, and a tour guide or host of some sort, and I'm convinced that it's my only superpower, connecting people to a place in a way that speaks to their heart while authentically honoring the location we're navigating. It's experiential education at its core, an ability I always felt I'd inherited with my parents' own professional passions for teaching and sharing their knowledge of history and literature.

I hope, with the help of small donations that would have gone toward flowers for a service had we had one, that I'm able to create a memorial experience for my mother that honors my father and selfishly, the kind of trip of a lifetime I never got to take with my own parents or treasure with my (world history-loving) mom. They didn't want a 50 year wedding anniversary celebration and I'm ashamed to say I've not ever had the means (if given the opportunity) to celebrate their lives, something I know would deeply matter to my mom.

Any small contribution will add up and help. My single-person, monthly, City of Bentonville income capabilities aren't all that promising just yet! I'm looking to book conversations with local historians, secure custom experiences with musicians and scholars along the way, and even make sure we only eat at the finest fish and chips locations ;) Barby will fall in love with the Emerald Isle that is full of other daughters named Bronwen, the way that I did instantly all those years ago when I was posted in Connemara, Kerry, Cork and all along the 'Wild Atlantic Way'. I hope to offer a proper farewell ceremony of some kind for my mother, (since we'll have a small amount of my father's ashes in tow), in the town of Castlegregory, once I know what all might be possible.

In return, I promise to take you along with us with updates, photos, and videos along the way and a proper 'post memorial trip report' once we're safely back home. I have been eternally grateful for the kindness, the compassion, and the support that you all have unfailingly displayed, given, and shown to my parents over the years you have each known them; but most especially the love you've surrounded my mother with since Keith's passing. There aren't words big enough to capture the gratitude I feel for all of you that have been such essential chapters in our book of Gregory Family history.

Thank you for considering a small memorial contribution and thank you for doing your very best to keep this a secret. My intention is for my mother to receive the gift of this trip of remembrance with an open mind and an open heart, and to see it as a collective gesture of love and respect given by friends and family, for not only my father, but for also recognizing her profound commitment to him. I'm willing to be in some real big trouble when this is revealed, if it means she's able to have the kind of experience she wouldn't be able to otherwise.

She's set aside the dates, we have secured our airline tickets and our rental car and she knows we are headed to Ireland as planned to honor Keith, but she doesn't know that friends and family would have helped behind the scenes by possibly contributing to get us there and to allow us to travel a lot deeper while we're there. I'll reveal that to her once we're seated on the plane on September 11th.

As we get closer to departure, I'll reach out to see if there's anything that you'd like to share (memory, story, thoughts, etc.) about Keith (or always feel free to share with me at any time). I'll then compile all things shared with me into something for my mom and I'll organize it into something that I'll reveal sections of, daily while we're out there.

With love and gratitude, your friend,

Bronwen