In my part of Canada, we don’t generally refer to a surprise ending or unannounced departure as an “Irish goodbye,” so I had no idea how personal Beth Ann Fennelly’s eponymous new micro-memoir collection would be. If she had used terms like “French exit,” “over the bridge,” “ghosting” or “leaving by the cellar door,” I might have had an inkling.

What holds the varied and carefully crafted elements of THE IRISH GOODBYE together turned out to be the sudden and very premature death of a beloved sister. As meaning dawned on me, I seriously considered setting the book aside.

"[W]hat makes THE IRISH GOODBYE pieces special is Fennelly’s visceral understanding of just how necessary some departures are.... For a slim volume it was hard going at times, but I’m glad I didn’t send it back and ask for something else."

Just over a year ago, only days before Christmas, my “baby” sister went to bed as usual and never woke up. She would never see her 68th birthday. Just over a year before COVID, my husband went for his habitual Saturday afternoon nap and also never woke up. We would never see our 50th wedding anniversary.

In Fennelly’s creative world, sudden-death loss is the ultimate “Irish goodbye.” No advance warnings, no premonitions, no enigmatic pronouncements about faith, hope, despair or even love. Beloved humans here one moment, forever gone the next.

Yet there are many other forms of silent departure in this thing called life, and as I read through nearly four-dozen examples curated from Fennelly’s own experiences, THE IRISH GOODBYE became more and more thoughtfully appealing and felt less and less like reopened wounds.

Fennelly’s collection of micro-memoirs ranges from the almost flippant, throwaway style of her three-sentence opening (a clever husband’s silent response to being overruled in a board game), or a five-word sentence about the body’s long Irish goodbye to youth, to essay-length reflections on deeply affecting topics like teaching English in a country so foreign that hellos barely happened, much less goodbyes.

Along with the haunting thread of her sister’s death, among the most sobering reflections in THE IRISH GOODBYE are Fennelly’s references to losing people through neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s. While their loved ones know the death sentence long in advance, the victims don’t; their own brains betray them from within as memory after memory makes a silent exit.

One of the book’s most powerful pieces centers on Fennelly’s almost anonymous commitment to volunteer at a vast refugee aid warehouse while on a teaching term in Germany. It was a combination of dogged, unrelenting physical work and strict rules of non-involvement that left her drained and emotionally numb. The enormity of the human despair flowing through the place and how victims of forced migration dealt with their fate seemed endless. One day, when her shift was over, she simply left.

Whether it’s the friend who just stops calling, the committee meetings one stops attending, the job you suddenly get up and walk away from, the messages left unanswered, the quiet escape from a party when the host isn’t looking --- Irish goodbyes are everywhere, once you start becoming aware of them.

However, what makes THE IRISH GOODBYE pieces special is Fennelly’s visceral understanding of just how necessary some departures are. Leaving a relationship or situation silently and invisibly no longer feels like a furtive or rude strategy. Whether in laughter, sorrow or a maelstrom of mixed feelings, sometimes it’s the only exit that works.

For a slim volume it was hard going at times, but I’m glad I didn’t send it back and ask for something else.