Of the Rock

Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland

Growing up I was lucky enough to know my great-grandma Mary Gordon (née Roche), she lived to be 96 and was full of life and so many stories. She grew up in County Clare, Ireland and immigrated to Canada during World War II with my grandmother and my great-uncle Donny.

When I was a child she used to tell me that she was “found under a rock by a leprechaun”. I never failed to laugh at this, I just thought she was playing into her Irish stereotypes.

Five years after her passing I set off to travel Europe on my own for a month, my first stop? Ireland. I learned so much about Irish history, I learned about the Irish Civil War, The Great Famine, and just about the geography of Ireland as I bounced around from place to place. It wasn’t until one of my last days in Ireland that I found the Roche name and crest in a frame with a write-up on the family name origins. It read:

“It originated in France as de la Roche, meaning ‘of the rock’.”

I laughed out loud in that moment, finally after all these years understanding the punchline of my great-grandma’s twisted Irish joke.