Susan is an 84-year-old American woman living in Ireland. Born in the USA, she was raised in a strict Catholic family. In 1952, when she was 15, Susan met Ray who was 20, and they became childhood sweethearts. During their relationship Susan got to know Ray’s family including his older (secretly gay) brother Jack.
Susan and Ray stayed together for three years including when Ray went away to fight in the Korean war. At the age of 18, Sue went to college and wanted some independence so the couple went their separate ways.
Susan eventually married someone else, moved to Ireland and had four children. The marriage didn’t last and Susan found herself a single mother in Ireland at the age of 27. It wasn’t easy being a single woman in Ireland in the 60s and she remained single for the next forty years. Ray also married but stayed in the US with his wife and three children. His marriage eventually broke up.
Fast-forward to the mid nineteen nineties. Ray’s brother Jack passed away. While Ray was sorting through his brother’s things, he found a Jewelry box with a note inside that said ‘for Susan’. Ray can’t think of anyone his brother knew called Susan except his childhood sweetheart so he decides it is his responsibility to find Susan, so he can fulfil his late brother’s wishes and give her this box.
A few years go by and Ray finally gets an address for Susan and writes to her in Dublin and tells her that something has been bequeathed to her. In 1999, when Susan is in her late 60s and Ray in his 70s, the pair finally meet again. To Susan’s surprise she falls in love with Ray all over again. She is a little reluctant at first but in 2011 after ten years together, they get married in Monkstown, county Dublin where they now live.
As Ray turns 90 in September, they will be marking the occasion with a small celebration and will look back on their lives together, apart and finally together again because of the strange bequest which reunited them across the Atlantic Ocean.
Documentary On One: The Very Thought Of You , Produced by Mary Elaine Tynan and Tim Desmond
TX: RTÉ Radio 1 September 10th 2022 @ 2pm