The house is at the end of the road and behind the playground in LaFlare, an ancient town in Galway County. Made of gray trim and white stone, there are lace curtains, statues of the Virgin Mary, two small bedrooms, one pink and the other blue.
In the living room, a small, fragile woman in a plaid skirt sits in a stuffed orange chair. She is 93 years old, but lives alone with an overweight mutt named Rex. Every day she gets busy with her small work — praying for the rosary, washing her, and putting her dog in the yard — she awaits the return of her son, whom she never holds.
She had waited for 76 years.
House of shame and secrets
As a teenager, Chrissie Tully fell in love with a man from her neighbourhood, and in 1949 she became pregnant.
What happened next would follow the harsh general script of the Irish medieval period, when the Catholic Church and its strict doctrines ruled almost every aspect of everyday life. Tully's family denied her. The town, LaFlare spurred her. The priest took her to St. Mary's mother and baby's house.
Such an institution continues to be one of Ireland's lasting moral taints. Independent panels hold them, religious institutions apologise to them, and the Irish government is running through the bailout scheme to financially compensate the tens of thousands of Irish mothers and children who have been exiled by them.
Particularly infamous was St. Mary's, a strict, gated structure that once was military barracks and workhouses. Its harsh reputation, run by sisters from the French religious order known as Bon Secours, was so well known that locals shunned it, and housed by fatherless children.
He spoke little about internal conditions regarding forced labor among young mothers, high infant mortality rates, prevalent shame and emotional abuse. Still, for someone like Tully, there was no other place to go.
On December 13th of the year she arrived, Talley was rushed to Galway Central Hospital due to labor complications. She gave birth to a boy born with a gun at seven and a half pounds. She wanted to name him Michael, but he was taken away before he had the chance. She didn't hold him or look at his face.
“It almost killed me,” she said.
Soon the doctor returned.
“'Baby's dead,'” recalled Tally saying. “They weren't very good about that.”
She had no way of knowing whether she would believe him or not. The system was full of shame and secrets. Some babies were adopted by Catholic families, both in the same town or even into the US. Others died in childhood, buried in unmarked graves, and disappeared into the collective silence that covered Tuam's facilities.
Mothers like Talley were often told that they were told where their children went or half the truth. In some cases, the mother was told the baby was dead and the birth certificate was forged just to find out that it was later illegally adopted.
In a story that is not lacking in cruelty, it is probably the most burnt-in. Lack of closure, an endless “what if”. For decades, Talley was wondering: Was Michael really dead? Or was he there somewhere, unfairly believing that his mother had abandoned him?
Talley couldn't accept that her little boy had never left the hospital and that his story began and ended in 1949. Perhaps it was irrational.
But a few years ago, she got a new reason to hope for.
“We've found your mom.”
After losing Michael, Tallie left Tuam's house and returned to her previous life. She also resumed her relationship with her partner, and four years later she became pregnant again. However, her father, who Talley said “is not the type to be married,” left her and moved to the UK. For the rest of her life she has carried a torch. She has never been married.
Without an alternative, she returned to Tuam's house. She gave birth to her second boy in 1954 and named Christopher.
Every day, Trekked to the children's ward at home to feed him and bathe him, and Tally had a deep certainty. She had lost Michael, but never lost Christopher. She finds work, takes him out of Tuam's house and builds her life – mother and son together, in La Flare.
However, one day, Talley arrives at the boy's bed and faces a “flattering” nun.
Nothing remained – she and her family were not completely reconciled – Ms. Tally stayed in Galway, doing some odd jobs at a cafe, and later worked as a live-in housekeeper for a group of priests. She searched for her son, but was stymed by Byzantine adoptive officials.
Over time, Talley realized that she might never live to find a lost child. She settled in Portumuna, the town of Galway on the Tipperary border, leaving behind a letter that would mean that if they surfaced it was aimed at the boys. In it, she described the 3,000 Irish pounds and their separation, revealing that she had never been willing to give either of her children.
Then, in 2013, a woman who looked like a professional arrived at Talley's LaFlare home and asked if she could have had tea. Slowly, the stranger revealed her purpose. She came from an adoption agency approached by a London man in his 60s who was looking for his birth mother.
The man had no idea, but he was the boy that Tally named Christopher.
He was eager to reconnect, the woman said, but the decision was up to Tally.
“I loved it,” Tully said of the revelation. “He's everything I have.”
That summer day, Talley arrived at a small hotel outside Galway City. Norton flew from London and stopped by a supermarket on his way to pick up a bouquet. When he entered, the little woman in front of him was so overwhelmed that she barely could see his eyes.
“Chrissy,” he recalls saying. “I'm not that bad 'Me?”
Since childhood, Norton, 70, knew he was adopted, but he didn't feel compelled to find a birth mother. He spent his childhood in Galway before his family moved to London.
“My adopted parents were very affectionate,” he said. “I thought if I ever saw it, I'd go behind them.”
However, after their death, Norton felt plagued by questions about his origins. Who were his birth parents? Did they have other children? Did his parents have them, and if so, why wouldn't he?
He searched for over a year and had largely given up when he received a call from the adoption agency in Galway. “We found your mother,” they told him.
“I've been home every year since the day I found her,” said Norton, who lives in London with his wife, along with gags from his three adult children and grandchildren.
It was a few years ago that Talley confessed that Norton might have a sibling. When he heard, he said he was “on the moon” – he could not believe that he could have a sibling.
Since then, Norton and Talley have helped record their birth and death, searching for cemetery and hospital documents. Through the Irish Freedom of Information Act, they eventually obtained birth records of other children, which were believed to be written in a hospital in Galway in 1949.
He said “stillborn.” Tully's name: “Back to Tuam.”
It was the first official indication that Talley saw Michael actually die. It was not clear whether “Back to Tuam” refers to Tully alone or included Michael, but the possibility that the baby's body had been sent there carried its own harsh weight. In 2017, an unmarked grave was discovered in a septic tank at St. Mary's, which was closed in 1961. Among them were the bodies of at least 796 children.
Was Michael one of them?
It seems impossible for Talley to know for certain what happened to the boy. She has yet to see a clear record of his burial. And for Norton, it's incredibly incredible to be buried in the pits from Tuam, 30 miles from Galway hospital.
“I don't know what to believe anymore,” Norton said. “He has to be somewhere.”
Rosary and dreams
So Talley waited in a modest house. She rented it from Galway County Council for a grant-on-received fee for 20 years. As she approaches nearly 100, she and Mr Norton may think that Michael will return to a house occupied by someone else, but that may not be possible.
“I hate Chrissy's dying in hopes of Michael coming back,” Norton said, restraining her tears. “And there's nothing here.”
Hoping to keep the house a family, he contacted the Galway County Council to explore buying a house in Talley's name. The house is rated at around 110,000 euros, but Norton said that the council took a long time to rent the house, so Tully could buy it for 50,000 euros.
Still, because of their respective ages, both Tully and Norton have been denied mortgages. They tried to raise their own funds through online fundraisers. However, the effort is insufficient, and in part they struggle to navigate the online process.
Tully's Mantel currently has a collection of framed photos. It is evidence of discoveries over the past decade. With another great grandson.
One photo is sitting next to it. This is a recent image of Tully, bundled up in the rain in Galway, walking through the iron gates of Tuam's house. She stares at the camera in front of a memorial set up for the baby found in a septic tank.
“I went to see if I could get Michael's grave,” Tally said, looking around the photos. “Nothing was found.”
At night, when Mr. Norton slept in the pink bedroom, he hears a tweet from under the hall. It is Tully who prays for the rosary for Michael, as she does every night. Not long ago, she called Mr Norton early in the morning and had news of the vision she had.
“I had a dream, I saw him, and he's alive,” Tully said at the time. “And no one will tell me anything different right now.”
