The Death of Slim Shady

Two years ago today, Eminem released The Death of Slim Shady.

Tonight, I fly to Glasgow.

I doubt Marshall Mathers planned it that way, but here we are.

Slim Shady was a character. A louder, angrier version of the man underneath. An identity that became so recognizable, it eventually needed to die.

I understand something about that.

I have spent much of my life creating versions of myself that felt easier to present to the world. The priest. The writer. The father. The front-line worker. The funny guy. The angry guy. The man who always has an answer.

Giff.

Today, I leave the country where they lived.

I was born in Glasgow in 1981 and brought to Canada the following year. Scotland is where my life began, but Canada is where almost everything happened. It is where I grew up, became a priest, became a father, lost the priesthood, wrote a book, worked in mental health, fell apart, and found ways to stand again.

It is my home.

That makes this more complicated than the word homecoming allows.

My son remains here. There is no honest way around that. I can write about ancestral soil, old churches, football, and the Clyde, but the person I love most will not be beside me on the plane.

That truth is heavier than anything I packed.

I am not returning because everything worked out. I am going because my health, housing, employment, and finances have become difficult to sustain. I need care, stability, and a different way of living.

There is no victory lap happening here.

By another accident of timing, I leave on the day of the Orange Walk in Glasgow.

My mother came from an Irish Catholic family. My father came from a Protestant Scottish one. Their marriage carried histories that existed long before either of them. I grew up trying to understand those identities and where I belonged.

Now I return to Scotland as a Catholic, after becoming an Anglican priest and then no longer being one.

I am not returning to revive old sectarian battles or claim a purity I have not earned. I want to understand what it means to live as a Catholic in Scotland without turning faith into another tribal uniform.

I also want to meet the real Scotland.

Not only the Scotland I inherited through family stories, football, music, memory, and longing. The actual place. The trains and council offices. The churches and pubs. The beaches, football grounds, graveyards, housing schemes, islands, and rain.

Giff on the Way became part of the journey toward Redemptive Trauma. Way of the Giff was what came afterward, when the redemptive ending proved to be neither neat nor an ending.

Now I am going back to where the whole thing started.

I have spent most of my life believing I belong to Scotland.

It is time to find out, humbly, whether I do.

My story wasn’t done then.

It isn’t done now.

This is Giff on the Way Home.

My last days in Scotland next to Papa and Granma O’Neil. May they rest in peace.