Maybe my Aunt Eileen bought the small shamrock lapel pin for my father, Shamus. Maybe my Aunt Catherine carried the little green and gold piece of Ireland back from one of her early trips to Cornamona, in County Galway, where my grandfather was born.

Thrilled with the keepsake, every day for decades Shamus stuck that pin in the lapel of his blue sports coat when he got dressed for work as a detective with the Pennsylvania State Police.

A local chief of police once asked why he wore the shamrock instead of an American flag.

“If it wasn’t for this you wouldn’t have that,” Shamus said with a glimmer of menace in his eyes.

One day he lost one of the shamrock’s green Connemara marble leaves. He wore the shamrock anyway. After a few years I asked what I thought was an obvious question.

“When are you going to get the leaf replaced?”

“I’ll put the leaf back when we put the six counties in the north back and unite Ireland,” he said.

Shamus served 34 years with the state police. He retired at age 60 when mandatory retirement stuck him at the kitchen table smoking Chesterfield Kings and reading the paper.

One day I asked if he missed being a cop.

“All I ever wanted to be was Irish,” he said.

Shamus retired as one of, if not the most highly decorated member of the oldest modern state police organization in the nation.

When he died in 1997, I picked up the shamrock, missing leaf and all, and vowed never to replace the stone until Ireland won the freedom that they owned in the first place. I wore the shamrock on special occasions.

Back in January, when Stephanie and were in Florida, some criminal kicked in our cellar door, tripped the alarm, ran upstairs in a flash and carried off Stephanie’s old jewelry box, escaping before police arrived. She lost her mother’s and grandmother’s wedding ring.

I lost Paddy Gallagher’s watch, which is a story for another time. The thief also grabbed a small wooden box from the top of our chest of drawers. The shamrock vanished in a flash.

I didn’t realize the loss until today, when I went for the shamrock to wear in my lapel when we took a pot of live shamrocks to Shamus’ grave in the Minooka section of Scranton where he was born and my family is buried.

In a bizarre twist, the crook emptied the wooden box of some Irish coins, one of Shamus’ state police tie tacks, a hoop earring and a pair of cheap cuff links. He arranged the items on a table in the basement on his way out. The box and shamrock are gone.

As I stand by my mother’s and father’s graves today, I’ll draw from the powerful lessons of life they taught that stressed honesty, truthfulness and courage against the day-to-day struggles of existence.  I’ll recall beauty and laughter, love and family bonds.

I hope the hooligan who violated our home one day understands morality. I hope he learns honor and discovers virtue.

This could happen. 

So will a 32-county Republic of Ireland.

Faith is worth fighting for.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.