Visions & Revisions: An anthology of new writing by Junior Cycle Teachers [selected extracts]

Martine O’Brien
were due to come home from holidays. The girls had convinced
her. Times were good, the shop was going well. We were all on a
family holiday together in Praia da Rocha. She looked beautiful;
she really did, warmed by the sun, loosened by the wine. Why she
didn’t get her hair done like that at home, I don’t know. Instead,
she went for the granny look. The night-time high fashion look
was her floral blue cotton nightie, plastic foam hair rollers and
creamed up face and hands. My Mary!
‘What was my mammy like when we were small?’ Susie
enquired of me recently.
‘She was always busy,’ came my reply, ‘with ye, with the
house.’
What kind of an answer was that? I disappointed myself.
Mary complains I am too aloof, always thinking, well she used
to. In truth, maybe I am but it’s not that straightforward. Is it
ever? People are complicated messes. Do you agree? When
I’m talking to the counsellor he asks me questions that get me
thinking about how I’ve lived my life and why I do what I do.
Big stuff. It gives me fodder for conversations, with my daughter
Una particularly, and is helping me understand my struggles. The
great unravelling. I get too emotional, too defensive over little
things. I take umbrage and wear the scars like an excuse. In the
past, the success of the shop relied on me, the staff too, and I had
to be tough. Stupidly I hold onto pain like a loyal friend and I do
not trust easy. When Susie asked me about her mammy, I should
have thought more carefully and tried to remember, challenging
though it is. Maybe if I had the photographs from the attic with
me as a guide it would help. I know stress can addle the brain but
I’m not sure why I’m stumbling so much when I try to talk these
days. Names, or even just the ordinary words I need to make
sense, seem to be just out of my reach here and there. I get stuck
and the gaps when I’m talking are embarrassing. The counsellor
told me to monitor it.
‘Age related!’ my wincing contemporaries deduce, half
smiling sadly, in solidarity.
We compare notes the odd time we meet. Some are with
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it mentally, even though they’re hobbling and falling over with
aches and pains.
‘You’re grieving,’ my friend Pat reminds me compassionately.
‘Are you drinking enough water?’
‘I’m not a great water drinker, ‘tis true, I prefer gin,’ I reply.
Then, with all their reading and radio programmes, they
might talk about how your body is made up of what is it, 70
percent, more, of water, and you need to keep it hydrated. One
particular couple, Joe and Cecily, friends of ours, still living,
still together, make me laugh, in spite of their obvious struggles.
Once we’ve gone through the update on the ailments, alternative
treatments, drugs, family, nothings, Cecily, the wife, whispers
conspiratorially to me, as she glances around, ‘Enough of this
age related drivel, let’s talk about sex!’
And her husband Joe pipes up, after a pause, ‘What? What
did you say? … Sex? … What’s sex?’
It’s always funny. Better than crying.
Sometimes I squeeze out a few tears when I’m desperate,
late at night when I’m in bed, wanting to die. When I cannot
sleep for the lonesomeness. All this insight from the counselling
is making me evaluate the last 80 years or so. I could have been a
better husband, in hindsight. A better father, brother too. I know
I was a good son though, the apple of my mammy’s eye. It can
be awful painful though. All these torturous, muddled thoughts
chase around my head and often I cannot seem to sort them and
put them back. Next time I see Susie I am going to give her a
better answer, a more honest one.
‘Your mammy was a very decent person, she wasn’t perfect,
but she did the best she could for our family,’ I will say to her
eyes. ‘She loved us all so much and she knew we loved her too.’
I will try to tell Susie and the others too what I remember
about her. I know she didn’t want to die. Her life was bearing
fruit, the grandchildren coming. She was enjoying her life more;
she had more time to do what she wanted to do. She planned to
finish the patchwork quilt and the projects she started but never
completed. I would explain that I get it now, why their mammy
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