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  It didn’t work. I wanted to lie down with him, but I couldn’t bring myself to because for the first time lying with John seemed wrong, so I just held his hand and brushed his blond bloodied hair from his face, the face that I had grown up with, the face that I relied on, the face that was as familiar as my own but was different now. The light was out, the spark had faded away and all that we were and had and all that he was and would be was gone. My boy, my man, my friend, my challenger, my lover, my identity lay growing cold like stone. Tears flowed from the ocean that had once been my heart. I removed invisible dirt from the sheet that covered him. I found his hand and held it tight.

  “I love you.”

  Time stood still and I succumbed to the agony. I’ve no idea how long I was kneeling on the cold tiles clinging desperately to his hand. At some point Clo entered the room. She was crying. When she saw our boy she screamed. She didn’t mean to – it was primal, it just came out, and she couldn’t help it. She stood looking down at the body that used to be John and put her arms around me. I heard myself saying: “Bye, baby.” Clo was sobbing as I held John’s hand. The pain weighed us down, making sudden movement almost impossible. We just stayed still, still like John.

  Someone had called my mother. She arrived with my father to pick me up, he silent and four steps behind her, not quite knowing what to do or say. She took control of me and, for the first time since I was a young child, I was grateful for her strength. As they led me out of the hospital I saw Richard comforting his distraught wife and Seán alone in a corner, staring and broken. We went home. I remember sitting in the back seat of the car, watching the night lights blur as we passed them, the reds and yellows of the streetlamps, the shining white of the passing cars. My father’s Dean Martin tape was playing. He was singing about love. I looked up at the sky. It was black. Not a star to be seen. The skin on my face still burned. My mother kept turning to gaze at me, almost as though she was afraid that at any moment I would defy her and join John in death as I had done in life.

  The house was cold. My mother put on the kettle to make tea, but I just wanted to sleep. She tucked me in and rubbed the hair away from my forehead. I couldn’t feel her touch. My father stood in the doorway watching his wife and child. She turned off the light and she lay beside me in the dark and I felt her warmth and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I remembered Clodagh’s mother and how as a child I thought it odd that her reaction to her husband’s death was sleep. I now realised why. Sleep was the only escape.

  Chapter 4

  No Goodbyes

  The funeral took place a couple of days later. John’s mother requested that Noel hold the service. It’s odd that I don’t remember much about it, but everyone said he did a beautiful job. The church was packed. People were there from our old school and college and of course people from work, all there to shake hands and share in the grief. They uttered words of sympathy; some were crying. I was numb. At the graveside people held one another circling the open ground. Noel’s choir sang “The Alleluia” while they lowered John into the ground. I could feel my father’s strength holding me up, his presence unobtrusive and omnipresent. His heart beat on my back as the coffin was lowered. He held my hand when I threw dirt on the glistening brass plaque inscribed with John’s name. I heard his mother’s anguish and felt her agony as people passed and blessed themselves. I remember being led away by the firm hands of my parents, passing the gravediggers standing by, itching to cover the hole so that they could go home, like vultures sitting on a tree waiting for a calf to breathe its last.

  I remember sitting in his parents’ front lounge surrounded by my friends and watching his mother crying while she handed out sandwiches. My mother and Doreen were handing out drinks and whispering to one another, concerned about who had a food plate and who didn’t. Doreen was our fifty-year-old neighbour – she had arrived with a sponge cake the first day we moved in and after that she became part of the furniture. John used to say that she came with the house. Doreen was kind, considerate, funny, sharp, strong, passionate and above all a deadly adversary. She was old Dublin and made no apologies. She was a second mother to me and Noel. We often went to her when any problem arose, but this was one that even the mighty Doreen couldn’t solve and she knew it, so instead she served food.

  John’s father sat in the garden on a plastic deck-chair alone and drinking whiskey. My father joined him and they sat in silence, both with tears resting in their eyes. There was nothing to say. Anne held on to Richard for dear life, afraid to let go, and I knew how she felt. Seán just sat by the front window, chain-smoking and blindly watching the passing cars. The loneliness and guilt in his eyes was unavoidable and for me it was like looking at a reflection. He caught my gaze and I turned away.

  It’s my fault.

  I stayed at my parents’ house for two weeks after the funeral, but it no longer felt like home. I was a visitor. Noel stayed too and it was nice, but we were all adults now and every day felt like an extended Sunday lunch. Everyone tried to say the right things but nobody knew what they were, even Noel. I wanted to go home, but they were worried about too many memories. Nobody seemed to understand that there was no escape from them and that I held them close. I wanted to roam around and pick up his jumpers and tidy them up. I wanted to smell his aftershave and lie on his side of the bed. I wanted to listen to our music and hold his shirts close to my face. I needed to be as close to John as I possibly could be, so that I could say sorry.

  It’s my fault.

  Eventually it was Noel who pleaded with my parents to let their vice-grip go. It was he who explained the feelings that I had difficulty sharing. He just knew it was right for me to leave, so that I could start to pick up the pieces. So I did. I went home. My mother cried openly when I left and my father held her and smiled at me bravely. When they hugged me, it was difficult to let go.

  My dad held me tight and bent down, whispering in my ear, “He was like my son. We’ve lost our boy but we will survive.”

  The tears that had dried up days ago fell once more and I was grateful for the release. My mother nodded her head, agreeing with someone invisible. I sat in the car and looked forward. When we moved off I turned to see my father holding my shaking mother.

  It’s my fault.

  The house was empty and cold. Noel put on the heating. The kitchen was still the mess we had left it. He started to clean up but I stopped him. Nick Cave was in the CD player. John had been listening to his new album that day. I wanted to be alone but instead Noel made tea. I waited for him to talk about God’s ways and how it was a plan and that John was much better off but he didn’t and I was grateful. He stayed for one coffee and when he was confident that I needed to be alone, he left. I waved him goodbye and told him I would be OK.

  Liar.

  I sat on the sitting-room floor listening to Nick Cave sing sad songs for hours, crying, laughing, talking to John, talking to myself but mostly crying. I played the answering-machine message he had left over and over again.

  “Hi, you’ve reached six four zero five two six one. We’re somewhere exotic so leave a message and, if we like you, we’ll call you back.”

  Our home had become a museum and my present was now the past. I sat in the kitchen and gazed at his personalised coffee mug, the post-it he had had left on the fridge reminding me to get the brake-light fixed on the car, the piece of paper he had brought from college about his stupid space-hopper test. I stared at everything that had been his and cried for hours because he was gone and it was my fault.

  Chapter 5

  The Five Stages

  Grief is all-consuming. Grief is isolating. Grief is selfish. Grief counsellors will tell you that there are five stages in the grief process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. I think that there are six: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, guilt and then finally acceptance.

  DENIAL

  I didn’t think about anyone else. I didn’t think. I lived in my own past. Loc
ked in my own head, rerunning my life thus far. I had been given four weeks’ compassionate leave. Four weeks to mourn a lifetime. I stayed mostly in my room, hiding under my duvet, listening to my grandmother’s antique clock tick through time. I slept and slept and slept and when my eyes would force me to wake I would hug my pillow and talk to John.

  “Remember when we told my parents we were moving in together? Remember how insane they went? Even Noel got it in the neck. Remember? My mother used the word ‘Christ’. Noel chastised her and she ate him. You calmed her down though. Even Dad was against it and he’s usually easygoing. You were brilliant. I was screaming like a fourteen-year-old but you sorted it all out. You were always good at arguing. You could have been a barrister if you’d wanted. You could have been anything.”

  I could hear the hailstorm outside. The hailstones battering against the window didn’t move me. It was a cat screaming on the windowsill that eventually pushed me to get up. I dragged myself to the curtain and pulled it back roughly, disgusted that reality was interrupting a pleasant conversation. I looked out at the hailstones battering down on the concreted backyard. The shed door was swinging wildly, its hinges screaming for relief. The plant pots were rolling, spilling their contents with every spin. It was a few seconds before I remembered the sound that had drawn me to the window. The cat cried out in desperation at the lunatic staring into the middle distance. If cats could talk, I think the words “Let me in, you fucking thick!” would have been uttered. I opened the window, shocked at the sight of the tiniest little kitten clinging on to the windowsill with its underdeveloped claws. I picked up this little sopping creature, who really was just a little pair of petrified eyes surrounded by fur, and lifted him carefully inside. I could feel his little heart beating wildly in my hands. I ran to the bathroom and wrapped him in a towel. I sat on the side of the bath carefully patting him dry.

  “You’re only a baby. Look at this, John! A little kitten.”

  I looked into his little face. You could tell he was a boy instantly. He had a boy’s face, oval black eyes, black fur that stood straight up despite being soaking wet and a little white smig under his chin. In fact the longer I looked at him the more he reminded me of John’s third-year science partner, Leonard Foley. Leonard had the black oval eyes and a black shock of gravity-defying hair. He didn’t have the white smig or the fur, but everything else was pretty much eerily the same. Leonard had made many attempts to sedate his mane – however, in the end the only option other than a skinhead was to gel it to the shape of a mohawk. He looked like an alien, but then he was a big fan of Star Trek and thought looking like an alien was cool and because he was lead guitarist of the only band in the whole school, we had all agreed that indeed it was cool. I played with the kitten’s head-fur, shaping it into a mohawk. He looked up at me cautiously while rubbing his ass against the towel. He was looking more like Leonard.

  “Hi, Leonard? How’s the music business? Got a deal yet?”

  The kitten wasn’t much interested in my rambling. Now dry, his cries suggested that he was intent on being fed. I took him downstairs and into the kitchen, sitting him on the counter while I looked for an appropriate bowl. Once out of my grasp he instantly began to move although he stopped short at the edge of the sink. He looked down at the floor far below and backed up against the window. It was only then that it dawned on me.

  “How the hell did a little dude like you manage to find your way onto a second-floor windowsill?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “That’s impossible.”

  Leonard wasn’t much interested in giving away any secrets – he was too busy walking around in circles. I watched him feeding on two-day-old tuna.

  “Where did you come from? Did you send him, John? Did you send him to get me out of bed? You never did like it when I overslept. A waste of a day, you’d say.”

  Leonard was finished feeding. He wanted to sleep after his ordeal. I couldn’t blame him. After all, his encounter with nature’s wrath on my windowsill was akin to any one of us surviving an earthquake. I found a shoebox and filled it with a fresh hand-towel. When I placed him inside he snuggled up instantly and closed his eyes. I put him on the bed beside me. I got back under the duvet and watched him sleep his troubles away.

  “Hey, John, remember the moving statue? Thousands of people made a pilgrimage to pray at the foot of a statue of Mary in some barn in North Kerry. Remember Leonard removed the statue of the Virgin and Child from outside the principal’s office. He hid it in the girls’ toilets and left a note on the podium saying ‘Gone to lunch’!” I was laughing. “The principal went nuts and called him a blasphemer. Moving statues! What a fucking joke!”

  Leonard opened one eye to see what the joke was. I wasn’t laughing anymore.

  We both fell back to sleep shortly after that.

  ANGER

  Clo would call me once a day.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to come over?”

  “No.”

  The call would end and we would both be relieved.

  She didn’t get four weeks’ compassionate leave. She only lost a friend, he wasn’t family to her. Her pain wasn’t valued as highly. She returned to her stressful job the day after the funeral. She walked into the office to be greeted by seventy pieces of post requiring urgent attention, three press releases, a magazine shoot for Fruit and Veg Awareness Week and a very disgruntled client. She dealt with her post methodically. Her client was placated within minutes. She managed to write three press releases within an hour, meeting the deadline with time to spare.

  The shoot, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Two underfed models, one dressed as a cabbage, the other as an apple, cold and cranky waiting for the fruit man to deliver the display. He was caught in traffic on the M50. The girls were fending off teenagers’ abuse of their fruit-like appearance while the photographer bitched about the time. Clo remained professional throughout.

  She didn’t get home until after seven. She entered her empty apartment, deflated. She pulled the coffee from the shelf. It slipped from her grasp and she could hear the thick glass jar hitting her head before she felt it. The coffee jar continued toward the floor. She nearly caught it but her grip let her down once more. It smashed onto her white tiles, the coffee grains bursting out of their glass prison in their bid for freedom.

  “Enough!”

  Heat blazed inside her. The erupting tears burned her eyes.

  “All I wanted was a cup of fucking coffee! Is that too much to have fucking asked? Fuck, I’m not cleaning up! Fuck, I’m not dealing with this!”

  She was screaming and moving towards the press. She started to pull out glasses, throwing them across the room, watching them hit, smash, then trickle down her kitchen wall. She aimed a cup at a picture of a boat sailing on blue sea. She threw it with the concentration and professionalism of a star baseball player. The glass shattered on impact, leaving the picture torn and hanging from the chipped frame. She screamed and cried and danced on the coffee and glass broken under her feet. Then she stopped cold, her heart beating wildly, attempting to break out through her ribcage, her hands shaking and her thoughts blurry.

  Enough.

  She was sitting on her kitchen floor, moaning and half-heartedly attempting to sweep the fruits of her destruction into a dustpan when the doorbell rang.

  “Fuck off!” she roared knowing that it was impossible for any prospective visitor to actually hear her four floors down on a busy street. She answered on the fifth ring. It was her mother.

  “Clodagh, let me in!”

  “I want to be alone.”

  “Let me in for Christ’s sake!”

  “Just fuck off!”

  She buzzed her mother inside. She surveyed the kitchen while her mother ascended in the lift.

  “Just leave me alone!” she roared at the counter before smashing the plate that
lay inoffensively in the kitchen sink. She answered the door a minute later.

  “Oh love! Come here to me, you’ve snots halfway down your face.” Her mother took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose. “Blow!”

  She blew hard and her mother held her while she cried and swore. Her mother cried too.

  Later, exhausted, Clodagh asked her mother to speak about the father she had been too young to know.

  “He loved the Boomtown Rats. He loved their restlessness, their anger. He was political. He wanted change. Old Ireland is dead and gone, he’d say. He was passionately opinionated.”

  She was smiling. Clo watched her softening with each memory.

  “When he laughed the room laughed with him,” she said, still smiling. “He was stubborn just like you.”

  Clo smiled, not offended.

  “He was always right even when he wasn’t. He loved the beach and he loved boats.”

  Clo made a mental note to replace the boat picture.

  “He was an overachiever – he always had a moneymaking scheme under his sleeve. He could drive me insane.”

  “Like me,” Clo said, attempting a smile.

  “Like you,” her mother admitted, stroking her hair.

  The Hallmark moment passed quickly and Clo felt the heat rising inside.

  “It’s not fair. I’m so angry!” she spat.

  “I know you are,” her mother agreed. “The state of the kitchen is a testament to that.”

  Clo couldn’t help but laugh. She was under the impression that her mother hadn’t noticed the contents of the other room.

  “You know, when your dad died you were only five, but on the day of the funeral you broke every single cup and saucer in your play set and they were plastic. I knew then that you understood that your dad wasn’t coming back. That was your way. Times haven’t changed.”