The Last Goodbye (31 page)

“Kate won’t come in to see me,” I whispered.

“That’s your daughter, right?”

“Yes.”

“She’s a teenager – she’s going through a tough time and she’s angry – she just doesn’t know how to express it.”

“I never got a chance to say goodbye to her.”

“Well, why don’t you write her a letter? Tell her everything that you would tell her if you saw her?”

“I suppose I could do that.”

“I’ll nip out and get you some paper from the office.”

“Thanks.” I began to plan what I might say as I waited for her to come back.

“Here,” she said when she returned. She handed me an A4 leafpad and gave me a pen. “Sorry I’ve nothing fancier.”

“Thanks, Sister.”

“I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be around to check on you in a bit.”

Even though I was exhausted, I sat on the bed under the lamp and concentrated hard on writing my letter and putting everything I wanted to say down on the sheet of paper in front of me. I made sure the words were just right and said exactly how I was feeling because it was my last gift to Kate.

Eventually I must have drifted off to sleep because I woke up to find my sheets were damp under me. I tried to speak but all that came out was a low moan. Sister Rita appeared back at the end of the bed again like some kind of white angel. She switched on the light and looked at me before putting her hand on my forehead. She went to fetch some water and a facecloth and sponged my face. The coolness of the damp facecloth was a welcome relief. She gave me some more medicine that she said would help bring down the fever.

Noel appeared sometime later, I remember it was either very early or very late for him – I didn’t know which. I could hear him talking to me but I didn’t have the energy to answer him so I closed my eyes and let them talk around me as I drifted in and out of sleep. I had vivid dreams of playing on hay bales with Anna as a child and picnics in the fields. I was twenty-three years old and performing on the stage in the Ballyrobin Amateur Dramatic Society’s annual show. Then I would wake up and Noel would be telling me stories from when the kids were small. I liked hearing them again – his voice was comforting. He told me how much he loved me and that it was okay for me to go and that they would all be fine. I closed my eyes and listened to him but I wasn’t able to respond. He was stroking my skin and his touch felt good. Then I was back sitting on the sand on Mulranny Strand with the sun warming my face. I watched as the kids jumped over the waves, Noel the biggest kid of the lot of them. I waved at them and they waved back at me, squealing in delight as the cool water washed over their skin. Gulls squawked on the warm air overhead. The waves were breaking in arcs on the sand in front of me and the water was rushing up towards me. I thought I was going to get wet so I got up and moved my towel back up the beach a bit further. I spread it out again and sat down and watched them all playing a while longer. A shivering Kate was now making her way back up the beach to me, the water running off her in drops. She left a trail of prints in the sand as she walked. I stood up and took a towel out of the bag. I held it out open until she reached me and I wrapped her close into its warmth.

28/10/1992

Dear Kate,

I am sleeping a lot more and soon I probably won’t be in any fit state to write this for you. Kate, my darling girl – I’m so sorry that we never got to say goodbye properly. I know you’re angry with me and you have every right to be. The problem is that we are so alike, you and I – you remind me so much of myself at that age – headstrong and impulsive.

Remember, Kate, that I love you – you were my firstborn, the one to amaze me with the wonderment of motherhood and how intensely we can love another person. It breaks my heart that I won’t be around to watch you grow up, to guide you on your journey into adulthood and to watch you become a young woman. Or that I won’t be there to listen as you swoon over a boyfriend or to help you through a broken heart.

I know your dad will do a great job in raising you all – believe me, there is no better father out there, which helps me be in peace as I go but I wanted to write this letter to you so you can turn to it whenever you’re having a bad day – I might not be able to be there for you physically but I will be with you through it all and my words are here whenever you need them – I hope they’ll be of comfort to you.

I hope one day, maybe when you have your own children, you will understand my decision and that it wasn’t easy for me. Try to help your dad with the younger ones – the next few months will be difficult on you all but on the up-side you’ll have no one banging your bedroom door with the Hoover when you’re trying to sleep in on a Saturday morning!

You are my treasure. Always remember that you were put on this earth because you are special, so go and put your stamp on the world, my beautiful girl.

With love always,

Mam xx

Noel 1992

Chapter 43

As soon as I heard the shrill ring of the phone cutting through the night-time stillness of the house, I knew. I got out of bed and ran down the hall to pick it up before it woke the kids. I talked briefly to Sister Rita before hanging up. I rubbed the palms of my hands down over my face. This is it, I thought, this is actually it. I picked the handset up again to ring Josephine to come over and mind the kids.

And she knew it too. It was unspoken between us and if she found it hard to be left behind while I went to say goodbye to her youngest daughter then to her credit she never let on. She shooed me out the door and told me to drive safely and to ring her as soon as I could.

I turned the key in the ignition and the car started up. I cursed its loudness in the yard in case it would wake the kids. I pulled out onto the dark road and set off for the hospice. After a few minutes the red light for the petrol gauge lit up on the dashboard in front of me.
Damn it to hell – the one time that I was in a hurry!
God only knew where I would find a petrol station open at this hour of the night. I had no choice but to keep going and hope that it would last until I got there. I knew I was driving fast but Sister Rita had never rung me during the night before so I knew it must be serious. Somehow, I made it there, probably just on the fumes alone. I took a deep breath of the crisp night air in the car park to steady myself and then I went inside.

I met Sister Rita in the hallway outside Eva’s room.

“After you left she developed a bad fever, Noel. Sometimes this happens before . . .” She spoke in hushed tones.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m sorry –” She paused, taking a deep intake of breath. “I think it’s time, Noel . . .”

I followed her into the room and when I saw Eva again, the same woman that I had seen only hours earlier, I couldn’t believe how much she had deteriorated. She was lying on the bed, covered by a single white sheet and even though there was a chill in the air, beads of sweat glistened on her body. She was gone so thin and her skin was so translucent that you could almost see right through her like a ghost. Her lips were blue and her face was ashen. She didn’t open her eyes when I came in. I sat down on the chair beside her and reached out for her hand. It was freezing. Every now and then she would writhe and moan in the bed and I would feel utterly helpless. I was so angry as I thought about how unfair it all was. If there was a God out there why would he allow someone to conceive a child if he was going to give them terminal cancer as well? What kind of a God would do that? She had managed to get Aoife here safely but at her own expense. I prayed for him to do something. For a miracle. He owed it to her. Although I wasn’t in agreement with her decision not to take the surgery, I’d had to accept that it was what she wanted. But I don’t think any of us had thought that this was the way it was going to end.

“Is there anything you can do for her?” I said, turning to Sister Rita when she came back in a while later.

She upped the dosage yet again to keep her comfortable and her whole body seemed to relax a bit more when the pain relief kicked in a few minutes later. I slumped back down on to the chair beside her bed. I still couldn’t believe that we had come to this.

“You know, it might not seem like it but she can probably still hear you – our hearing is always the last sense to go,” Sister Rita said softly.

I nodded. I remembered hearing that somewhere before.

“Keep talking to her, Noel, so she knows that you are with her and that she is not alone. Tell her that you love her and that it is okay for her to go.”

So I did as she said and kept talking to Eva, telling her that she was going to a better place where there would be no pain, even though I wasn’t sure if I really believed it. I told her that it was okay to go, that she had nothing to worry about and I would look after everything here. But it wasn’t okay – I didn’t want her to go.

I loved Eva so much. Where some men talked about their nagging wives and spent their time longing to escape them, I hated every minute of being apart from her. From the moment I had first seen her on the stage when the Ballyrobin Amateur Dramatic Society were putting on a production of
My Fair Lady
and she was Eliza Doolittle, I had loved her. When I saw her delivering her feisty monologue I knew she was the one. She had the whole audience in the palm of her hand – her charisma had radiated off the stage. She loved acting and she was good at it too but, when Kate came along, it had slipped away and she didn’t have the time to commit to it any more. She kept saying that she must go back to it but she never did. I should have made her go back, I thought sadly. I should have done everything possible to let her do what she loved doing.

I stayed like that all night on the uncomfortable plastic chair talking to her. I would remember funny things that had happened with the children and I would tell her. Her breathing was rapid and rattling and sometimes it would stop altogether and I would think this is it – this is the end – and my heart would start thumping in my chest but then she would start again. Sister Rita was in and out giving more medications to keep her comfortable.

When dawn broke I opened back the curtains to let some light into the room. A magnificent red ball of fire lit up the sky. The sunlight glinted off the glass. It was going to be one of those autumnal days that Eva loved, cool, crisp and sunny. I looked back at her on the bed, her lips had turned up at the sides and a smile had crept over her face. It was like she knew that the sun was shining, I walked back over and sat down beside her again. I took her frail hand in mine and then she left this world.

I don’t know how long I stayed there sobbing as I held her hand, which was already starting to go cold. Sister Rita came in then and went to give me a hug and I’m ashamed to say it now but I stood up and kicked the metal pedal bin in the corner. I just wanted to lash out at something.

I drove home barely able to see the road in front of me through my tears. The roads were empty at that time of the morning and I drove fast. The car hopped off the crests of the road surface. I remember thinking that if I crashed and died now too that it wouldn’t be so bad but then I would think of our four children and I knew it was selfish of me.

I let myself into the kitchen quietly and Josephine stood up and walked towards me. We met and clung to each other with heaving sobs.

Telling the kids was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Josephine sat with me and she cuddled them all as they cried. Kate took it particularly badly. She sobbed until she was hyperventilating and I wondered if we should call Doctor O’Brien up to the house to sedate her. She eventually fell asleep from sheer exhaustion with Josephine stroking her face as she laid her head on her lap. My heart broke as I looked at my eldest, her hair was clinging to her damp face in ribbons.

I heard Aoife cry then. I had almost forgotten about her. I went over to her crib and picked her up. Her smile lit up the room and I thought how lucky she was to be spared all of this heartache. She was too young to understand and it was a blessing. She cooed at me like it was any other day and not the day the woman who had brought her into this world had just left it.

We had the funeral as she had wished and Father Ball did a lovely Mass and the choir sang the songs that Eva had wanted. Kate wouldn’t go to the funeral so she stayed behind at home and Aidan came up to sit with her. For once I said nothing and let her do as she wished. It was hard enough on her without me being on her case. One of the neighbours had offered to take Aoife, which I was relieved about.

A long queue of people came to pay their respects and offer me their condolences in the church. All their faces seemed to blur together as I shook hand after hand. Rough, smooth, broad, narrow, they all merged into one. The smell of incense wafted through the air. My heart broke for the two boys – they looked so lost amongst the huge crowd of mourners. Their school had made a guard of honour for the coffin as it went into the church and I knew they felt self-conscious as hundreds of eyes bored into them as we walked past them all. Eva’s sister Anna had come back from New York again – this time her whole family were in tow and I watched as the boys warily eyed up their American cousins with their strange accents, who they had only met once before.