The Last Goodbye (30 page)

It was surreal wandering around my house for what I knew was the last time. I gave Aoife a kiss and a cuddle – I had told Noel that I didn’t want her to be brought into the hospice to visit me. It was no place for a new baby and she was still so fragile. She smiled a gummy smile at me and hooked my baby finger inside the ball of her fist. I raised her fist towards my mouth and kissed each of her dimpled knuckles in turn. She was almost twelve weeks old now and was gurgling away, oblivious to all of the drama that she had been born into. She was such a good little baby – she was already sleeping through the night and she only cried to be fed or changed. Her eyes stared at me like she had been here before. It was as if she knew what was happening and she was playing her part in making it as easy as she could for me. I couldn’t believe it was going to be the last time I would get to hold her.

I didn’t have a chance to see Kate before I left for the hospice. She had been staying in a friend’s house ever since we broke the news to her. I had overheard Noel on the phone to her friend, asking her to have a word with Kate, that it was urgent, and to get her to come home and talk to me but she still never came. Noel had been in contact to make sure she was okay but she just didn’t want to be around us, so we gave her space. I desperately hoped that she might come to visit me. I didn’t want to leave on bad terms – I wanted her forgiveness.

Once in the hospice, I wasn’t in any pain. They had given me medication to help bring down my temperature and hooked me up straight away to a morphine drip. The relief was almost instant. I knew it was my time. I felt calmer and more accepting of what was to come. I had heard it said that a certain serenity descends on a person as they reach that transition between this world and the next. I wondered if this was the start of mine.

I was starting to sleep a lot more, the morphine making me drowsy. Sometimes I would wake up and wonder where Noel and the boys had gone to and then Sister Rita, the nurse looking after me, would tell me that it was the middle of the night and that they had gone home hours ago.

I opened my eyes sometime a few days later to see the blurry face of our parish priest, Father Ball. He was sitting on the chair beside my bed, wearing his usual black slacks, black short-sleeved shirt and white collar. His bulbous red nose seemed to grow bigger every time I saw him. He was fond of the brandy by all accounts.

“Well, now that you’re here, Father, I know I’m on my last legs.”

“Well, we always should have hope because without hope we’ve nothing,” he said.

“Ah come on, Father, even I know that my body has given up on me.”

“Well, the Lord is watching over you at the moment and he will help you through it.”

“Does he have morphine?” I started to laugh. “It’s great stuff!”

He looked taken aback and wasn’t sure how to respond. “I thought you might like me to hear a confession for you?”

I thought about Kate – she was the first thing that popped into my head.

“My eldest, Kate – I’m sure you know her – well, she’s very angry with me at the moment. She won’t come in to see me and the last time we saw each other ended in a blazing row so I guess if there’s anything . . . I’d like to make peace with that . . .”

“The Lord is listening, Eva, and he knows. What about the funeral arrangements?”

“Well, I want to be buried in the family plot – definitely not cremated – that’d be too scary for me.”

“And are there any hymns or prayers you would like?”

“I like that one – what’s it called . . . ‘Sing to the Mountains’?”

I watched as he made a note in his little flip-top notebook just like a Guard would do.

We sat in silence for a few minutes. I didn’t have much to say to the man. I wasn’t the most religious person in Ballyrobin. I mean, I made the effort to go to Mass whenever I could but I wasn’t too put out if I had to miss it for whatever reason. I wasn’t like some of the Holy Joes around the town who were almost bribing Father Ball just so they could do a reading or become a minister of the Eucharist yet again.

“Oh and if they could get someone to sing ‘Pie Jesu’ – that would be nice too. If it’s not too much trouble . . .”

“Would you like to pray with me?”

“Sure it can’t do any harm, now can it?”

He started off an ‘Our Father’ and I mumbled along with him, more for his sake than my own.

“Oh, Father Ball – I wasn’t expecting to see you here!” Noel said as he came in with the boys a while later.

“Well, I was just leaving anyway, Noel.” He stood up and took his coat off the back of the chair and put his arms into the sleeves.

“Well . . . em, goodbye, Eva, and remember the Lord who brought you into this world will be with you when you leave it.”

I could see Patrick looking at me. I knew three-year-olds with more tact than Father Ball.

“And, Noel, remember your family in the church will help you through it.”

“Thanks, Father,” an embarrassed Noel mumbled.

“Mam, what was the priest saying?” Patrick asked as soon as he had left.

“Aragh, you know what priests are like – they’re not happy unless they’re spouting some religious mumbo-jumbo.”

He smiled at me, freckles from the summer spent playing in the fields gracing his cheeks and the tip of his nose. He was going to grow into a handsome young man, I thought sadly.

“Here, I’m parched, will you two go down and buy me a bottle of water?”

“But sure haven’t you a jug of it there beside you?” Noel gestured to the locker.

I winked at him and he knew then I wanted to talk to him alone. He rooted around in his pocket and pulled out a five-pound note. “You can get yourselves something nice with the change.”

The boys ran out giddily with Seán trying to grab the money out of Patrick’s hand. “Give it to me!”

“What was he doing in here?” Noel asked.

“I’d say Mam told him to come. What is it they say, Noel – the end is nigh?”

“Don’t say that.”

“Ah come on, Noel, I’m on the way out.”

“It doesn’t make it any easier though.”

“You look tired.” I noticed his face was more lined than I remembered.

“Do I?”

I nodded. “It’s taking its toll on you.”

“I’m grand.”

“Well, make sure you look after yourself, do you hear me? I know you’re busy looking after everyone else at the moment but if you were to get sick then we’d be really up the creek.”

“Will you look who’s talking? The words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.”

I smiled at him. “Oh, would you get me some Vaseline? My lips are all cracked.”

He opened the pot and, using his index finger, he gently applied the balm to my parched lips.

“That’s better. Thanks. Look, Noel, I don’t think you should bring the boys in to see me any more – I don’t want them to remember me lying like this in a bed all tubed up.” Something like this would stay with them forever. Plus I was starting to sleep a lot more and I knew they were bored hanging around. It wasn’t fair on them – they were only children.

“I see . . .” He trailed off. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“I think it’s for the best. I don’t want any goodbyes either, do you hear me?”

“What, you just want them to go out of here tonight and say nothing – no goodbye or anything?”

“I think it’s for the best, Noel – I don’t want them getting upset. It’s best not to say anything to them.”

“Does it not seem a bit . . . well . . . mean?”

“Noel, I haven’t long left. I don’t want my last few days to be full of tears and maudlin goodbyes.”

“Okay, whatever you want.” He put his hands up.

“How’s Kate? Has she come back home yet?” It shredded my heart in two to know that the last words we spoke to each other were raging and wild and said nothing of the love I had in my heart for my firstborn child.

He shook his head. “She’s been back a couple of times to get things – clothes and the like – but she’s still sleeping in Sorcha’s house.”

“Does she mention anything about me?”

“Not really.”

“So you mean no, then?”

He nodded.

“Will you ask her again to come into me – I want to see her before I –”

The unspoken word hung in the air between us.

“I said it to her again this morning but you know how stubborn she can be.”

“Don’t I know it . . . And how’s Aoife doing?”

“Well, she’s good, putting on lots of weight. Getting nice and chubby now.”

“Ah good, God bless the little thing! What a start she has had . . . At least she’s too young to understand any of it.” My heart ached for my two daughters.

“It’s a blessing all right.”

“This morphine is great stuff, I tell you, Noel – and I can have as much as I want because it doesn’t matter if I get addicted to the stuff now. That is the plus side of this death business.”

“You have to look at the positives, I guess. You always were the more optimistic one of the two of us.”

“Now I don’t want you lolling around that house moping to yourself, do you hear me?”

“What do you mean?”

“After I’m gone, I want you to find someone new. Someone not quite as beautiful as me because I’d be jealous then but close enough – maybe someone with a bigger nose or frizzier hair.”

“Ah stop it, Eva!”

“I’m serious, because the first thing I’m going to do when I kick the bucket is to go looking for John Lennon. We’re going to have a right ’oul party.”

He was smiling at me but I thought I saw tears in his eyes.

When Noel took the boys home later I gave them each a big hug. I took my time breathing in their scents when they hugged me. I didn’t want to let them go. I forced back the tears that filled my eyes – I didn’t want them to see me crying. It was hard to believe that this was the last time that I would ever get to hold them – the babies that I had brought roaring and screaming into this world.

“You’d better go on – you’ve school in the morning.” I forced my voice to remain level.

“Night, Mam!” Patrick sang.

“Night, love.”

“Night, Mam.”

“Night, Seán.”

Chapter 42

“Are you okay?”

It was Sister Rita coming around to check on me. I had actually grown quite fond of her over the last few days since I had been under her care. She was a neat little woman with soft grey hair peeping out from underneath her white habit. She still chose to wear the habit even though most nuns had given it up years earlier. Her white nurse’s uniform was always pristine and starched and she always wore beige soft-soled loafers so you never heard her footsteps when she walked.

“I’m all right.”

“Were they your boys that I saw earlier?”

“Yes,” I said and her gentle manner caused the floodgates to open. “I don’t want to die – I don’t want to go!” I started to cry.

“It’s natural to feel like that, Eva.” She sat up on the side of the bed, pulled back the sheets and started to massage my feet.

“I’m going to miss out on so much . . .”

“Tell me who has gone before you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, have you lost a parent or someone else close to you?”

“My dad died when I was a teenager.”

“Well, then, I’m sure he’ll be waiting on you to guide you through.” Her gentle hands were kneading and plying the balls of my feet.

At a time when I just seemed to be aching all over, it felt heavenly.

“Can I ask you a question, Sister?”

“Of course, ask away.”

“Do you really believe in all of that stuff?”

“How do you mean – the afterlife?”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, I do actually.”

“But that tunnel of light business – don’t you ever doubt it all sometimes?”

“I’ve been close to a lot of dying people – it’s part and parcel of doing this job – but it’s a privilege actually to be close to people at such an intimate moment of their life as they get ready to start the next part of their journey.”

I looked at her like she was crackers.

“No, really it is, Eva – I’ve seen death up close, I’ve looked it in the eye and I know that when my time comes, I won’t be afraid. There is a look – a peacefulness – on the face of the dying just before they leave us and a contentment that I have still never seen on the face of a living person. Of course we don’t know what it is that makes them so calm as they leave this world but I like to think that they are being reunited with their loved ones that have gone before them.”