MY MEMORY of the funeral service was patchy at best. It was a gray, rainy day—appropriate to the task at hand, I thought; why should the sun shine when my heart was dark with loss? I didn’t hear a word of the priest’s droning, just kept my eyes glued to the photograph of my mother resting behind the coffin, upon which was laid a bouquet of flowers from Mom’s garden: her dog rose and ragged robin, two of her favorites. Even though it was the end of May, I later remembered the wind was chilly and cold as we stood next to the grave. I’d done my best to control myself, but when the violinist and singer began their heartbreaking rendition of “Danny Boy,” the floodgate broke and the tears came, salty and bitter and painful. Dad held me close, like I was a little boy again and not a man nearing thirty. As the coffin began its slow descent into the grave, Dad’s tears joined my own, our grief mingling.
With the funeral done and the family returned to Ireland, the black fog that had threatened to descend over me since the moment Mom drew her last breath finally did. Days would pass where I could do nothing but stare at the ceiling, lost in my pain. I went days without eating, without doing anything more than the most basic required functions: the bathroom and breathing. My job, which I hated anyway, was understanding and gave me time to grieve, but I think my boss and I both knew I would not be returning to them.
Dad called me at least five times a day, every day, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer any of them. The entirety of my world had become narrowed down to the ever-present ache in my heart. With Mom gone, there was a void, and I couldn’t fathom how I could possibly go about my day-to-day life without her in it.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I lived in that constant fog for two whole weeks, not that I was really aware of the passage of time. It was a Tuesday afternoon and Dad was being more persistent than usual with his phone calls. By noon he’d called a dozen times and sent two dozen text messages, and I’d read none of them. I didn’t have the energy to deal with anyone in the outside world, most especially Dad. Thinking of him would remind me that Mom was no longer around.
The sound of my apartment door opening jarred me from a state of half-sleep. I was laying on the couch, a throw over my body, the start menu of my Criminal Minds season four DVD playing the music over and over again, waiting for me to select Play.
I sat up groggily and tried to peer over the back of the couch to see who had come in, though I already knew who it was. Only two people had a key to my apartment—well, one now. Already Dad’s presence was causing unwanted pain.
“Look at this place,” my dad said, the disapproval clear in his tone. “It’s a mess.”
I reluctantly sat up on the couch, turning to look at him. I knew what I must have looked like, with my scraggly brown hair a mess, a two-week’s growth of hair on my face, and wrinkled clothes. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in a while, and though it wasn’t really messy, given my lack of motivation to even eat, it probably didn’t smell so great. I had laundry piling up near the washer and a few empty pizza boxes from the days leading up to Mom’s death, when there was very little time between work and going to the hospital and I needed something to get me through the day that wasn’t hospital cafeteria food.
“Did you forget how phones work?” Dad walked around and sat on the edge of the couch. He kept his voice light, a gentle reprimand. “I’ve been calling since the funeral.”
“A lot’s been on my mind.” My voice sounded strange to my ears; it hadn’t seen much use recently.
Dad let out a sigh, settling back on the couch, and I moved my feet to accommodate him. “I know the feeling.”
I studied him for a moment. He looked like he’d aged two years in the two weeks since I’d seen him. Dark bags bloomed under his eyes, his skin looked sallow, and his hair had more gray in it than I remembered. How did I forget, in my world of blackness, that my father was suffering too? Grief is a strange monster; it coils itself around you, making you feel like there is nothing in the world but you and it. The reality of the situation was that I wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone important to them, even though I felt like I was. I lost my mother, yes, but my father lost his wife.
Guilt rushed through me, hot and scalding. I shifted uncomfortably, turning and putting my feet on the floor, elbows propped on my knees. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”
“I get an hour or two,” he said. “But I’m here to talk about you. I’m worried about you, son.”
“As you can see, I’m fine.”
Dad raised an eyebrow and glanced around at the apartment pointedly. “Yes, I can certainly see that. So fine, you don’t seem to have taken a shower since the funeral.” His voice tightened ever so slightly on the final two words.
“Did you come here just to criticize me?” I knew I sounded like a petulant brat, but I didn’t care.
“Isn’t that my job?”
I rolled my eyes. “If you say so.”
Dad sat there quietly for a moment, fiddling with the wedding band on his finger. He did that when he was uncomfortable or when he was nervous. I didn’t know which it was at the moment, but it made me nervous.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
He looked for a moment like he’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, what? No, nothing. Nothing.”
Nothing, my ass.
“Dad, you know you’re a terrible liar. If there’s something you came here to say, just say it.”
“Okay, I’ll just say it.” He pursed his lips into a straight line. “What do you think your mother would think of all this, Ronan?”
I felt my eyebrows raise all the way to my hairline. Talk about starting with the gloves off. “Hard to find that out, now, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be a smartass,” Dad snapped, and for a moment, he reminded me of the man he’d been before Mom got sick, before everything in our lives fell to pieces. “Do you think your mother would approve of you laying around, wasting away like this? Have you even left this place since the funeral?”
“We all handle grief in our own way,” I muttered, eyes on the floor.
“It’s been two weeks. I think it’s time you start moving past the grief, not just handling it.” Dad’s voice was gentle, and I wondered how much of what he said was directed at himself as well as me. “Your mother wouldn’t want you—wouldn’t want us—to live like this. She would want us to move on and be happy.”
Tears came unexpectedly to my eyes. “That’s much easier said than done.”
Another ragged breath. “I know. Trust me, I know. But you can’t just sit here and waste away—you and I both know that’s not the way to honor her memory.”
I said nothing, keeping my eyes glued to that one spot on the floor, extremely interested in the seam where one plank of hardwood met the next.
Dad must have guessed that he wasn’t going to get anything more out of me, because he stood and placed a hand on my shoulder, then gave it a squeeze. “I’ll be having your uncle over for dinner tonight, if you want to come.”
I sat there on the couch after Dad left, thinking. The reasoning part of my mind was able to recognize that lying around for weeks on end would do nothing to bring Mom back, nor would it help to stem the pain of grief. The longer I wallowed in it, the harder it became, and now I was drowning with no clear idea which way was up.
I got up and dragged myself into the bathroom. Once in there I splashed cold water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror—at least, I thought it was myself. For all I could tell, it was a different person. My cheeks were hollow and covered with growth, my eyes looked sunken, no better than Dad’s, and my hair was limp and greasy.
Look at me, I thought, seeing myself through the haze of grief for the first time. How the hell did I let myself get like this? I ran my hand through my damp beard, grimacing. Dad was right—I’d let myself go. If Mom saw me now, she’d give me that disappointed look—she wouldn’t say anything, and she never had to. Her eyes said it all.
What the hell was I doing with myself?
I want you to go—don’t put it off too long, like I did, Mom’s voice echoed in my head.
I knew what I needed to do.
I took a long, hot, much-needed shower, luxuriating in the feel of the water stinging my skin. When I got out, I lathered my face with a heap of shaving cream and removed the unkempt, scraggly beard.
I took the rest of the day to clean the apartment from floor to ceiling, set the laundry going, and for the first time since that dreary, rainy Sunday of the funeral, left my apartment. It was a sunny day, heading towards evening, with a lovely sunset on the horizon. The back door of Dad’s house faced west, so that smearing of orange and red and purple through the clouds would be hanging over Mom’s garden right then. She always said late-evening light was the best for Irish flowers.
Dad was in the kitchen cooking dinner when I walked into the house; I could smell his famous chili from my car. Despite the apathetic state I’d been in for two weeks—more likely because of it, actually—my stomach gave a tremendous growl.
I made my way into the kitchen.
Dad was surprised to see me. “Well damn. I didn’t think that would actually work.”
“You should have just told me you were making chili,” I countered, picking up the spoon and scooping up a small bit of the sumptuous-smelling object of my stomach’s desire and giving it a taste. Spices and flavor exploded on my tongue, accompanied by quite a bit of heat.
Dad smacked my hand, took the spoon from me, and resumed stirring. “I’m glad to see you cleaned up and out of that apartment.”
“I made up my mind that I have to do something. I have to get over this, and there’s only one way I can think of to do it.”
Dad raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s that?”
“I’m going to Ireland.”