I met him because of rain, which is a very Dublin thing to say and also the plain truth. I was standing outside Pearse Station after a late shift, pretending my light summer jacket was protection against the kind of rain that arrives sideways and takes your pride with it. My phone had died, the buses were delayed, and I had cried once already in the staff toilet that day because my mother’s appointment at St Vincent’s had not gone well. I was twenty-nine and felt about seventy. Then a man beside me said, “You’ll be soup by Westland Row,” and held out half of his umbrella.
His name was Conor. He worked in an office near Grand Canal Dock and had the gentle awkwardness of someone who was kind before he was charming. We walked together as far as the corner near Trinity, shoulder to shoulder under a black umbrella that had a broken spoke. He talked about nothing important at first, which was exactly what I needed. He told me he hated coriander, loved old maps, and once got locked into the toilets in St Stephen’s Green as a child because he was too polite to shout. I laughed for the first time all day.
When we reached my bus stop, the rain was still hammering the street. He gave me the umbrella and said he only lived ten minutes away. I told him I would return it if he gave me his number. He smiled like he had been hoping for that but would never have asked. I typed his number into my dead phone, which of course saved nothing. He wrote it instead on the back of a receipt from a café, and I put it in my pocket like it was a medical prescription.
I lost the receipt before I got home.
For two weeks I carried that umbrella around Dublin like a small guilt. I brought it to work, to the hospital, to the supermarket on Camden Street, even to Whelan’s one Friday when my friend dragged me out because she said grief needed air. I kept watching for him in crowds. I looked at every dark-haired man near Pearse Station until I started to feel ridiculous. It was only an umbrella, but it had become the one good thing from a bad day, and I had failed even at returning it.
Then, one Tuesday evening, I saw him through the window of a café near Merrion Square. He was sitting alone with a book open in front of him, not reading it, just staring out at the rain. I nearly walked past. My heart started acting like it had received bad news. The umbrella was at home that day, naturally, because life has a mean little sense of humour. Still, I went in.
He looked up, and for a second I saw him search his memory. Then his face changed. “You’re not soup,” he said.
I apologised so quickly I barely breathed between words. I told him about losing the receipt, about trying to find him, about the umbrella waiting in my hall like a witness. He listened, and then he said, “I thought maybe you’d decided the umbrella was better company.” I laughed, but there was a little hurt behind his joke. It mattered to me that he had wondered. It mattered too much for someone I had known for twenty minutes.
We had coffee. Then another. I told him about my mother, not the polished version people get over dinner, but the messy truth: the appointments, the fear, the way I had become practical because panic was no use. He did not try to fix it. He did not say everything happens for a reason. He just said, “That’s a lot to carry,” and the simplicity of it nearly undid me.
A week later
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
