When we moved into our little red-brick terrace near Stoneybatter, I thought I knew what loneliness looked like. I had seen it on buses, in the wet windows of cafés, in old men eating alone in pubs before the evening crowd arrived. But I did not recognise it at first in Mr. Keane, who lived two doors down from us and always wore a clean shirt, polished shoes, and the expression of a man who expected nothing from anyone.
He was in his late seventies, though he stood straight as a lamppost. Every morning he walked towards Phoenix Park with a folded newspaper under his arm. Every evening he came back carrying one small paper bag from the shop. A tin of soup, a loaf, sometimes two apples. My mam used to watch him from our kitchen window while she peeled potatoes. “There’s a sadness in that man’s house,” she said once. “You can nearly hear it from here.”
Our first proper conversation happened on Christmas Eve. I was seventeen, sent out in the rain to get extra milk because my brothers had finished it with cereal. Mr. Keane was standing at his gate, struggling with a string of lights that had fallen from the little holly bush beside his door. I asked if he needed help. He looked embarrassed, as if needing help was a private failing. “If you wouldn’t mind,” he said.
I fixed the lights badly, but they came on. A weak little flicker of colour against the dark. Mam saw the whole thing from the window. When I came in, she was quiet for a moment, then said, “Ask him if he has somewhere to go tomorrow.”
I nearly refused. It felt too intimate, too awkward. But she handed me a plate of mince pies and pushed me back out before I could argue. Mr. Keane opened the door slowly. His hallway smelled of furniture polish and old books. I said, “My mam wants to know if you’d come for dinner tomorrow. No pressure. We’ve loads.”
He looked down at the plate. For a second I thought I had offended him. Then he said, very softly, “That’s kind of her. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t,” I said, though I was not sure. Our Christmas dinners were noisy, crowded, and half chaotic. Someone was always burning something, laughing too loudly, or arguing about whether to watch the film or the match. Mr. Keane seemed made of silence. I could not imagine where we would put him.
He arrived the next day at exactly two o’clock wearing a navy tie and carrying a box of biscuits wrapped in brown paper. My younger brother opened the door and shouted, “The neighbour’s here!” as if announcing a celebrity. Mam gave him a kiss on the cheek before he could stop her. Dad shook his hand with both hands. And then, somehow, he was at our table.
At first he barely spoke. He smiled politely when we passed the gravy. He thanked Mam three times for the turkey. But halfway through dinner, my little sister asked him if he had ever met Santa. We all groaned, but Mr. Keane leaned back and said, “Not Santa, no. But I once saw a man in a red coat fall asleep on the Luas.” That was the beginning of it. He told us about working as a conductor years ago, about dancing in a hall off Parnell Square, about his wife, Nora, who had died six years earlier and had loved Christmas so much she kept decorations up until February.
After dessert, he helped Dad wash the dishes. I remember hearing them laughing in the kitchen, the sound of plates clinking under warm water. When Mr. Keane left, Mam sent him home with enough leftovers to feed him for days. At the door, he turned and said, “I had forgotten what a full house sounds like.”
The next holiday was Easter. Mam invited him again. Then came Halloween, when he handed sweets to children from
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
