I used to think love was proven in the soft things. His hand on the small of my back crossing Grafton Street. The way he kept the last chip for me outside Leo Burdock’s. How he remembered that I hated coriander and loved daffodils from the flower sellers on Moore Street. He was brilliant at the easy parts of loving me, the parts that could be done under warm lights, with music playing, when nobody was frightened.
We met in a pub near Camden Street on a wet Thursday, both of us pretending we had only come in for one drink. He was funny in a way that made the whole table lean towards him. By our third date, he was calling me “home” like it was a joke, but not really. I believed him. I was thirty-four and tired of men who kept one foot out the door. He moved into my flat in Phibsborough six months later with two suitcases, a guitar he rarely played, and a confidence that filled every room before he even switched on a lamp.
For almost two years, I was happy. Not perfectly, but honestly. We walked along the canal on Sundays and ate breakfast in Stoneybatter when we could afford it. He kissed me on the forehead in queues. He told his friends I was the calmest person he knew. I think that was the version of me he loved most, the woman who could soothe, organise, laugh, and make a home out of very little.
Then my mother had a stroke.
It was a Tuesday morning in November. I was on the Luas when my brother rang, his voice so thin I barely recognised it. Mam had been found on the kitchen floor in Tallaght, unable to speak properly, one side of her face fallen. I remember getting off at Abbey Street and standing there while people moved around me like water around a stone. I called my partner first. He didn’t answer. I sent one message: “Mam is being taken to hospital. I’m scared. Please call me.”
By the time I reached St James’s Hospital, I had seven missed calls from my brother, none from him. The hospital waiting area had that tired blue light that makes everyone look a bit older. My brother was crying into a paper cup of tea. My mother was alive, but confused, furious, frightened. She kept trying to ask for my father, who had been dead for nine years. I held her hand and told her lies gently. “He knows, Mam. He’s with you. You’re safe.”
My partner finally rang at half nine that night. I had been in the hospital for nearly twelve hours. His first words were, “Sorry, my phone was on silent.” Then, after a pause, “Is she alright?”
I said I didn’t know. I told him I needed him to come in, or at least come meet me outside, just to stand beside me for ten minutes. There was a silence on the line, not empty exactly, but full of him deciding how much inconvenience my pain was worth.
He said, “I’m wrecked, love. I’ve an early start. I’ll come tomorrow.”
I told myself to be reasonable. People panic differently. People shut down. People don’t always know what to do. But the next day he didn’t come either. He texted a heart emoji at lunchtime and asked if I could pick up milk on the way home. That sentence did something to me. It made a small, clean cut through all the stories I had been telling myself.
For the next three weeks, my life became hospital corridors, forms, physiotherapy updates, and calling insurance offices on my lunch break. I washed Mam’s nightdresses in our flat and hung them over the radiator. I slept badly. I forgot to eat. I cried once in the toilets of Heuston Station because a woman my mother’s age asked me if I knew which platform the train to Cork was on, and she sounded exactly like Mam before the stroke.
At home, he became annoyed by my sadness. Not cruel at first, just impatient. He missed the cheerful version of me that
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
