The last night before Aoife moved to Australia, we sat on the low wall outside St Stephen’s Green with a bag of chips between us and said almost nothing useful. We had known this day was coming for six months, since she got the nursing job in Melbourne, but Dublin has a way of making faraway things feel like rumours until they are standing beside you with a suitcase.
We had met three years earlier in Whelan’s, both of us pretending to like the band more than we liked each other. She laughed at one of my bad jokes near the bar, and I remember thinking her laugh sounded like someone opening a window. After that there were walks along the Grand Canal, cheap dinners in Rathmines, Sunday mornings in Phoenix Park, and rows about small things that were never really about small things. We were ordinary, which is to say we were happy in ways we forgot to notice.
When she first told me about Australia, I tried to be decent. I said she had to go, that it was a brilliant chance, that I would never forgive myself if I held her back. She cried anyway, which annoyed me at the time because I was doing my best to be noble. Later I understood she wasn’t asking me to stop her. She was asking me to admit it hurt.
On her last night, we went for one drink in The Long Hall and stayed for three. Friends dropped in and out, hugging her too tightly, making jokes about spiders and sunburn and Australians saying “no worries” to everything. Around half ten, it was just the two of us again, walking slowly through town like we were trying to stretch the pavement. Grafton Street was nearly empty, a busker packing away his guitar, the shop windows bright with things nobody needed.
At the Green, she handed me the last chip and said, “You’ll be grand, won’t you?”
I said, “Of course,” too quickly.
She looked at me for a long second. Aoife had a way of seeing the sentence you had swallowed. “Don’t do that,” she said. “Not tonight.”
So I told her the truth. I told her I was proud of her and angry at the world for being so wide. I told her I had imagined us older in the same city, meeting after work, arguing about where to eat, complaining about rent, becoming the kind of couple who knew each other’s coffee order without asking. I told her I was scared that love might not survive time zones, new friends, hot Christmases, and all the small details of another life.
She listened without interrupting. Then she took my hand and said, “I’m scared too.”
That was the moment I stopped feeling abandoned. Not completely, but enough. She wasn’t leaving because Dublin or I had failed her. She was leaving because part of her life was calling from somewhere else, and love, if it was real, had to make room for that.
The next morning, I went with her to Dublin Airport. Her parents were there, her sister, two cousins, and a friend from work who cried before anyone had even mentioned goodbye. I stood slightly apart, holding the scarf she had forgotten in the taxi. Terminal 2 was full of people performing bravery badly. You could see it everywhere: parents fixing collars, children clinging to legs, couples staring at departure boards as if the letters might rearrange themselves into stay.
When the final call came, Aoife hugged everyone in order. Her mam held her face in both hands and whispered something that made them both laugh through tears. Then Aoife turned to me.
I had planned to say something memorable. Something worthy of films and airport goodbyes. But when she stepped into my arms, all the words fell away. She smelled like vanilla shampoo and rain. I felt the little shake in her shoulders and realised mine were shaking too. We held each other longer than people usually do in public, long enough for the world to become impatient around us.
“Thank you for loving me properly,” she said into my coat.
I had no answer to that, so I just held her tighter. That was the last hug before she moved to Australia. Not dramatic, not perfect, not enough to stop anything.
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
