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By any other name
October 1st. I am writing this at 2am on a Tuesday morning and I’m tired. So very tired. Need to get some sleep or I’ll crack up. Simon was very bad all through the evening. Constantly making demands. I never got a moment’s peace from him.
Wednesday morning. Only had an hour’s sleep when he woke me by shouting and wandering around the house. Took me ages to calm him down. I don’t think that medication the doctor gave him is any good.
Oct. 13th. Took him out in the wheelchair after dinner. Might as well have pushed him in a wheelbarrow for all the help I got. We both needed the sunshine and the bit of fresh air, even though it was chilly. He dozed most of the way back. Must be the fresh air. Or was it the medication? I gave him a double dose.
Oct. 31st. Can’t get any rest tonight. It’s either him staggering around the bedroom, breaking things as if he had drink taken, or it’s those flaming trick –a-treaters in black plastic bags. Oh God, I wish I could take a drink…
Nov 7th. 3 am. Overtired. Can’t sleep even if I wanted to. Think I have gone past it. Don’t care if I never sleep again.
Grainne flicked through the pages of the diary. Why do I bother writing in this damn thing? She asked herself. Nobody’s going to read it. Then she had a thought. Ashling might. After I’m dead. She’ll sift through my things. Tearfully sorting out old photographs, diligently filing away letters and certificates, anxiously wondering when she was going to find the will. If that’s the case…
Nov 19th 11 am. My dear Ashling, this is your mother. You rang me this morning to say you couldn’t make it over here. We had arranged to take your father to Dr. Zirac’s surgery. We both know how much yourfather hates going there. I can’t understand what he’s saying, your father says. Bloody Foreigner. And the place is full of sick people, coughing and wheezing all over me, your father says. Doctor Zirac speaks perfectly understandable English, of course. And your father forgets that he has to make an odd appearance at the surgery so that I can collect his prescriptions for those very expensive medications that stop him coughing and wheezing all over me. Anyway, you couldn’t come, you said. Something to do with one of the children. Was it little Martin you said, I can’t remember. You couldn’t come. That’s all I remember. So I had to manage your father on my own . Again.
Dec. 11th 10 am. Very little sleep last night. Woke up after a strange dream. I was dreaming I …
Grainne closed the diary and had a think for a second. She was going to describe how she dreamt she took a large pillow from her bed, and furtively crept into Simon’s room where he was snoring away to himself with an odd cough or splutter. She dreamt that she put the pillow over his head and sat on it until he was perfectly still. The dream then went on to some ridiculous scenario where she had to drag his body out to the boot of the car, and then drive off to hide him in the bogs of Connemara. Ridiculous, she thought. Much better to pretend he died of natural causes. He is under doctor’s supervision, isn’t he?
Grainne looked at the diary. Better not to commit all your thoughts to paper, she decided – just in case. She completed the entry with a long ago memory.
... Church bells… ringing merrily in the distance. Sunshine, glorious sunshine. Flower petals. Showers of petals. Confetti. And then Simon, standing so fine and handsome in his suit. Do you take this woman? I do, he says. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer. And my eyes filling up with the sight of him, the finest man in the county Galway. All the days of our lives, in sickness and in health.
As she read the entry, a tear trickled down her cheek. She had been trying to remember a poem her granny used to recite :
‘Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be…’ oh what was the rest of it? How frustrating when memory starts to fade.
The best is yet to be. Not for everybody…
Later that day, Ashling visited. It was Saturday, so she brought the children. They immediately invaded the downstairs bedroom where Simon was sleeping, climbed up on his bed and started bouncing on it, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their grand- dad was still in it.
Their behaviour was a mystery to Grainne. What malicious pleasure did they derive from hearing their sick granddad shouting and roaring at them, and they in turn screaming back at him? Then a pillow fight would follow. Sometimes Simon joined in. After they were all gone, she would have to go in and tidy up the mess. So why did she not intervene? The children were an interruption, a distraction. While Simon was shouting and roaring at them, he was leaving her alone and that was a blessing, at least.
“So how are you keeping, Mom?” Ashling surveyed the kitchen with the eye of a Health Inspector and continued talking as if she had heard her mother say “grand” or “not so bad.”
I have written it all down in a diary, my dear. You can read it after I’m dead.
“Really sorry I couldn’t go to the Surgery with you, Mom. The kids, they’re a full time job, I don’t really get time to bless myself with them.”
Her daughter seemed uncomfortable. Grainne understood. The last time Ashling had gone with them to the doctor had been embarrassing. The three of them had sat in front of Dr. Zirac. Simon plonked in the middle.
“And how is Mr. Hogan today?” The Doctor addressed the question to Grainne.
“The same as he was yesterday, and the day before, very agitated and disturbed.
I have no rest with him.”
“Is this so, Mr. Hogan?” The doctor looked at Simon over his spectacles. “Are you disturbed?”
“She locks me in the cupboard.”
“What?”
“When her posh friends come around,” Simon raised his voice, speaking with affected precision as if he thought English was not the Doctor’s preferred language, “she puts me in the closet in my bedroom and doesn’t let me out until they are all gone.”
The spectacles turned towards Grainne. She stared back at the Doctor and forced herself not to blink. What could she say? He’s raving. I don’t have any posh friends who come to visit me. I don’t have any friends at all come visiting. Not for a long time. Because of him. And I cannot get away from him to go visit anybody. But I can’t say this in front of my daughter.
“It’s his smelly feet,” she said, still without blinking.
“His feet?”
“Yes. He must have athlete’s foot or gangrene. I don’t know. You’re the Doctor. Sometimes before the local Vicar comes to see how I’m doing, I sit Mr. Hogan in the shower and put his feet in a basin of hot water and Dettol. He loves it.”
Simon scowled at her. She offered him a sympathetic smile. Yes, my dear man, I know you hate it.
Ashling frowned. “What Vicar, Mom?”
“It’s no matter,” Grainne said. I can’t use the word ‘priest’ in front of your father. The last time Father Thackery, our parish priest, entered the house, your father slammed the bedroom door on him. ‘You can stick your Last Rites where the sun don’t shine’ was his parting words before hiding himself away in the wardrobe. He stayed there for hours. When he re-appeared, he was like a raving lunatic.
“I’ll give you something to help the feet,” the Doctor said, scribbling. “And I’ll ask the District Nurse to show you how to apply it. I’ll prescribe a stronger sedative to help him sleep better…is that ok?”
“Yes, thank you, doctor,” Grainne said. Any tablet to help me, perhaps?
Ashling drove her parents home without saying another word. Simon cursed and swore all the way. It was the last time their daughter accompanied them to the Doctor.
Two weeks before Christmas, Grainne’s son-in-law called to the house.
“Oh…Fergal? Is everything alright? Ashling? The children?”
“Yes, everything is fine. Grainne,” Fergal beamed a big smile at her. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know…hanging together, battering away. Come on in –”
“Er, no…” Fergal hesitated, looking back at his car. “Listen, Grainne, my aunt Molly is in the car and she is going to her Bridge club in the Arches. She wondered would you like to come?”
“Gosh no, I couldn’t do that…” They could hear Simon moaning noisily in the background.
“Don’t worry about him,” Fergal said, moving past her. “I’ll stay until you come back. We’ll be fine.” Grainne stroked her hair, unsure. “Molly will wait ten minutes for you, no more,” Fergal said, firmly. “Hey! Simon!”
Simon stopped moaning. “Is that you, Fergal?” he shouted back.
“Yes, you ol’ codger. It’s your favourite son-in-law. Fancy a game of poker?” Fergal disappeared down the hallway.
Some hours later, Molly brought Grainne back home. Fergal met them at the door. Grainne’s face was radiant, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed with excitement. “Well,” said Fergal, “and how did you two get on?”
“Smashing,” Grainne said, throwing off her coat. “Molly and I had a great chat about the old days. We went to school together, you know.”
“And what did you think of the Bridge club?”
“I met some lovely women there, very welcoming and friendly. But – how about you and –?” Simon came through the hallway.
“Fergal wants to take me away for a dirty week-end,” he said, almost defiantly.
Grainne stared at him.
“Fishing in the Corrib,” Fergal explained. “Wet and mucky, but not dirty. May I take him away with me? My Dad is coming too. They can watch each other.”
“Yes, please,” Grainne said, delighted. “Have him back by Christmas, will you?”
Feb. 14th. Dear diary, I am sitting in the conservatory and it’s hot where the sun is beaming down on us. Simon is sitting opposite, writing. He hasn’t done that with a long time. He improves day by day. So Thank God his medication is at last working for him…I see more of the children too. They seem to be more mannerly. Dare I think that life is looking good?
Simon got up and came over, offering her a sheet of A4.
“What’s this?” she said.
“It’s this poem you were scratching your white hair about, remember? You asked Fergal to google it for you, but I had it all the time. Read it out loud to me.”
“Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be,
the last of life for which the first was made.
Our times are in His hand
Who said a whole I planned, youth shows but half –’’
“Trust God, see all, nor be afraid!” He finished the verse for her.
Grainne smiled. “Simon, you’re full of surprises.
“I was wondering,” he said, shyly, “I would like us to renew our wedding vows?”
Grainne looked up at him, towering over her. She had to shield her eyes from sunglare silhouetting the shape of him.
“So darling, what are you thinking?” he said.
By any other name, a rose is still a rose, she was thinking, and you are still the man I married all those years ago, my dear sweet Simon.
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