My Life in Shambles: A Novel

by Halle, Karina

I look at my nan and she has a hand over her mouth, tears in her eyes, watching the ambulance doors close.

  “Is he …?” I can’t bring myself to say it.

  Please, God, no. Let him be okay. Let me have another chance.

  “He’s alive for now,” Margaret says. “But it doesn’t look good. They’re taking him to Cork.”

  “Then I’m going to Cork.” I look at Nan. “You’re going too.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t,” she says, her words choked.

  “What do ye mean? He’s your son-in-law.”

  A tear spills down her face. “You don’t understand, Padraig. I can’t handle it. I don’t want to see him in there like that. I can’t lose him like that. Not after I lost your mother.”

  I hear the crunch of gravel and look to see Valerie limping up the driveway, out of breath, her face contorted once she realizes what’s going on.

  I put my hands on my nan’s shoulders and make her face me, peering into her anguished eyes. I’ve never seen her like this before, it’s enough to break me. But I need to get through to her. “You listen to me, Nan. I know you’re scared and I’m scared too. But he’s not dead yet. If ye don’t go, ye won’t get to tell him all the things ye want to tell him, that ye need to tell him. Believe me, you’ll regret it. You don’t want to regret it. Please, come with me.” I squeeze her shoulders. “I need ye.”

  Her chin trembles but she straightens her back as much as she can and nods. “Okay, Padraig,” she says quietly. “I’ll come with ye.”

  “What happened?” Valerie cries out, breathless. “Is it Colin?”

  “Run inside and grab the car keys,” I tell her. “We have to follow the ambulance to the hospital.”

  The ambulance roars off down the driveway, sending dust in the air as Valerie runs into the house and grabs the keys.

  We all pile into the Porsche, even Major, and Valerie guns it down the road.

  All of us are hoping for one more chance.

  * * *

  It’s been several hours since my father was admitted to the hospital. All five of us waited and paced in the waiting room, wanting to hear the status, sipping on weak tea. We all knew that there wouldn’t be much they could do for him but we still needed to know that he could at least live for a few more days, just so everyone could have their goodbyes.

  The doctor eventually came out and told us that he didn’t have days.

  He had minutes.

  I nearly collapse on the linoleum floor, unable to grasp the finality of it all, Val holding me up.

  Minutes.

  Minutes of life.

  Minutes to make amends.

  Minutes to let him know much I love him.

  But even if it were hours instead of minutes and days instead of hours and weeks instead of days, it still wouldn’t be enough time.

  He was right about time.

  It’s all over before you know it.

  We all go into his hospital room at once, like a team.

  The room is private and dim and my dad is lying in the hospital bed, an IV in his arm. The heart monitor beeps, so slowly, too slowly. In smells like death in here. He’s not moving. If it weren’t for the monitors I wouldn’t think he was still alive.

  God, this is hell on earth.

  We stand around the bed and Major is the first to say something, standing by my dad’s head, hands clasped at his waist.

  “I don’t know if ye can hear me old chap, but I’ll always be able to hear ye. Your voice always echoing in my head, yelling at me over what bad bets I made at the races and how I always cheer for the wrong team. You were a cantankerous old man, but so am I and maybe that’s why we got along so well.” He pauses, getting choked up. “You were my best friend Colin, and I don’t think I ever told you that. I’m sorry I’m only telling ye now. I’m going to miss ye.”

  He wipes the tears away from his eyes and steps back.

  Nan goes up beside Colin and puts her hand over his. “I know ye can hear me dear. So I’m going to say some things to ye that I never got the chance to say. Things I should have said earlier, decades ago, but I didn’t because the good Lord decided to make me stubborn. The fact is, when ye first said you were going to marry my daughter, I was already plotting the many different ways I could prevent that from happening. My husband didn’t see the problem but I did. No, I saw ye as a bad boy and not fit for the likes of Theresa’s gentle soul. But ye found a way, the both of ye did, and went behind my back.” She lets out a soft laugh. “She’d sneak out in the middle of the night, leave pillows under her covers to make it look like she was sleeping. Ah, the cheek of it.”

  “The truth is,” she goes on, her voice becoming strained, “that you were a good man to Theresa and I should have told ye that. You were a good husband, and contrary to what ye always thought, you were a good father too. I don’t know why we keep these things from each other. Why sometimes, as a family, we’re always in a battle. I guess that’s the thing about family though, whether by blood or not. Everyone is trying to protect themselves and in the end they shut out those that they love the most and that love them the most. We’re so imperfect, ye see. All of us. We’re made of broken bits and jagged edges and we expect to fit flush with each other like puzzle pieces but we can’t. And that’s not the point of family. You don’t need to fit, you just need to be close.”

  “If I have any regrets, it’s not being more loving with ye, not treating you like a son, because you are my son. And … merciful Jesus, it pains me something fierce to see ye go like this. To have seen my daughter and my husband go too. I’m ninety-years old, I shouldn’t have outlived all of ye. And yet here I am. And I’m about to lose another soul that I love.” Tears spill out of her eyes and onto his arm and she wipes them away, sniffing. “Oh for feck’s sake, look at me now.”

  Valerie leans forward and hands her a wad of tissues from her pocket.

  “Bless ye dear,” Nan says to her as she takes it and blows her nose. “Sorry for this, Colin, I know ye don’t like people making a fuss over ye but that’s what ye get for deciding to die today.” She squeezes his hand. “And I know ye can hear me so just know that all of us love ye. You are loved and you are free.” She leans in and kisses him on the cheek. “Go fly with yer birds now.”

  He stirs, just a bit, enough to tell us that maybe he really can hear us.

  Valerie is nudging me in the side, wanting me to say something.

  But suddenly, I don’t know what I can possibly say.

  What made me think I could sum up everything he is to me and a whole lifetime of unsaid words now?

  “Padraig,” Valerie whispers, sniffling into her tissues. “Go to him.”

  I try to swallow. I nod. I shuffle forward and everyone else moves to the back of the room to give us privacy.

  I can’t breathe.

  But I have to try.

  I take my father’s hand in mine and I squeeze it tight, trying to feel him, feel that he’s still here, that he’s listening and alive.

  His hands are cold but they aren’t lifeless.

  It’s enough to give me courage.

  It’s enough to let me know that time is running out by the second.

  “Dad,” I begin to say and immediately the tears start running down my cheeks. “Dad, I’m so sorry,” I sob, my nose burning, my chest tight as a band that might snap at any moment. “I am so, so sorry. For everything. For absolutely everything. I wish I could tell ye so much but there isn’t enough time. I just … I looked up to ye, Dad. You were my hero. It’s why I started looking after the birds, it’s why I took up rugby. Not only because ye wanted me to, but because I wanted to be just like ye. And then … I don’t know what happened to us. We lost mam and Clara and then we lost each other and we were never the same. But I should have fought harder for ye. I should have fought harder for us. With family, I think you take them for granted. I think that you assume you have to love them or they have to love ye and that they aren’t going anywhere.”


  Valerie hands me a tissue and I wipe the tears under my eyes, trying to inhale. It’s getting hard to breathe, the depth of my grief is endless and it burns like a star in my chest. When I exhale, I’m shaking. “But they do go somewhere. You can lose people so easily. I felt like I lost ye even before now, just because I turned my back to ye and I should have just …”

  I swallow the painful lump in my throat, “I should have just sucked up my pride and tried with ye. But I didn’t. And that’s my biggest regret. And that’s why I made up that story about the engagement, because I thought maybe it was an excuse for another chance. And please, Dad, please, please believe me when I say I’m sorry for that and I know it was wrong. But where it came from, that was all right. The last thing I wanted was for us to take another step backward and now I’m afraid that … I’m afraid that you can’t hear me. That ye won’t forgive me. Please forgive me Dad,” I whisper, placing my head on his chest, hearing the faintest heartbeat. I wrap my arms around him. “Please forgive me. I love ye. I love ye so much. And I can’t believe that this is the end.”

  I cry into his chest, hard sobs that rock the bed and I can’t be consoled.

  I can’t be consoled.

  Especially as I hear his heartbeat starting to fade in time with the beep of the machines.

  “Padraig,” my nan says softly.

  There’s one beep.

  One heartbeat.

  Then another.

  Then.

  The machine lets out an endless single beep.

  His heart stops.

  “He’s gone,” she says.

  I lift up my head and stare into my father’s face and I can almost see the life leaving him.

  He’s gone.

  I feel Valerie put her arms around me, hear the crying and sniffles in my room and all I can see is my father’s face in death, trying to remember how he was when he was alive, trying to remember the last time he was young and we were happy and we had a mother and everything. We used to have the world and it was only us, just family, that’s all we needed.

  That’s all we really need.

  But they’re gone.

  My mam.

  Clara.

  My dad.

  And now, now that black hole of grief in my chest, the place where the loss of my mother resides, it’s growing bigger, making room for him.

  This time, it might swallow me whole.

  21

  Valerie

  “You must be Valerie,” an accented voice says from behind me.

  I turn around and see a tall, tanned man with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a physique that’s a cross between Padraig and Dwayne Johnson. He’s wearing a suit like everyone else is here, but it doesn’t seem to suit him, like he’s about to burst out of it at any moment, ala the Hulk.

  “I am,” I say to him. He has a handsome face, darker skinned, and very white teeth. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’re one of Padraig’s teammates.”

  “You’d be right,” he says. “My name’s Hemi. Hemi Tuatiaki.”

  He holds out his hand and I give it a shake.

  “Nice to meet you, Hemi. I thought there would be a lot more of his team here.” I look around the funeral. It’s not a small event. The entire town of Shambles has shown up at this cemetery overlooking the sea, but everyone is about seventy years old and no one looks like they play rugby anymore.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Padraig likes to keep to himself. I think I was the only one who really got to know his father and that wasn’t very well. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t know his father very well but I really did like him.” I take in a deep breath. I’ve been crying off and on all week since Colin passed away and though I’m mourning his loss, most of my tears are for Padraig. His grief is boundless.

  “Is he all right?” Hemi asks softly, nodding over at Padraig who is standing by the casket and consoling people, even though Padraig is the one who needs the most consoling.

  I shake my head. “No. This would have been hard for anyone under normal circumstances but …” I trail off, not sure if I should get personal, but Hemi is his friend and he’s here. “They had a fight before he died. Things were said that are weighing on Padraig. He got to say his goodbyes to his father but his father … he passed before they could make amends.”

  “Fuck,” Hemi swears. “That’s rough.”

  “Where is your accent from, by the way?”

  “New Zealand,” he says proudly.

  “Wait a minute. Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be playing for the All Blacks?” I’m kinda proud of myself for knowing the name of their rugby team.

  He grins. “Ah, I did for two years and then got traded out here. Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind going back. I miss home. But I wouldn’t want to leave old Padraig here. He’d have to learn how to pull his weight, then.”

  I cringe internally. Padraig hasn’t told his team yet about his diagnosis. I know this was something he’s been waiting to do and right now is definitely not the right time, but it sucks that his best friend from the team doesn’t know the truth.

  “Do you know when he’s coming back to the game?” he asks hopefully.

  I can only shrug and give him a quick smile. “I don’t know.”

  “He doesn’t talk about it?”

  “We’ve just been so focused on his father …”

  He nods. “Ah, I get it.”

  And it’s not a lie either. This whole last week has been misery for everyone at the B&B, trying to deal with his father’s funeral arrangements. It’s too much stress for Agnes to worry about, and Padraig has been practically comatose, so I’ve had to take it all on by myself and let me tell you, funerals are a bitch. You would think they would make the process easier for people who are steeped in grief but they try and nickel and dime you every step of the way.

  Luckily Padraig has money and told me to throw whatever I could at them to make the situation easier.

  So far, I think it turned out okay. As far as funerals go.

  The sun is shining and it makes the color of the grass and the beautiful bouquets and wreaths of flowers look electric. There are a lot of people here crying, a lot of love and stories being shared for this man. I think Colin would have been happy with it, but who knows. He might have secretly hated everyone here and complained about the color of the flowers.

  “We should go sit down,” Hemi says to me, guiding me by the elbow to the seats.

  I sit down next to Agnes, with the Major on the other side of her. Padraig is at the podium, ready to deliver the eulogy. He’s wearing a dark grey suit that I picked up for him in Cork, and even though it doesn’t fit him quiet right, he looks stunning in it.

  “How are ye doing, dear?” Agnes asks me as she takes my hand in hers and gives it a squeeze. The tenderness brings a tear to my eye.

  I nod, pressing my lips together. “I’m doing okay. How about you?”

  “I have a hole in my nylons,” she grumbles. “The only good pair I had.”

  I give her a sweet smile and rest my head on her shoulder for a moment, letting her know that I’m here. Her humor and grumpiness are defense mechanisms if I’ve ever seen one. I’m just lucky that she’s been able to get over the lies we told. When it comes to her relationship with me and with Padraig, it’s been repaired.

  It hurts that the same didn’t happen with Colin.

  Padraig holds up a sheet in his hands as he briefly looks over the crowd. The sheet is shaking but I can’t tell if it’s tremors from his MS or from the grief. This week, so many of his symptoms, the shaking, the fatigue, could easily be blamed on either affliction.

  “Do not go gentle into that good night,” Padraig clears his throat and begins by reading the poem by Dylan Thomas. “Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightnin
g, they do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, they wave by, crying how bright their fragile deeds might have danced in a green bay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  He swallows hard, clears his throat, his eyes looking over the crowd and blinking as if trying to clear tears. “Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way. Do not gentle into that good night.”

  Padraig pauses again, closing his eyes, breathing hard. When he opens them there’s fear and sorrow across his brow. He blinks at the paper and puts it aside. “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” He reads it all by memory and I have to wonder if that’s the poet soul of his mother speaking through him.

  “And you, my father,” he begins and then stops, his words choked on a sob. He presses his fist to his mouth, trying to bite back his soundless cries until he can compose himself. “And you, my father, there on that sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night.” He pauses and looks up at the sky. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  After a few beats, among the sounds of sobbing and crying and sniffling that comes from all round us, he takes in a deep breath. “My father raged against the dying of the light. For those of you who knew him, even if you didn’t know him well, you knew he raged, especially if his favorite team was losing.”

  To my surprise there are a few chuckles in the crowd. I’m also surprised Padraig is taking the humor approach after opening with that poem.

  “Of course his favorite team was always Munster,” he says to which almost everyone cheers and hoots and hollers. Padraig had told me that this was the team most people here root for. “And when they’d lose, which they do a lot, the whole town would lock their doors. But my dad, Colin, was more than just an angry old sod. He was a terrible driver as well.”

  I lean into Agnes. “What is this, a roast?”

  “It’s just a funeral,” she answers. “If ye can’t laugh when you’re dead, when can ye laugh?”