Life, Interrupted

by Damian Kelleher

  She hasn’t changed a bit in the way she speaks to us. We have had a constant stream of visitors – friends of Mum’s, Freya and Jack, even Mrs Halloran (that was very embarrassing) – and everyone who comes to the house is saying things like, ‘I’m so sorry’ and, ‘If there’s anything we can do to help’, and I really want to say, ‘Well, yes, there is actually. How about bringing my mother back to life?’ I have stupid thoughts like that all the time, but of course, you don’t say anything, you just nod and smile. But Polly’s been brilliant.

  We haven’t got a clue what to do. Jesse and I just sit like a couple of morons on the sofa, gazing into space. We’re off school at the moment – Uncle Stu says we don’t have to go in until after the funeral – but doing ordinary everyday stuff seems a bit disrespectful right now.

  Polly says, ‘You can turn the telly on if you want, you know.’ Then, as if she is reading Jesse’s mind, she tells him, ‘I think you could do with some fresh air, Jesse. Why don’t you have a bit of a kick-around in the garden, eh?’

  Jesse tries his best not to break out in a big smirk as he practically flies out of the back door. It’s the first time he’s touched a ball since last weekend.

  Once he’s gone, Polly gets up and closes the door. Uncle Stu is off making arrangements for Monday, the day of the funeral, and she sits next to me on the sofa. I can smell her funny fruity perfume, which is strangely reassuring, and she picks up the remote for the telly and turns it down a few notches, but she doesn’t turn it off. It’s the news and they’re talking about a famine somewhere in central Africa, and I’d love to switch channels as I see these images of children with big swollen heads and flies landing all over their lips, but I don’t.

  ‘Luke, I have to talk to you about the funeral,’ she says. ‘Stu’s got a lot on his plate at the moment and I said I’d help out, but I don’t really know what to do about your dad.’

  She leaves a pause for me to step in.

  ‘What about him?’ I say.

  To be honest, I have thought about him a bit since Tuesday, which is a lot more than I’ve thought about him in the past six years or so. Usually it is when I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself. I mean, some kids in my class have got two parents. Look at Freya. Her mum and dad both work and they’ve got two cars and a big house, and I know it’s a bit untidy sometimes, but whenever you go round there, Angela’s really nice and asks you to sit down and makes you tea and toast and chats. And I know David’s a bit grumpy and he grunts and bumps about the house like a big grizzly bear and he never looks like he’s pleased to see you, but Freya always says, ‘Take no notice, that’s just David.’ And, even though he doesn’t say much, I’ve seen her give him the odd hug and you can tell she really loves him.

  Well, I never felt cheated only having one parent because, well, who needs two if you’ve got one really good one? Dad just didn’t come into the equation. He was off and away and it’s not like we missed him or he sent us money (I overheard Mum telling Mia once, but she never moaned about it to me and Jesse) or anything useful like that. We had Mum so we didn’t even think about it.

  ‘Stuart’s obviously spoken to your dad,’ says Polly, ‘and Ian would like to come down for the funeral. On his own. He won’t bring his wife and kids – he realises that that’s not appropriate – but he says he wants to pay Patty his last respects.’

  Ian, I think. I’d forgotten that was his name. Ian. I try to put a face to the name, but it’s a big blur nowadays.

  ‘Does it make any difference if I say no?’

  Polly smiles at me, and picks up my hand and gives it a little squeeze.

  ‘Of course it does,’ she says. ‘That’s why I’m asking. It’s up to you and Jesse. Stuart says he never had anything against Ian. Marriages break up, these things happen. But he realises that Monday is going to be tough on both of you two. If seeing your dad makes it even harder to take, he’ll ask him not to come. And your father says he’ll respect that.’

  She leaves another gap here, but I’m still too busy thinking to say anything.

  ‘He doesn’t have to come back to the house after the funeral if you don’t want him to, you know.’

  I take a big deep breath and look at the telly.

  The TV reporter is standing next to a group of children who all look seriously skinny, like they’re on the brink of death, really. I’m wondering if TV news reporters feel guilty when they sit down and eat their dinner after they’ve told the rest of the world about a country that’s gripped by starvation. I’m also thinking, come on, Luke, you may have your problems but at least you have enough to eat and your head’s not covered in manky flies.

  It’s then that I think of the Miss Tranter question that’s been on my mind and I think, I have to ask it or I may end up looking stupid, like Josie Pegg staring at those ham sandwiches in the bin with bits of fluff and pencil shavings stuck to them.

  ‘Polly,’ I say, ‘why did it happen to us? I mean, how come Jesse and I have ended up with no parents and some people have two. It’s not exactly fair is it?’

  Polly closes her eyes briefly and then she stares right at me. ‘Luke,’ she says. ‘It’s never easy when someone dies. You start to question all kinds of things. I see that a lot – people asking, “Why me?” There’s no answer. I could start spouting all kinds of clichés, but I don’t know if they would make you feel any better right now. You’re not being punished, you know. It’s not like you deserve this. And it’s not because your mum did some awful things in her life. I only knew Pat a few weeks, but you didn’t have to be a genius to see what a strong, funny, lovely person she was.’

  ‘I keep wondering if we could have done more,’ I tell her. ‘If Mum hadn’t come home that weekend, well, maybe she’d still be alive now.’

  Polly takes a slow, deep breath. ‘Of course you’ll think that. It’s perfectly natural. Look, Luke, the doctors at Gospel Park are fantastic. Yes, they knew your mum’s cancer was advanced, but they didn’t realise just how advanced it was, and nor did she. She still thought she had some time. There were still things she wanted to do – she hadn’t even had time to talk to Jesse about the cancer – but suddenly her illness just kicked into overdrive. That happens sometimes, but it’s unusual, you know, it’s very rare. The recovery rate for cancer nowadays is better than it’s ever been. People do survive, they do get better, but a few don’t. Maybe that last weekend was a bit much for Pat, but do you know what? I don’t think she’d have traded it for another two weeks in her hospital bed. And I don’t think you and Jesse would either.’

  She looks me straight in the eyes. I know Polly’s right. I know this all makes sense.

  ‘It’s the law of nature, Luke. We all have to die. Some of us die sooner than others. The best thing we can do is make the most of it while we can.’

  She smiles. ‘And I said I wasn’t going to give you all those old clichés . . .’

  She’s still staring right at me, and I’m thinking that she’s got a really friendly, caring face.

  ‘Live, Luke. Enjoy it. Don’t waste your time feeling angry or hard-done-by, or let down, because your mum’s gone and your dad’s moved on. You’ve got friends – good friends – you’ve got an uncle who loves you and who’s going to look after you. You’ve got a brother, too, and I know you think he’s a pain now but that won’t last for ever. Your dad may not have been much of a father to you recently, but who knows,’ she says, ‘one day, that might all change, too.’

  The news has moved on from the starving African children. Now they’re talking about some changes to the tax system that the government is proposing. In a few minutes, no doubt they’ll be finishing up with a tap-dancing dog to make us all feel chirpy.

  ‘I don’t mind if he comes,’ I say. ‘I don’t really know him. I’ll ask Jesse but I don’t think he’ll care either way.’

  Polly squeezes my hand again and says, ‘Good. I think that’s very honest of you. I’ll tell Stuart.’

  chapter twenty-four


  I don’t know how the word ‘fun’ ended up in funeral, but personally I think someone has a very sick sense of humour.

  Uncle Stu has been talking to us about the funeral – I think Polly suggested it might be a good idea – so we’re not in for any nasty surprises on the day itself. It seems he and Mum had talked about it at some length a few days before she died, and she had made a few special requests (typical Mum).

  1) She wanted it in the local church, the Holy Cross.

  2) She wanted the nice South American priest who baptised Jesse – Father de Freitas – not the doddery old codger who’s always banging on about eternal damnation and shakes the collection plate under your nose a second time on the way out of church (she always said that was the reason why we stopped going).

  3) No gloomy hymns, only happy ones.

  4) No wearing black (she said it reminded her of funerals – work that one out).

  5) She wanted to be buried, not cremated.

  6) No flowers.

  I’m slightly perplexed by this last request. I mean, it’s not as though she didn’t like flowers – she loved them. For Mother’s Day last year Jesse and I clubbed together and bought her some anemones from the flower shop up the road. We bought anemones because we liked the colours and we couldn’t afford the roses. Mum said she was glad we didn’t get the roses (Jesse blurted out that they were too expensive) because she always thought they were ‘lacking in imagination’. I think this was a reference to my dad who always bought her a bunch of moth-eaten roses from the local petrol station every Valentine’s Day and thought this qualified as a grand romantic gesture. Mum didn’t see it quite the same way. She also said anemones were her favourites. Okay, maybe she said it just to make us feel better, but we believed her at the time. And I found one of the purple anemones that she’d squashed in her memory book (it was where she kept her favourite photos and little mementoes), and she’d written next to it Mother’s Day 2008, so I think it did mean something to her.

  I tell Uncle Stu I really want to get her some anemones even though she’d said no flowers and he says that’s cool because ‘no flowers’ means people outside the immediate family, but we can still get flowers if we want. He says Mum thought it a shame that beautiful flowers just end up wilting in a cemetery with no one to look at them. He also says he’d like to ask people who would have spent money on flowers to make a donation to Cancer Research and Macmillan nurses instead, if Jesse and I agree (we do).

  ‘Can they make flowers into special shapes?’ asks Jesse.

  ‘Like what?’ I say. ‘The Titanic? The Sydney Opera House? Your brain?’

  ‘I was thinking that Mum might like a football,’ says Jesse quietly.

  I practically choke.

  ‘You mean you might like a football,’ I say. ‘It’s not for you. It’s for Mum.’

  ‘Yes, but she liked to watch me play,’ says Jesse. My jaw drops open. This is news to me. I remember the time when she watched him play at primary school on a freezing Saturday in February and she claimed the experience had left her with chilblains on her left foot and frostbite on her right.

  ‘Sometimes she did,’ he adds under his breath.

  ‘I think a wreath in the shape of a football would be perfect,’ says Uncle Stu. ‘I’ll see what the florist can do.’

  I hear him on the phone to the florist later when Jesse is outside again, kicking the ball against the wall. Mum may have died, but Jesse obviously still has the finals of the Inter-County Schools Under-16s on his mind. Or maybe it’s the World Cup 2018.

  ‘I know it’s unusual,’ Uncle Stu is hissing down the phone, trying hard not to raise his voice, ‘but it’s what my nephew has requested. He’s only ten, and his mother’s died. Is it really too much to ask to try and make a little boy happy?’

  It’s funny how adults can be economical with the truth about your age. Like when you go to a theme park and they tell you to say you’re eleven if anyone asks when you know perfectly well you’re twelve. Of course Jesse’s not ten (though he acts like it sometimes), but adults like to age you up or down to suit their own ends. As though a florist wouldn’t mind breaking the heart of a bereaved almost-twelve-year-old, but wouldn’t dream of saying no to a distraught ten-year-old.

  He gets his way in the end though. Well, it’s hardly surprising. ‘They didn’t want to do it?’ I say as Uncle Stu comes into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.

  ‘Oh, they say it’s a nightmare trying to get black and white flowers to make it look like a football,’ says Uncle Stu. ‘Well, they can get white flowers – it’s the black ones that are the problem. I told them to use red.’

  I give him a look that says ‘are you sure about that?’

  ‘I’ve seen kids at the park kicking red and white footballs,’ says Uncle Stu defensively. ‘It’s meant to be a bloody gesture, not the FA Cup Final.’

  We both snigger at this, and then I say, ‘Jesse won’t mind. Red and white – they’re his colours, aren’t they?’ and Uncle Stu nods his head to show he understands.

  He says he’s going to say a few words about Mum at the funeral and asks if I want to say something too. I can’t think of anything I’d less like to do except possibly insert hot needles under my fingernails. I figure if I can get through the ceremony without falling to pieces it will be a major achievement and I’m really not keen on the idea of standing up in front of a whole church full of people and putting on a bit of a performance. So I say, ‘Thanks but I don’t think it’s my style,’ in as firm and tactful a voice as I can manage, and Uncle Stu is cool about that.

  ‘Why don’t you write her a poem?’ he suggests. ‘Your Mum always said you were good at that. You don’t have to read it out, but we could put it with your flowers on the coffin, so it’s private.’

  I must admit, I like this idea. I spend the rest of the day trying to get some words on to paper but it’s not as easy as I’d thought. Trouble is, if it’s a rhyming type of poem it reads like something out of those really naff birthday cards you get at the local newsagent, or, worse still, brings back horrible memories of the carnage that was ‘Hyacinth Wood’. And if it’s the non-rhyming kind, it seems a bit pretentious somehow. I have a go at both and then go back to the rhyming sort. I want to find something that rhymes with my name so I can sign it off, but the only thing that rhymes with Luke is ‘puke’ and even I can tell that that is ‘far from appropriate’ as Mrs Blythe would say. Eventually I settle for this.

  If I close my eyes

  I can hear your voice

  Above the sound, the background noise.

  I can hear your laughter

  Loud and clear

  And I wish you weren’t gone, Mum

  I wish you were here.

  I’m trying to think of a title, but that turns out to be even more difficult than writing the poem in the first place. Then I remember what Mum used to write at the end of postcards when we went away on holiday. Wish you were here. So I scrawl that across the top and I look at it for a bit. It feels right, it seems to fit somehow. Wish you were here.

  I go rummaging through my desk upstairs and find some blue marbled writing paper that I got in my Christmas stocking last Christmas (she’ll know where it came from) and I write it out with my fountain pen in really neat handwriting. It’s not an epic, but it takes me a few attempts to get it just right. The fountain pen is a bit leaky, because I don’t use it that often, and writing with a fountain pen is obviously a bit of an art. I manage to smudge the first couple of goes, just because I’m trying a bit too hard, but eventually I get a little system where I write then blot, then write, then blot, and eventually I get it just the way I want it. Then I put it in one of the matching blue marbled envelopes, write ‘Mum’ on the front, and stand it up on the mantlepiece. Then I have to admit I have a bit of a boo because I get to thinking I’ll never write ‘Mum’ on another envelope again.

  Polly comes round later and cooks pasta for supper. While we’re twirling spag
hetti bolognese around our forks, she asks, ‘Have you thought if you’d like to say anything at the funeral, Jesse?’

  He slurps up a string of spaghetti, leaving tomatoey trails around his mouth as he sucks it in. This is Jesse thinking.

  ‘Yes,’ he announces. ‘I think I want to read a poem.’

  ‘Good for you,’ says Polly. ‘Have you got anything in mind or would you like some help?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind some help,’ he says. ‘I’m not very good with poems. But I don’t want anything too mushy.’

  ‘Luke’s good with poetry,’ says Uncle Stu. ‘He’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ I say. This is guaranteed to make me look bad, if he reads and I don’t – especially as I’m older than him.

  ‘I’ve got a book of poems for funerals,’ says Polly. ‘We can have a look through after supper and see if there’s anything there you fancy.’

  Jesse seems to like this idea. As he takes his plate to dump it in the sink, Polly turns to me.

  ‘Luke, we all do our own thing. We all grieve in our own ways. Don’t feel bad if Jesse wants to say something in the church and you don’t. It’s totally cool. We all know you’ve written Patty a poem and it’s private. I think that’s lovely.’

  ‘Right,’ Uncle Stu says to me. ‘That’s you and me on washing-up duty while the poets get stuck in.’

  ‘Most of these are long and boring,’ proclaims Jesse, as though he’s some kind of poetry expert now. ‘I can’t even say some of the words.’

  ‘They’re all a bit serious,’ Polly agrees. ‘And some are a little bit on the morbid side.’

  Jesse nods in agreement, then says, ‘What’s morbid mean?’

  ‘It’s means they’re all obsessed with death,’ Polly explains.

  ‘Which seems stupid when you’re already at a funeral,’ says Jesse. ‘Of course it’s all about death. Duh! I don’t want anything mobid.’