A Letter I Did Not Send
I went back to the house after the hospice and my mother stayed on with him, because my mother stayed on with him every afternoon from two to six, and there was no talking her out of it, and I did not try to. She said the walk from the hospice to the bus stop would do her good. I gave her the keys to the Skoda in case she wanted it, and she refused, and I knew she would refuse, and I gave them anyway, because giving them was the ritual. She said she had the bus and she had a flask and she had her book, and that was the end of it.
I sat in the back room with the door closed and I did not know what to do with myself. I had a laptop and an internet dongle and an email full of things I was meant to be answering about the lighting rig for the Turgenev, and I answered none of them, and instead I opened the drawer of the small desk under the window, which was the desk I had used for my Leaving Cert, and I began to go through it the way people go through a drawer when they are looking for an excuse.
There were pens that no longer worked and a ruler with my name on it in biro and a rosary I had been given by an aunt for my Confirmation. There was a holiday brochure for Lanzarote from 2005. There was a school report from Transition Year that said I had talent but did not apply myself, which was a thing every report I had ever got had said, and I had stopped taking it personally round