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.”