Postscript(29)

‘Do you remember?’ Dad begins, but his voice is shaking and he clears his throat. Mum places a hand on his cheek and they both laugh. ‘Do you remember when you were younger and I had to travel for work?’

‘Yes, of course I remember. You used to bring me back a bell, every trip. I had dozens of them.’

‘I hated flying,’ Dad says.

‘You still do.’

‘It’s simply not natural,’ he says firmly. ‘Humans were made to be on the ground.’

Mum and I laugh at his deathly serious state.

‘Well, every time I had to get on one of those awful things I was sure the plane would go down,’ he says.

‘Dad!’ I say, surprised.

‘It’s true,’ Mum says, grinning. ‘It was more stressful dealing with your dad going away than it was with you all missing him.’

‘Every trip where I had to get on a plane, I’d sit down the night before and write you all a note. In case the plane went down and I never got to speak to you again. I left it in the drawer beside my bed with strict instructions to Elizabeth to give you the messages.’

I look at both of them in surprise.

‘He didn’t leave me any letters, mind you,’ Mum says, teasing.

‘It’s not the same thing as Gerry did for you, not the same thing at all. I never equated my little notes with Gerry’s letters. I didn’t even use envelopes. But I kept them. I just needed to put in words all the things I would want to say to you if I wasn’t here. Guiding words for your life, I suppose.’ He slides a shoebox towards me. ‘These are yours.’

‘Dad,’ I whisper, looking into the box. ‘How many are there?’

‘Fifteen or so. I’m sure I didn’t write one for every trip. I didn’t feel so scared going on short flights to the UK. But the longer letters were when I was getting on a propeller plane.’

Mum snorts with laughter.

As I lift the envelopes from the box and flick through them, Dad adds, ‘I thought they might be helpful to you now. To help you make your decision.’

The lump in my throat is so enormous I can’t speak. I stand up to reach over and hug him, but I put my weight on the wrong foot.

‘Ow, fuck,’ I groan, sitting down again.

‘All these years, and that’s the response I get,’ he says, amused.

Crouched with Dad around the letters at the table, with a box of my collection of bells that Mum retrieves from the attic, I choose one at random. Dad opens it and inspects it. I can tell he’s enjoying the game of retracing his past.

‘Hmm, let’s see. Barcelona trip. Sales Conference with the horrifically foul-breathed Oscar Sheahy, who had more time for escorts than meetings.’

I laugh and search through the bells. A tiny porcelain black-handled bell with a cathedral and sunset sky. Barcelona is hand-painted in white around the base. I tinkle the bell and Dad hands me the letter. I read aloud:

Dear Holly,

You’re six years old this week. I’ll be travelling for your birthday and I just hate it. You’ll have a clown party. I hope it doesn’t scare Declan, he hates clowns and kicked one in the goolies for Jack’s party. But you love them. You dressed as a clown for Halloween this year and insisted on telling a joke at every door we knocked on. ‘What do you call a zoo with only one dog?’ you asked Mrs Murphy. ‘A shih-tzu.’ You love telling that one.

I’m sorry I’ll miss your birthday, this very important day of your life, but I’ll be thinking of you all the time. I didn’t want to leave you on this very special day but Daddy has to go to work. I will be with you all the time, even if you don’t see me. And please remember to keep me some birthday cake.

Lots of love,

Daddy

‘Oh Dad.’ I reach across and take his hand. ‘That’s so lovely.’

Mum is standing by the kitchen sink, listening. ‘That was the day Jack jumped off the roof of the shed and cracked his two front teeth.’

We look up at her in surprise.

‘And I ate all the birthday cake,’ she adds.

I stalled after Gerry’s death. His letters got me back on my feet again. The following year I began to cycle and I’d been pedalling fast ever since. But now, I must be still, and learn to walk again. It is this simple quality of life and rhythmic functioning, almost like a production line, that gets me thinking: I’m equally terrified by life and ecstatic to be living it at the same time.

I selfishly thought after Gerry’s death that the universe owed me. I experienced a great tragedy at a young age and I thought that was me done, I got it over and done with. In a world of infinite possibilities, I should have known there is no end to the loss that we can experience, but neither is there to the knowledge and growth that arises because of it and in spite of it. Now I think surviving the first prepared me for the second, for this moment, and for anything else that lays ahead. I can’t stop tragedy from unfolding, I am powerless in the face of life’s sleight of hand, but while I lick my wounds and heal, I tell myself that although the car knocked me off my perch, momentarily tore my confidence, ripped me raw and broke my bones, I’m healing and my skin is growing back thicker.

My mind sent an SOS to my roots. This is what my roots have come back with: my unravelling at this time could be the making of me. After all, it happened once before, so why can’t it happen again?