Postscript(77)

I stop speaking and stare straight ahead at the fields that surround the castle. I wait for him to stand and leave, but after a moment he’s still there. I sneak a look at him and he’s rubbing tears from his cheeks.

I hurry around to him and sit beside him, and wrap my arms around him. ‘I’m sorry, Paul.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he says, voice trembling. ‘That’s the best advice anybody ever gave me.’

I smile, relieved, but I feel his aching sadness; a pressing weight on my chest. ‘I should have said it a long time ago. To you all.’

‘I probably wouldn’t have listened.’ He wipes his eyes. ‘I’m dying,’ he says, finally. ‘I’m just trying to do everything to give them more of me.’

‘I know, but you have to leave room for them to remember you themselves.’ A thought strikes me, clear and vivid and it’s directed at myself. ‘And they can’t allow the ghost of you to take someone else’s place.’

After meeting with Paul, I give up on the idea of gathering with my family and go home. I take Gerry’s letters from my bedside locker, never far from me after all these years, and I open the one that I need to examine with a different pair of eyes.

Gerry’s fourth letter was one I treasured and was grateful for. In it, he encouraged me to rid myself of his possessions – not everything, of course, but he guided me as to what to keep and what to lose, what to give away and to whom. He told me I didn’t need his things to feel him with me, that he’d always be there wrapping his arms around me, guiding me. Gerry was wrong. At the time I did need his things to feel him with me. I smelled his T-shirts I refused to wash and hugged myself in his sweaters to fool myself into believing his arms were around me. This letter was one of my favourites because it kept me busy, it wasn’t a one-off event, it took me one month. It was weeks of work, gathering items, reminiscing, holding on then letting go as I allocated homes for them.

I wish I’d taken more time before following Gerry’s instructions. I wish I’d thought about my life more carefully and about what I would need. Instead he instructed me based on the woman I was when he knew me, instead of the woman I became when he was gone, and there are items that I gave away that I wish I’d kept and, most importantly, there are precious belongings of his that he told me to keep that I know I shouldn’t have. I kept them because he told me to, and I used him as my excuse for my own needs and greed.

It was delivering Bert’s letter to Rita’s sister that has played on my mind for some time. You can’t blame the dead, Rachel had blasted, respecting her mother’s final wishes, as though the final decisions of the dying are the correct ones, sacred and untouchable. I used to agree with her, but perhaps we’re wrong. Perhaps the ones who leave us behind don’t always see the bigger picture, but instead place it in our hands with trust in us to make better decisions.

I enter Malahide village, and take a left at the church, down Old Street and towards the marina and the boat-repair facility where his dad still works. After Gerry’s death, I used to meet with his parents a few times a year; they were still family to me, I was still their daughter-in-law, but over time as the middleman to our connection had passed, so too did our relationship. Conversation was sometimes forced, sometimes awkward, hard work and draining because though we were joined by love, it was impossible to avoid the fact we were also joined by loss. As time is no one’s friend, and in my effort to move on and let go, to face the light, I suppose that fraction of my life got bumped. Christmas cards, birthday presents, at first were hand-delivered and then mailed, and so we drifted further from one another.

Gerry’s dad isn’t expecting me; even when married to Gerry I never visited his workplace, but it must be done and it must be done today. Being involved in the PS, I Love You Club has given me new insight into why Gerry wrote his letters, and part of that lesson has been in discovering that Gerry wasn’t always right, and I wasn’t always right to follow them.

I arrive at the boatyard and, naturally, the steel gates are shut. Behind the barrier men are busy at work cleaning, repairing, maintaining boats of various sizes mounted on steel legs. I finally catch the attention of one bare-chested worker, sweating in the sun, and I wave at him.

‘I’m looking for Harold,’ I call. ‘Harry?’

He opens the gate and I follow him in. Harry is fully dressed, thankfully, hard at work by the propeller of an enormous vessel.

‘Harry!’ my guide yells, and Gerry’s dad looks up.

‘Holly,’ he says, surprised. ‘What brings you here?’ He puts down his tool, and walks towards me, arms open.

‘Good to see you, Harry,’ I say happily, examining his face for a trace of his son, the Gerry I knew and a glimpse of the aged Gerry he never became. ‘Sorry to drop in unannounced.’

‘It’s great to see you. Come to the office for a tea?’ He places a hand on the small of my back and starts to guide me.

‘No thanks. I’m not staying long.’ I feel the emotion gathering, as it does anytime I’m with a physical reminder of Gerry. His dad brings him to life, his life emphasises his death, and an actual acknowledgement of his death is always crushing.

‘What is it, love?’

‘I’ve taken on a new project this year. Something inspired by Gerry.’