When All Is Said by Anne Griffin

Author:Anne Griffin [Griffin, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2019-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

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When I met your mam it had been her intention to make her way home to Noreen, to be there to help out with her. She hoped to get a transfer to Donegal at some stage. But I scuppered her plans. Failing us moving there, it was Sadie’s wish that in later years Noreen would come to live with us, once your grandparents had passed. She told me once that she hoped this would coincide with medicine making such advances that Noreen might mellow, becoming at last the doted-on little sister of her longing. Only one wish was fulfilled when Noreen moved to Meath in seventy-four. Your Granny Mary died first with the father remaining to make the daily drive to Saint Catherine’s. It was a flu that was his downfall in the end. You don’t hear of that much these days, someone dying from flu, but it took that bull of a man. Noreen, to everyone’s surprise, didn’t seem at all upset by the prospect of a move hundreds of miles away to the brand spanking new nursing home in Duncashel. In fact, the day we arrived to pick her up, she beamed at us, not bothered by the recent loss of her father it seemed and delighted by the prospect of a new bedroom.

‘New room, new room,’ she repeated, intermittently as we drove south along the Donegal coastline, then east towards home.

Sadie was silent. I imagined a whole host of emotions churning around inside her. Sadness to have lost her father, fear that Noreen mightn’t settle, and concern that she, the big sister, might, once again, not be up to the job. You know what a worrier your mother was; she had herself in a state in the weeks building up to the move:

‘Maurice, what if she hates it? What if it sets her off on one of her fits and she doesn’t recover? I don’t know what I’d do. Would we have to bring her to live in the house with us then or what? Sure, we couldn’t bring her back to Donegal. Ach, are we doing the right thing at all?’

She sat in the passenger seat staring ahead the day of the move, like a scared little girl, needing to explain and defend this woman, merrily chatting away to herself in the rear. I reached my hand to hers as they writhed in her lap.

‘We’re in this together, Sadie,’ I said.

I think she nodded. My hand didn’t leave hers until the gears cried out. I felt her own hand move in under my left thigh then, where it nestled for the rest of the journey until we arrived on the gravel driveway of Duncashel Care Home. I’d barely stopped the car before Noreen was out and past the nurse standing waiting to greet us. We ran after her as she scurried down the corridors.

‘New room! New room!’ she chirped, louder and louder until the nurse finally caught up and escorted her to the yellow wallpapered room with its neat single bed and locker.

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