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.