in the house, honey, but don’t worry, I know exactly what I’m doing,’ she continues. ‘You will get them. You’ll get them all in good time.’
Her eyes light up with excitement and I feel so much better to know how we both have played a part in making her passing from this world a bit more controlled and slightly more bearable in her eyes. I can only imagine the fun she had putting these videos together, and also the pain she was in as she did so, knowing she would be speaking to us in a one-way conversation that she would never get to know the results of.
‘Look, I don’t claim to know it all about life,’ she continues. ‘In fact, I don’t think anyone ever does know it all, and I’m not setting out to lecture either of you on how to live your own lives, but what I do know is that the whole damn thing goes in a blink and I’m so thankful I’ve had a bit of warning that my time is almost up.’
She clicks her fingers to emphasize her point and I breathe in. The whole concept of the fragility of life is exactly what has been occupying my mind recently. I’m beginning to wonder if she anticipated how her death would raise these questions in those she left behind?
She removes the silly Easter bonnet, which makes me take her a lot more seriously, but her hair is sticking up a little at the front and I want to fix it for her. She was always so particular about her hair.
She shifts a bit now in her seat, then leans slightly forward and clasps her hands together, just like she always did when she had something really important to say to me. She stares at us too for effect. It works, as I’m all ears.
‘I’ve a simple message for you as the joy of spring fills the air,’ she says. ‘To yourself you should always be true.’
I can see Aidan shuffle at the edge of my vision.
‘If you hide your true self, it will follow you, it will haunt you, it will whisper in your ear in the morning, it will roar at you in the middle of the night,’ she tells us. ‘It will trip you up all through your day and throughout your whole life, because the truth will always get you in the end. No matter how fast you run away from it, the truth will always win, and your true self will always be revealed.’
Mabel talks slowly, emphasizing her words with her pale wrinkled hands and with her sparkling turquoise eyes and, as always, I’m totally engaged with everything she is saying as I quickly reflect on my own path in life over the past almost forty years.
I have tried to cover up the truth many times, but it always did get me in the end.
When I was just eight years old, my grandmother begged me to come and live with her, and I said no. I didn’t tell her the truth about my mother’s drinking. I lied to her about what I’d had for dinner. I lied about the bruise on my arm that I said had happened when I’d bumped into someone in the playground at school.
I lied when I was a teenager to my teacher who asked if I had enough dinner money to see me through the week, and I lied to her again when she asked if I was hungry.
I lied to myself when I left university early, thinking that all I needed in life was already all in my head.
I lied to my friends when they asked me if everything was OK with Jude, and when I seemed so agitated and irritable at times. I lied about feeling unwell when he wouldn’t let me see them any more.
If I’d told the truth to my grandmother back then, she’d have saved me from a childhood of pain. If I’d told the truth to my teacher, I wouldn’t have had to go so hungry I’d sometimes be sick. If I’d told the truth to my friends about Jude, I wouldn’t have been broken into a million pieces of glass and then been blamed for making him bleed.
Mabel’s voice lilts into a merry tone of reflection.
‘You know, my husband Peter once took me to visit the most delightful little village across on the east coast of Ireland called Breena where he and his only brother Danny worked for