When my father died, the light went out. For a few years, I’d wake at 5am and at 5.01, he would die again. It was like he couldn’t get over the novelty. In time, I slept ’til six and he gave up the dying and the light came on again. Only it was harsh and at the low angle of winter, not so much illuminating life as exposing it, the layers of dust, detritus, the forks in the road, the paths not taken.
Of course, my father’s death coincided with the realisations and accommodations of middle-age, but as those of us of a vintage know, it’s hard to live under the 2,000-megawatt homicidal bulbs flashing on the Massive Mistakes sign that hovers over our heads, confirming to the world our absolute imbecility.
He lived for Christmas and died two weeks before it, at home, as was his wish, getting five bonus days before the elixir of life ceded to the pharmacology of death.
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Dying has its own mechanics and when he did it – and actively – I put up the fresh holly wreath on his front door, wrapping it in black-velvet ribbon, determined he would have his bit of Christmas before O’Connor Brothers whisked him off to swap the Hyoscine, Haldol and morphine sulphate we had pumped with love and horror into his veins for a good glugger of glutaraldehyde.
That’s the thing about death. It’s visceral. Noisy. Busy. Irreversible. Since we do it only once, it needs to be right. In his case, it was. My father had a good death but not just randomly. We made sure of it. Then, when his heart stopped, we wrapped him in our love, passing him to the people who had loved him before us. We hope for the same for ourselves.
The father-losing-and- recovery business – and it’s an awful business – was followed fast by the empty-nest business which has a complication level of quantum mathematics. Apposite, given quantum mathematics is how children go from Junior Infants to college in around three weeks.
This Christmas will be quiet. The kids will be home – thank you, Baby Jesus and all your Holy Angels – but it is a time of transition that will be felt by many mothers, where we have outlived our usefulness, our essentialness in our grown children’s lives. We’re not careering with trolleys around Smyth’s Toys or Dunnes Stones or M&S, grabbing the Last in the World of today’s equivalent of Tinky Winky or siege supplies to see us through, at least, until the massacre of the Holy Innocents. At the till shouting “Nuts! Quick! Run back for the nuts! It’s Christmas! We have to have nuts!” Even though we’re all allergic.
When we have spent 20 years washing, ironing, sorting, shopping, frequently at the velocity and ferocity of a Tasmanian Devil, to find ourselves suddenly at a standstill and nobody at home to do anything for, is unnerving, disenthralling. Because, if we are not that person, who are we? Since we are no longer doing all of that, what do we do now?
Transitions are tricky. We go from fairly-confident single woman to expectant mother, to holding in our hands the secret of life itself in the form of our son or daughter. This new life totally dependent on us for its safety, existence. It’s a shock. Two seconds later, they go to school and suddenly we exist no longer as ourselves but as the mother of A or B. Other women exist to us as the mothers of X and Y. And so it goes.
Years of us collecting and delivering and matches and ballet and sleepovers and “will ye take them, no, we will” and fallings out and broken hearts and study and exams and graduations and college and then, ‘they think it’s all over? It is now’. For me and many, it is over. And it’s awful. Friends tell me it gets better. Marginally. I hope they’re right.
*******
I used to see them at Christmas. The old women going to Donovan’s in Prince’s Street for waxed papers of sliced meat – the good stuff – because they have no need now for the soft pink cushion of ham or the minky, balsamic hunk of spiced beef.
They had known the years of the Pifco lights, the hunt for the tester and the spare bulbs and the fuses that looked like rolled-up messages for carrier pigeons, or those pills that Resistance fighters and spies kept in their dry mouths and bit on when they were betrayed or captured: count five and die.
There were the turkeys ordered from a shop with Victorian windows – in it, birds strung up by their yellow claws, a few feathers still around their elongated gizzards, their dead eyes gazing at the ancient, hand-painted Nollaig Shona and beyond it, small, mittened children pressing their faces to the glass, mesmerised by the gruesomeness.
“The usual, Mrs So and So? A female bird? And it’ll be the six of ye as normal? I’ll put that in the book.”
“Yes. Do.”
She takes her docket. There’s a docket for everything. Except for loss.
Once, by order came tins of Afternoon Tea (USA if things were tight), of Tanora, White Lemonade, Coca-Cola, Rasa, Ginger Ale, boxes of Lemons Sweets, Black Magic, Weekend, Hadji Beys with its wooden fork, a few dates, figs, a slab of seed cake. A deep box of port, sherry, brandy, a single malt.
There were Crolly Dolls hidden in attics and walkie-talkie dolls and walkie-talkies themselves and cap guns and cowboy suits and sheriffs’ rig-outs with the badge and nurses’ outfits with the bag and the fob-watch and Raleigh bikes put away in Kilgrews.
I used to see them, the women. That time when I had my own two children by the hand, down in Cork to see Granny and Pat (he was always Pat, never Granddad), and the children would move the Wise Kings on their journey down the stairs, fighting over the camel. My father testing them.
“Who are they?”
“The Magi: Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior.”
“Ye have it. Very good”.
I used to see them, the women. That time I thought would last forever, when elves patrolled the skies from November – you could never be too sure – and there were Christmas plays and concerts and carols and lists were made and letters were sent and there was pure joy on Christmas morning, not so much with what he brought but that he came. He remembered them.
I used to see them, the women. One day I might be them.
*******
Last week I put out the decorations that make our Christmas: the painted paper-plates my son made in Junior Infants, the crumbs from his lunch preserved in the glue like a fly in amber; the grey clay infant in the grey clay manger his sister made in First Class, spending that Christmas killing and resurrecting Christ by adding and removing the detachable head with its glitter eyes, cocktail-stick slash for a smile. “Dead Baby Jesus. Alive Baby Jesus.” The signs were early.
There was no sound. No other person. No schoolbags in the hall. No coats and gear. No young fellas swarming like giant locusts over the fridge. No Dodie playing in one room or guerrilla wars being fought in another. No-one asking could you do, did you buy, are they washed, did you see, oh my god, Mom, tell me you didn’t, any chance of a tenner?
In the Christmas present, there was only me and Christmas past. In the Christmas future, I hope they will still come home from wherever they are. I’m ready for the year either or both won’t make it. But this Christmas, they will. And if our children are home for Christmas, it is not just enough. It is everything.
Oh, and who are we now we have outlived our usefulness? Well, even when they’re 96 and a half, we’re still their mothers. And they? They are our love, our light, our life.
Nollaig Shona. Happy Christmas.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Miriam O'Callaghan: 'For us empty nesters, our returning children are our love, life and light'
Miriam O'Callaghan: 'For us empty nesters, our returning children are our love, life and light'
When my father died, the light went out. For a few years, I’d wake at 5am and at 5.01, he would die again. It was like he couldn’t get over the novelty. In time, I slept ’til six and he gave up the dying and the light came on again. Only it was harsh and at the low angle of winter, not so much illuminating life as exposing it, the layers of dust, detritus, the forks in the road, the paths not taken.
Of course, my father’s death coincided with the realisations and accommodations of middle-age, but as those of us of a vintage know, it’s hard to live under the 2,000-megawatt homicidal bulbs flashing on the Massive Mistakes sign that hovers over our heads, confirming to the world our absolute imbecility.
He lived for Christmas and died two weeks before it, at home, as was his wish, getting five bonus days before the elixir of life ceded to the pharmacology of death.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
Log In
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
Dying has its own mechanics and when he did it – and actively – I put up the fresh holly wreath on his front door, wrapping it in black-velvet ribbon, determined he would have his bit of Christmas before O’Connor Brothers whisked him off to swap the Hyoscine, Haldol and morphine sulphate we had pumped with love and horror into his veins for a good glugger of glutaraldehyde.
That’s the thing about death. It’s visceral. Noisy. Busy. Irreversible. Since we do it only once, it needs to be right. In his case, it was. My father had a good death but not just randomly. We made sure of it. Then, when his heart stopped, we wrapped him in our love, passing him to the people who had loved him before us. We hope for the same for ourselves.
The father-losing-and- recovery business – and it’s an awful business – was followed fast by the empty-nest business which has a complication level of quantum mathematics. Apposite, given quantum mathematics is how children go from Junior Infants to college in around three weeks.
This Christmas will be quiet. The kids will be home – thank you, Baby Jesus and all your Holy Angels – but it is a time of transition that will be felt by many mothers, where we have outlived our usefulness, our essentialness in our grown children’s lives. We’re not careering with trolleys around Smyth’s Toys or Dunnes Stones or M&S, grabbing the Last in the World of today’s equivalent of Tinky Winky or siege supplies to see us through, at least, until the massacre of the Holy Innocents. At the till shouting “Nuts! Quick! Run back for the nuts! It’s Christmas! We have to have nuts!” Even though we’re all allergic.
When we have spent 20 years washing, ironing, sorting, shopping, frequently at the velocity and ferocity of a Tasmanian Devil, to find ourselves suddenly at a standstill and nobody at home to do anything for, is unnerving, disenthralling. Because, if we are not that person, who are we? Since we are no longer doing all of that, what do we do now?
Transitions are tricky. We go from fairly-confident single woman to expectant mother, to holding in our hands the secret of life itself in the form of our son or daughter. This new life totally dependent on us for its safety, existence. It’s a shock. Two seconds later, they go to school and suddenly we exist no longer as ourselves but as the mother of A or B. Other women exist to us as the mothers of X and Y. And so it goes.
Years of us collecting and delivering and matches and ballet and sleepovers and “will ye take them, no, we will” and fallings out and broken hearts and study and exams and graduations and college and then, ‘they think it’s all over? It is now’. For me and many, it is over. And it’s awful. Friends tell me it gets better. Marginally. I hope they’re right.
*******
I used to see them at Christmas. The old women going to Donovan’s in Prince’s Street for waxed papers of sliced meat – the good stuff – because they have no need now for the soft pink cushion of ham or the minky, balsamic hunk of spiced beef.
They had known the years of the Pifco lights, the hunt for the tester and the spare bulbs and the fuses that looked like rolled-up messages for carrier pigeons, or those pills that Resistance fighters and spies kept in their dry mouths and bit on when they were betrayed or captured: count five and die.
There were the turkeys ordered from a shop with Victorian windows – in it, birds strung up by their yellow claws, a few feathers still around their elongated gizzards, their dead eyes gazing at the ancient, hand-painted Nollaig Shona and beyond it, small, mittened children pressing their faces to the glass, mesmerised by the gruesomeness.
“The usual, Mrs So and So? A female bird? And it’ll be the six of ye as normal? I’ll put that in the book.”
“Yes. Do.”
She takes her docket. There’s a docket for everything. Except for loss.
Once, by order came tins of Afternoon Tea (USA if things were tight), of Tanora, White Lemonade, Coca-Cola, Rasa, Ginger Ale, boxes of Lemons Sweets, Black Magic, Weekend, Hadji Beys with its wooden fork, a few dates, figs, a slab of seed cake. A deep box of port, sherry, brandy, a single malt.
There were Crolly Dolls hidden in attics and walkie-talkie dolls and walkie-talkies themselves and cap guns and cowboy suits and sheriffs’ rig-outs with the badge and nurses’ outfits with the bag and the fob-watch and Raleigh bikes put away in Kilgrews.
I used to see them, the women. That time when I had my own two children by the hand, down in Cork to see Granny and Pat (he was always Pat, never Granddad), and the children would move the Wise Kings on their journey down the stairs, fighting over the camel. My father testing them.
“Who are they?”
“The Magi: Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior.”
“Ye have it. Very good”.
I used to see them, the women. That time I thought would last forever, when elves patrolled the skies from November – you could never be too sure – and there were Christmas plays and concerts and carols and lists were made and letters were sent and there was pure joy on Christmas morning, not so much with what he brought but that he came. He remembered them.
I used to see them, the women. One day I might be them.
*******
Last week I put out the decorations that make our Christmas: the painted paper-plates my son made in Junior Infants, the crumbs from his lunch preserved in the glue like a fly in amber; the grey clay infant in the grey clay manger his sister made in First Class, spending that Christmas killing and resurrecting Christ by adding and removing the detachable head with its glitter eyes, cocktail-stick slash for a smile. “Dead Baby Jesus. Alive Baby Jesus.” The signs were early.
There was no sound. No other person. No schoolbags in the hall. No coats and gear. No young fellas swarming like giant locusts over the fridge. No Dodie playing in one room or guerrilla wars being fought in another. No-one asking could you do, did you buy, are they washed, did you see, oh my god, Mom, tell me you didn’t, any chance of a tenner?
In the Christmas present, there was only me and Christmas past. In the Christmas future, I hope they will still come home from wherever they are. I’m ready for the year either or both won’t make it. But this Christmas, they will. And if our children are home for Christmas, it is not just enough. It is everything.
Oh, and who are we now we have outlived our usefulness? Well, even when they’re 96 and a half, we’re still their mothers. And they? They are our love, our light, our life.
Nollaig Shona. Happy Christmas.
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