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Read an excerpt from the book below:
Chapter One
See you in two minutes, ma! The words echoed in the hallway as the front door closed and re-opened in a burst followed by a trundling of long legs up the stairs and down as quickly. All over in a blur and this time the silence left uninterrupted. Me standing in the kitchen ironing some innocuous piece of clothing in a mundane way on an ordinary Saturday evening, in an ordinary house in a Cul de Sac with a green area, where children kick ball and have tea parties with plastic tea-sets and he and his crew set up a tent to camp out, where they tumble wrestle with each other and take selfies, plan battles on xbox, dance, sing, shout, share a smoke behind a wall. Here in this ordinary life the unthinkable happened. My life was transformed forever that evening as that was the last time I saw him alive. Read more...
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Music and Song
This excerpt from the chapter entitled “Music and Song” is set in our living room one evening when Darragh’s friends call in. They perform a heart breaking song which is followed by the piece below. These visits are defining and expanding upon a common ground where music provides a platform upon which we can express and relate in this unprecedented way.
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…….. But here, now, we are in exceptional times as we each try and adjust to his loss. They are used to my tears, they see this often on a visit but tonight there’s a special magic. It’s the summer and it’s another season beginning, another segment of time marked since his departure now six months ago.
I ache inside for his voice, his gangliness, his input and his mortification at the lads feeling so free in front of his Ma! I wish him to be here in the midst of the madness and aliveness that transforms my living room and transports me back to a time not much more than half a year ago when such things were common place. The next piece of performance is discussed and a song is located on someone’s phone, which they then connect to the base speaker. As the lull of the slow beat that starts, the lads pretend to be chilled out and relaxed and then with a sudden start, right on cue, at the exact moment the pace of the music heightens, they all jump up and dance like crazy in a circle wild and un-abandoned, one of them dropping a torch out of his pocket that lands switched on right in the middle of the melee. I know instantaneously that’s his way of partaking, this is Darragh in the middle of the madness having a moment with the crew. ‘Nice of Darragh to join us,’ one of them quips when he sees the torch spinning at his feet.
Sitting in the silence after they file out the door in their natural boisterousness I recall my dream of the night before where I was with Darragh and his crew in a bar and a dance off began. He was in the middle of it loving it and I said to him ‘Stay, stay, look at the fun you’re having’, to which he replied, ‘It’s too late, Ma, I’ve already left.’ How apt that seems now as the loud silence impregnates the space. I look at his smiling face framed forever behind the glass hoping for a glint in his eye, a twinkle of life, a spark of reason. Nothing happens. Eventually I blow out the candles and ascend the stairs to the empty room casting a glance in at his bed. I cannot resist the need to lie there staring up at the stars he created out of the end of his pen with scrunched up paper. ‘Spit wads’, they call those. I shudder at the idea and wonder what was in his mind as he lay there…....
The last evening shared in our house with the teens….....
Eventually after a long photo shoot and lots of tea, it’s time for us all to part company. Me, their friends’ mam, and they, the maturing lads and young women, joined together by the adversity of such loss that it cannot be easily expressed in words. Again music and song provides us with a common ground where we can meet. Their noisy departure and promises of visits to my sisters side of the country leaves me shell shocked and so, so lonely. Standing in the kitchen again, the sink overflowing with mugs and cups from copious cups of tea, the loud silence making itself known to me, I’m so unsure what to do with myself. It seems too late to ring Derek. Minutes later, without warning, the front door bursts open and the crew rush in and surround me in a mass group hug, ‘Group hug, group hug’, they chant, as they swamp me all of them so much taller than I. ‘We thought you might be feeling sad’, they declare. How wonderful are these young people.
Once again they completely astound me with their brash sensitivity. It feels encouraging to me for the future of our race that these young people can be so understanding and sensitive in the face of their own experience, grappling with the aftermath of their friend's atomic bomb of an act.
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Linda joined Shane Beatty in studio on Kildare FM. Listen back on kildaretoday.podomatic.com
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Article posted on Lustforlife.com
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