Categories
Adulthood fiction Observations Stories Writing

The Friend

“So, that’s all we have time for on the programme this week.”

There’s a soothing aspect to having the radio on as a constant background noise. It is something that I feel strongly about and as a result, my house is never quiet. Whether I’m leaving it on so that Poppy, my Spaniel, doesn’t feel lonely while I’m out in the day, or to keep my mind focused on the words being said so that it doesn’t wander into those dangerous dark places, I always have sound.

Poppy’s favourite station is Radio 2, though she does like Heart FM on Sunday’s – musicals and love songs aren’t her thing. I particularly enjoy Radio 4 for it’s discussions and the peaceful tranquility that comes with it. I feel I learn something merely by having it playing out even if I’m not listening and, most of all, I feel like I have company when I am alone.

I find Sunday’s the hardest days to cope after everything. Sunday morning television is hideous and currently I haven’t a good book to indulge in. I love to lose myself in fictional worlds but it has to be the correct, gripping read and my taste is becoming pickier as my age increases.

Poppy lay on my lap sound asleep but in a state whereby if I move she will know instantly and pine for me to return. I can sense it and, apparently, so can she. Stroking her soft fur brings me calmness but otherwise I am fidgety and restless. What to do.

I press my phone and there is nothing. No messages, no likes or comments on social media, not even a breaking news broadcast. Nothing is going on.

Outside is cold but sunny and bright which brings envy towards my friends with kids and perfect families, probably playing outdoors or off out for lunch at a country pub that they saw recommended in the paper. I rarely envy children having made a conscious decision not to have them, but times like this I do.

Breathing in slowly and out deeply relaxes me further but only for a second when a car pulls up onto next doors driveway causing Poppy to bark loudly in attempt to warn possible intruders off. She fails to realise that they live there and it is perfectly within their rights to park up.

I tune back into the radio that has been playing throughout my morning and chuckle slightly at the comedians. Even though I don’t find them very funny at all, I feel I should at least try to laugh on occasion today.

The day suddenly feels huge with an expanse of time to fill in which I have no plans and nobody to plan with. I pick up the paper and attempt the crossword to add productivity to my day. At least I will have achieved something that way.

The first clue. Seven down. I can’t do it.

The door rings. Jenna.

“Oh hey darling, I was just checking in. See if you’re alright. Martin has gone out with the kids. I wanted some time to myself.”

Imagine that, I think, wanting some time to yourself.

“Lovely to see you.” I say, genuinely so grateful for her presence.

“Here, look. I brought a bottle. It’s up to you but I really fancy one.”

“It is the weekend after all,” I agree, pretending I’ve got it all together with my normal, upbeat response.

I take the perfectly chilled bottle from her, my thumb prints marking the icy casing and put it on the kitchen side while retrieving two glasses from the cupboard.

“I’d usually not consider drinking before 1pm,” I say with a smirk.

“This isn’t a usual day,” replies Jenna, reassuringly but making me question her mental state as well.

I pour equally generous measures into the glasses and smile at the sound. I smile at the sudden buzzing feeling inside me. A feeling I’d forgotten about.

“Cheers to friends,” we both say simultaneously.

The first sip and I am reminded how lucky I am.

Categories
Non-fiction Writing

20 writing goals for 2020

  1. Enter 10 writing competitions
  2. Finish book 2
  3. Publish my debut novel
  4. Work hard
  5. Encourage others
  6. Finish my Writers Bureau Writing Course
  7. Attempt writing for radio
  8. Write more in different settings
  9. Write some happier fiction
  10. Keep it up with my blog (at least 2 posts a week)
  11. Earn some money from my writing(!)
  12. Attend literary events
  13. Embrace conversations when people are upbeat about my writing
  14. Read more brilliant work of others
  15. Read more around topics like social media, blogging and self-promo
  16. Take myself off to places to gain inspo and ideas
  17. Start another novel???????????????
  18. Read my writing magazine WHEN it shows up
  19. Stay positive and enthusiastic
  20. Keep going
Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Flight (part 3)

One more visit to the hospice before my flight and I know this will be the hardest visit yet. I am borrowing our neighbour’s car because mine is back in England and we sold Mammy’s once she got too poorly to drive. It was an impulse decision which we clearly hadn’t thought about properly because it would have been very useful to have over the past month, a lot more useful than the two thousand euros that we got for it.

I load my gigantic backpack into the boot ready for Mary to take me to the airport after my visit and mentally prepare myself for one of the hardest goodbyes to date. Not one bit of me is feeling excited in this current moment. In fact, every bit of me is questioning whether this is the correct thing to be doing at such a helpless time. Then I hear Mammy in my ear telling me to go, spread my wings, find whatever it is I need in life and come back with lots of stories. I stop everything and smile for a minute.

I have done the journey to the hospice so many times that I don’t have to concentrate on the directions because I know the route off by heart. In fact, it scares me once I arrive in the car park and turn off the engine that I can’t remember half the journey as I was totally spaced out and unaware of my surroundings – my mind was elsewhere.

I carefully place my chip in my pocket and choke at the two-euro charge to park in a place where everybody is visiting somebody who is dying. It’s a lot better than the extortionate rates that they charge on the hospital side. I suppose you’re unaware in that case how long your relative will live so they may as well rinse you for as much as they possible can. It makes sense.

Mammy’s room is on the ground floor with a beautiful view of the bright yellow Wicklow gorse all in bloom outside in the courtyard. When she has fallen asleep during visits I have taking every pleasure in watching people walking around this space, savouring the last precious moments with one another. Be it husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, they all look content in a beautiful final scene.

I walk down the long corridor to room seven where Mammy is. A nurse squeezes out of the door quickly before I can get in. She must be new because otherwise she would have greeted me. We all know each other now because I have spent so many hours in here lately.

I look over to Mammy’s bed and see a sight I have been imagining but hoping would never actually happen. The whole room stops for a moment and all goes quiet inside my head. Perhaps Mammy has been moved to a different room.

I gasp in shock though it is the inevitable. It is real. A nurse runs to me in attempt to comfort me with a hug, but I want to go over to her. To touch her. To give her one last kiss and say my final goodbyes. Real goodbyes not temporary.

The staff respect my privacy and leave the room telling me to take my time and call them if there is anything that I need. I sit on the bed next to Mammy in a space that is as if she had planned my visit and left for me. I lean over to kiss her cheek and see Jenna’s body out cold on the floor, a needle in her wrist and marks on her neck – dead.  

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Flight (part 2)

That was the great thing about this happening to a person like my Mam. She is such a strong lady that she made her cancer some sort of joke. A joke for her anyway. She’d constantly go on about how much we’d all miss her because she is possibly the greatest person to walk this earth.

Of course, she was exaggerating, she didn’t love herself like most politicians out there or celebrities who have been born into fame and constantly told by people around them how perfect they are. The hilarious thing about these situations was how everyone around her would be hysterically crying, genuinely sad tears and she would just laugh it off and tell everyone to man up. That was easy for her to say. She was the one that was going to die.

My mother’s dealing with her stage four diagnosis was what made the horrific scenes at the hospital easier. The tubes going in and out of each and every vein. The photos Daddy sent me after her first few rounds of chemo and the news that it wasn’t working. The more upbeat photos of her sat with a large gin and tonic in the hospice more recently. It was all of this that encouraged me to book my flight to Paris on September 4th. Today.

However, today is different. I’m not feeling as cocky in my ability to handle the loss of my mother which will inevitably happen. Initially I thought that exploring Europe would set me free from the pain that is about to come but then I feel the pain will creep up on me sooner and I’m not ready to handle it alone.

I have had such an intensely beautiful month spent in Dublin with my family, visiting Mammy every day and making memories that I am going to hold on so tightly. The same way a toddler would squeeze onto their Mum out of jealousy while she was breastfeeding their new born brother. So many memories yet not enough. I am not ready to go.

As I sit and pack the last of my survival kit into a bag that already looks too big to lug around station after station and up numerous sets of hostel steps, I stare at the photo of Mammy and I from graduation. The proudest moment of my life so far and one of hers. I look to the right of me at Jenna and consider where it all went wrong. I wonder what she is doing right this minute and a part of me wants to speak to her. Though it was her decision to leave, to allow her life to go off track, she still may silently need her older sister.

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Flight (part 1)

It is the big day I have been looking forward to for so many years. For so long have I wanted to spread my horizons further than London’s south bank and the memories that I have of Dublin as a child. A place that I recently felt urged to return to yet I didn’t really know why so I booked a cheap Ryan Air flight number FR115 a month ago and headed home for the first time in thirty years.

It wasn’t only to visit Mam in the hospice because that didn’t need to be done for a month continuously. I have been preparing for the outcome since her diagnosis and realistically could get there when needed to say my final farewells. There was something pulling me to my home town, like a gust of gravity that whooshed like a tornado over London grabbing only me and taking me over the Irish Sea to my place of birth.

I am off to Paris tomorrow on an adventure around Europe. I booked my interrail pass the day after I found out about Mam’s cancer as if to stick my two fingers up to the world for cutting another life short to that awful disease. Though travelling had always been at the back of my mind, at the bottom of my to-do list, I had always been waiting and making excuses about why not to go. Not having anybody to go with was usually the main one but for some reason also the world seemed a bit scary, scarier still each time I started browsing flights and hostels.

Receiving the painful news about Mammy removed this fear because nothing is worse to fear than death, the fear she had been instantly faced with, which could crop up at any time. On that day I headed straight to the nearest travel agents and paid one hundred and eighty pounds for my ten stop Euro rail pass inside three months.

‘Don’t you think you should wait until…’ Uncle Jimmy had remarked on the phone once Mam had told him my exciting news.

‘Wait for what?’ I replied. ‘My mother to die?’

I felt harsh saying this and even more so when Jimmy began to sob on the other end of the line, but I knew that Mammy wouldn’t have wanted me to wait. She’d have wanted me to go out and explore knowing that I could return at any time when things got really bad. She never wanted me to put my life on hold for anybody not even her and she was even more persistent about this after her diagnosis.

‘You’re twenty-two.’ She’d say. ‘Don’t hold out for me to die. It won’t be easy and no time waiting in expectation is going to make it easier.’

Categories
Adulthood Non-fiction Writing

Pause For Thought

While doing the dishes, a pause for thought,
Waiting for the kettle to boil, pause for thought.

While walking your four legged friends, a pause for thought,
Waiting for a train, pause for thought.

While brushing your teeth, a pause for thought,
When you’re in the shower, pause for thought.

While sat in a waiting room, a pause for thought,
When you’re eating your lunch, pause for thought.

During the adverts on TV, a pause for thought,
Waking up five minutes before the alarm, pause for thought.

While travelling or stuck in traffic, a pause for thought,
The moment before you fall asleep at night, pause for thought.

In this busy little life we lead we have to find perks indeed,
Noticing areas on the daily can help keep our sanity.

Whether it’s at home or work and even if only short,
There are always moments in this busy little life when we can pause,
Pause For Thought.

Categories
fiction Writing

Missing (Part 3)

I walk around the side through the conifer trees so that I can hide behind a trunk if anybody should step outside. This route also gives me the option to peer in through the bifold doors to see where they all are in the house. A thought passes through me as to why I am being so secretive when I have done nothing wrong but then if Mum knew of my intentions, she would never let it happen. Knowing whole heartedly that it is a bad decision to drive in the current mental state that I am in, I turn on the ignition, exit the driveway and bolt down the A64 heading towards home.

I have always loved this road and enjoyed many drives on it, the sun gleaming onto the windscreen, windows open, our hair sweeping in front of our faces. Sarah’s beaming grin lighting up the rainier days and her beauty outside and within brushing off onto my miserable frame. The laughter filling the car so that no trouble in the world could get in between us. Each moment with her is total bliss.

The road reminds me of holidays and how life with Sarah has changed my entire view on them. I used to live for getting away. For weeks where all my cares and worries vanished along with the mundaneness of and everyday working existence. Nowadays, my happiness comes when driving in the opposite direction down the road heading home. There is no happier place for me, and I no longer continuously wish to be away from it. Home is a good place and my life is a constant vacation whenever I am around Sarah.

My mind slips back into reality when I glance to the passenger seat to see yesterdays newspaper with our story on the front page. I look up, slam my foot on the breaks causing the car to screech to a halt upon seeing police cars by the edge of the road, signalling traffic to go around them in an orderly and safe fashion. My vision blurs as I look at other drivers throwing their bodies around in anger and frustration. Others merely pause to stare before zooming off into the distance. More than one emergency vehicle usually attracts viewers from the prying public, but four flashing police cars makes even the most uninterested passer by glare over their shoulder.

I slowly approach the scene and begin to veer round following the cones, but I swiftly ignore the police signals after seeing what it is that they have found.

Categories
fiction Writing

Missing (Part 1)

My face is numb, but I can still feel it. It is a weird sensation as if my cheekbones have turned to jelly and the feeling is slowly evaporating never to return, but in the present moment the physical awareness remains. The expression that I have been holding for the past fortnight won’t leave and it is paining me knowing this but there is nothing I can do about it. The exhaustion throughout my body remains too and no matter how much I try to relax, my mind doesn’t allow for any form of recuperation.

‘Why don’t you get some rest,’ Mum says affectionately while she tries to remain normal and feed the children their favourite – spaghetti hoops on toast.

Though I know she means well, it is the last thing I wish to hear because I cannot rest until we find her.

‘I just can’t.’ I snap at her not meaning to and leave, heading into the unknown.

I walk out of Mum’s patio doors which lead into her huge garden. Her garden has been an ongoing project for as much of my life as I can remember. It has been so carefully designed at an extortionate price by a professional to look as wild and uncared for as it does, and my feet speed up into an almost run as I traipse through. Her garden backs on to an expanse of fields. Wide open space with nothing else around until the forest, but that is over a mile in the distance so I don’t know whether I will get that far.

Running through this landscape gives me a total sense of freedom and new energy that I haven’t experienced for almost a month and it is something that cannot be explained in words. I feel as if I can fly and the sweet smell of Mum’s garden resonates in my nostrils as I proceed to make the distance to the forest. This is also a new thing that I am noticing because smells are certainly something that have vanished during this dark time. Noticing the scent of the Hydroniums and Honeysuckle lingering in my memory bank pleases me but doesn’t remove my hurt.

On reaching the forest a wave of panic that I am so familiar with now comes over me again. It swarms my body as if a snake wrapping itself tightly around my frame with intention to kill. All the new energy that I had whilst I was pacing through the fields has instantly disappeared. My sense of freedom too has washed away into the air and I am left feeling that all too intimate sensation of horror that has been a permanent fixture inside me lately.

I begin searching frantically in the bushes, even looking high up into the trees.

‘Sarah!’ I scream in pure desperation hoping, naively, that she will pop out from behind a large tree trunk and shout ‘Hello!’ as if all of this has been some sort of sick joke.

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Descriptive fiction

Thankfully the sun was shining, already brightening my mood for the day and I had just started a new book on recommendation by Eileen who I can always rely on when it comes to good reads. It was one that she had found in a charity shop which is where she finds a lot of her suggestions if they don’t come from the book club that she irregularly attends and it was by an author that she loves which is usually how she picks out the good ones. She is a very loyal reader and once she finds an author that she likes she reads every book written by them until the list has been completely exhausted.

This one was complex from the start and had me gripped instantly. I love books that have that effect and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to put it down until my eyes began to droop with tiredness later that evening. The protagonist had experienced a death of someone close to her, a relative I felt, though it wasn’t clear who had died. She was sorting through the will while trying to sort out the house with a useless brother and intrusive friends to make matters worse. Three chapters in, she had discovered so much about her life that she never knew, and each chapter ended on a cliff-hanger forcing my addiction to the story line to continue.

I was so engrossed in the novel that I hadn’t noticed Jack set up his chair beside me with his iPad and headphones in. He must be playing a game, I thought to myself, but didn’t start to ask him because we were both content in our own worlds but sharing a happy space in our garden, together.

The sky looked like one in a perfect world, clear blue with just a few fluffy white clouds dotted about, perfectly shaped. The breeze came at intervals that provided just enough cool air but never too much that we had to get jackets on, and the warmth continued to make our skin smile. The birds seemed to be enjoying themselves with subtle sounds coming from the trees but apart from that everything was still.

The first smells of freshly mowed lawn came over the fence as our neighbours started to perform their initial garden tidy up of the year and the sounds of the lawnmower and laughter from their children hinted strongly that summer was well on its way. As I started to think that the length of the last warm period on my skin was considerably longer than the last, I looked up to see that most of the clouds had vanished and the sun shone down on its own.

‘Here, you two. Put some cream on,’ Eileen shouted from the kitchen, a tea towel in her hand and clearly emptying the dishwasher while listening to Randy Travis on the stereo.

I had attempted to introduce her into the world of Spotify, claiming that it would save her a lot of money, time and space on her shelves, but she disregarded my efforts and instead wanted to keep her old habits alive.

I lay in silence beside my brother reading my book and my attention only became slightly interrupted when passers by walking their dogs and their children were in loud conversation that interested my brain. The topics were never that interesting at all and they were talking about people I didn’t know but I felt it was natural for a girls brain to focus on any form of gossip, whether it involved me or not.

Categories
Non-fiction Writing

I write because…

I write because it’s therapy

I write because I’m lucky

I write because I have the opportunity

I write because it’s fun

I write because it makes me happy

I write because it is my sanity

I write because sometimes I’m sad

I write because sometimes I’m happy

I write because it teaches me

I write because I need to

I write because I escape

I write because it tests me

I write because it helps others

I write because it helps me

I write to express myself

I write because I love it

I write because I want to