Chapter 4
I used to wonder if other people got the same kinds of feelings as me, but I wasn’t brave enough to ask anyone, not even Ronan.
As well as ‘vivid life moments’ I also got ‘the dark feeling’.
I’d feel it sitting at the bottom of my stomach.
It was impossible to ignore. But if other people did experience the same thing I could understand if they did ignore it because it was scary to acknowledge it was there.
In January, when Granny was in hospital, I visited her a lot with Mum.
The snow was falling heavily one night as we sat by her bedside.
She was drifting in and out of consciousness.
On one of her drift-ins she opened her eyes and tried to reach for the bedside locker.
On top of the locker was a jug of water, a plastic tumbler, a poinsettia plant, a book of crossword puzzles, a copy of January’s Reader’s Digest, her watch which she couldn’t wear anymore because her wrists had swollen up too much, her glasses which the nurses had to take off because the oxygen mask was pressing on them, and her pouch of rosary beads.
It was the beads she seemed to be reaching for.
‘Do you want your beads, Granny?’ I said and she nodded.
They were the ones she always prayed with, they were wooden and painted a rose colour inside a black leather pouch with ‘My Rosary’ printed in cracked gold lettering on it.
When I put the rosary pouch into her hands she pressed it back into mine with a gentle force.
She said something that was muffled inside the oxygen mask but I knew what it was.
‘I love you too, Granny,’ I said back.
She took a few hard breaths behind the mask, storing up enough force to say,
‘I love you all.’
I told her I loved her again; I told her that everyone loved her, would always love her.
Then the dark feeling came.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Granny.’
The feeling lurked as I walked away down the corridor leaving Granny and Mum behind.
It was growing deeper as Dad met me in the reception and we walked out into the snow and got into the car.
We drove in silence but I could hear my last words to Granny over and over in my head.
I said I’d see her tomorrow as if I didn’t know she’d die in the night.
As if the dark feeling wasn’t inside me, telling me to stay, not to walk out into the snowy night and make sleety footprints I could never take back.
But I did.
When the phone rang after 5 a.m. I didn’t need to know what was said on the other end.
I knew Granny had died. And when Mum was crying in the hospital with Granny on the other side of the sheet, and when she asked Dad what took us so long to come back to the hospital and why she had to be there on her own for hours after she’d phoned us, and when Dad looked at me not knowing what to say because he knew it was my fault we were delayed, I swore I’d never ignore the dark feeling ever again.
That September morning, standing at the school gates waiting for Ronan, the dark feeling was beginning to form.