‘I’m nervous,’ I confess. ‘Are you?’
‘Totally,’ he says. ‘I’m looking forward to this, but dreading it too. OK, let’s get it started.’
And so just like before, I grab Mabel’s cushion for some moral support, focus on my breathing, and decide to put my absolute faith that Mabel and only Mabel can guide me on my way from here on in.
33.
‘Welcome to my birthday season and to the beautiful fall!’ is her opening line and I can’t help but gasp when I see how frail and old she looks in comparison to her previous bright and breezy video messages, which must have been made much earlier in the year before her passing.
She is wearing the purple sweatshirt I bought her for her birthday in late October last year, which bulks her up and disguises just how tiny she had become beneath her clothes as her illness rapidly took its course.
She takes her time, she licks her lips, and she chooses her words so carefully. She is tired and frail and I’m guessing this was recorded on or around her birthday, as she left us just a few weeks later. I’d gone shopping for groceries one day and had returned to find her wearing it, but she was so cagey as to what she had been up to while I was gone, with her make-up on and her bright sparkly new sweatshirt …
‘I’ve always loved the fall or as you know it here, autumn,’ she continues slowly and I listen with intent, ‘not justbecause it means I get birthday presents, although that does make it very special, but I also love the visual change of season from green to golden colours, the orange, misty hue in the air, and the smell of chimney-pot smoke when out for a crunchy walk in the forest.’
She speaks so much more hastily and I’d forgotten just how transparent her skin had become in her last few weeks, how sunken her cheeks became as they sat beneath her razor-sharp cheekbones, and how dark her eyes were, even though she always topped up her look with make-up to try to disguise how sick she really was.
‘I hope you enjoyed New York, my dear Roisin, and I hope you enjoyed having company out there, darling Aidan,’ she says, her voice so much weaker and quieter now. ‘It’s a strange one when you realize you’ve no more birthdays left and that you’ve just blown out the last candles on your cake. My time here with you is almost up.’
She pauses to catch her breath.
‘I hope you mark what would have been my eightieth birthday in style when it comes around,’ she says, trying her best to lilt up her tone of voice. ‘Please do something nice for me, won’t you both? You know I always loved a fuss and a celebration, so please do make a fuss.’
A tsunami of tears threatens to wash over me as I listen to her, hanging on to her every breath and to her every word. I think ahead to Aidan’s awards ceremony and how proud she will be of him next week when he celebrates hisevening on her birthday, but what will I do here in Ballybray to mark it?
I’ll get a cake, I decide. I’ll go to her grave with some flowers, and then I’ll blow out her candles when I come back; eighty candles – no more and no less. Eighty candles for her seventy-nine laps here in this world and the extra one she travelled with us this year through her messages.
‘I’ve thought long and hard of how I’m going to say goodbye to you both, my darlings, now that your first trip around the sun without me is coming to an end,’ she says, dabbing her eyes every now and then and touching her heavily powdered nose. ‘I hope you have developed a friendship, quite literally, made in heaven.’
She laughs at her own words, but I shift uncomfortably in my seat and when I look across at Aidan he is staring at the floor, leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him as if it’s too painful to watch her or hear her voice for this very last time.
‘Aidan, I totally understand why you wanted to keep the truth from me about your marriage, but darling, I was always your biggest fan and I’d have supported you through thick and thin,’ she exclaims, shaking her weary head from side to side. ‘Fear is never bigger or more powerful than love, please remember that. I just want you to be happy.’
She pauses. I can barely breathe.
‘And Roisin,’ she continues. ‘Yes, you’re an independent little warrior who can stand on your own two feet and Ijust know you’re learning to do that again, but don’t let your stubborn streak rule your head or more importantly your heart, do you hear me? When your heart screams, you have no choice but to listen. No matter how much you try and drown it out, your heart will always speak the loudest. Follow it. Always follow your heart, every single day.’
I bite my lip and look at the floor now too, then back at the screen, feeling as though I’m being told off by the person who knew me better than I even know myself sometimes. It’s as if Mabel had predicted exactly what my reaction would be to Aidan’s attention and kindness. She knew I’d be stubborn and afraid. She knew I’d push it away.
‘Let me leave you with this, my darlings,’ she tells us, clasping her tiny hands together. ‘You can buy and sell houses, you can buy and sell cars, you can spend holidays in the sun as much as you like to. You can buy fancy clothes, you can buy the best jewellery, you can eat the finest foods and you can drink the best of the good wine. You can strive to get to the top of everything you do, but what if you do all that only to find that when you get to the top, there’s nothing there? What if you realize it all meant nothing?’
She pauses and wets her thin lips.
‘Ambition and success are marvellous traits, and we should always aim to do our very best in life, no matter if it’s tackling a blocked sink or cutting a multi-million dollar deal,’ she tells us, ‘but when you come to the very end of your time on earth like I am now, all those material thingsyou busted your ass working for are not what’s on your mind. They make nice memories, yes, and they make life easier at times, yes, but only if they’re combined with the one, most beautiful thing of all – love.
‘As I sit here clinging on to every last second of life that I have left, the fear and panic I have of saying goodbye to the people I love is often the only thing on my mind,’ she explains. ‘But – the fear of saying goodbye will never beat the joy of love I feel for you. Never. If the love is there, the fear of saying goodbye will soon fade into the darkness, and love will save the day.’
She speaks every word like she means it, leaving no room for misinterpretation.
‘Thisis life. Right now, today, where you are sitting is your life. Don’t wait for tomorrow, or next week, or next month to live how you want to live, because living is now,’ she says. ‘And one day, on a time and date that you will never know, you will face the end of your life like me, and you won’t have a choice any more. Goodbye will no longer be a choice, but right now, you do have that choice. Do you choose love, or do you choose goodbye?’
Her voice is brittle and weak now, and she sits still with her eyes closed, then she opens them again and smiles, looking directly at us both.
‘Goodbye, my darlings,’ she says as her face folds into tears. She lifts her little hand and blows us a kiss, her hand shaking and her breath low and shallow. ‘Remember thatbefore every new beginning, there must be an ending. This may be the end of my time with you, but it’s the start of a whole new chapter for you. Take care of each other for always. I love you, my little family. Goodbye.’
She waits again and we wait too for the recording to stop, but then she looks to the side of the camera as if she is talking to someone else in the room and I strain my neck as if I’m doing the same.
‘I’m finished,’ she whispers, wiping her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
