Home and Garden

Home and Garden



Michael turned awkwardly to face his wife. The pity in her eyes frightened him. Never in thirty-six years together had she looked at him like that. Never in those thirty-six years had he ever felt like crying, but now he did. A car passed along the road. The driver looked in his direction and his stare lingered. For a moment, Michael could see what the young man in the car could see – an old man drenched in fear – and he felt ashamed. A lifetime’s presence and strength had fallen away from him, and what was left? A cowering schoolboy, terrified of what lay ahead, being choked by his own inadequacies. Deep from within himself, he fished out what remained of his dignity and looked Tess in the eyes. This was a situation that was not uncommon. He had seen many others face a similar fate. Communicating the terror that raged through him to her would achieve nothing beyond a shared anguish.

‘It’ll be along shortly I’d say,’ was the best he could manage.

‘What?’

‘The bus, it’s usually fairly on time. I’ve often seen it passing when I’m walking Dusty.’

‘Oh I know…always back fairly on time as well in fairness.’

‘I wonder will I have to wait long. Somebody told me that everybody gets the same appointment…….. I hope not, I was never a great one for waiting around’

‘It’ll probably be grand,’ she coaxed, sensing again his bubbling unease. ‘Anyway, Lord knows with the paper in your hand, you were never too bothered about waiting.’

Michael nodded and smiled faintly, marvelling now at the spell of absorption that the daily paper had cast on him over the years. The idea of the sort of passionate contemplation that the reports of the comings and goings across the globe had once inspired in him, now seemed vaguely ridiculous. He was reduced to living in a universe inhabited by him alone. It was this fact that scared him the most. Even now as Tess’s loving gaze shadowed him, for the first time in his life he felt utterly and terrifyingly alone.

  The medical bus ambled to a stop beside them. With their heads held up by awkward smiles, they greeted the driver and took their seats, trying not to make eye contact with their fellow passengers. Michael recognised the driver. He was a Murtagh from New Park. Michael had known his father at some juncture or other, way back when as they say. He was taken aback by the wave of bitterness that swept across him, aimed squarely at the man. He recognised it immediately for what it was – a churlish and petty jealousy towards the driver’s obvious health. Young and strong, he was not cursed with disease like Michael and the others. The bitter and irrational alter-ego in him interpreted the man’s cheery demeanour as mocking – waving his vitality like a flag. Rationalising the irrational helped the bitterness subside, leaving Michael only with a sense of shame, coupled with a renewed fear stemming from the recognition that it was not only his body under attack, but his mind also. 

  They passed the journey slipping between strained and uncomfortable discourse, and quiet contemplation. Michael, bizarrely, found himself resurrecting a habit from his younger years in order to keep his mind on an even keel, and away from the nagging thoughts of his own mortality. Always a bad sleeper and distracted by the clamorous thoughts of the day, he would recount various hurling and soccer teams through history, player by player, position by position. He had found it a useful way of keeping his mind focused on the superficial and away from potential insomnia. Now, some thirty odd years since he’d last resorted to such a course, he found himself desperately trying to recall the Cork team that had won the All-Ireland in 1970. He could only recount seven players but the task served its purpose none the less.

The bus pulled in near the entrance and as Tess and he descended, again he was filled with an unexpected anger. The spring of the soft mossy grass beneath his feet, abetted by the sense of the warm summer sun on his face, instigated it. These things, these wonderful things – to him the very essence of life, of God, of everything worthwhile – seemed to taunt him. They were for the living, not for the condemned. He remembered now the days spent in happy contemplation in the garden, accompanied by his books and the love of his wife. The sun peering out from behind the cloud had always been the final piece in the jigsaw, the piece that gave everything else context, the source of all life. He wanted to get away from it now; its mocking glow sickened him. He shuffled quickly toward the hospital door, joining the two-way trickle of people moving in and out.

  The receptionist took his name and pointed blankly toward a waiting area where many more lolled listlessly, a disturbing mixture of mild boredom and crippling anxiety. Sitting there and looking at the scores of frightened faces, his mind returned to the carefree image of himself in his garden. While he had been sitting there, this room had been full of people just like these, just like him, people looking death in the eye and then looking away, petrified. He hadn’t spared a thought for them, for himself, for what it really meant to be alive. Of course he understood the irony, that it is only in the shadow of death that we can truly understand what it means to be alive. Youth is wasted on the young, his mother used to say. Life is wasted on the living, he felt, was closer to the truth.

  His terrible biting fear passed down through him like electrical waves, crashing into the pit of his stomach, where a revolving mass of anxiety and nausea curdled incessantly. When his name was called, he looked toward Tess, unsure if his ears too were deceiving him. No, the squeeze of the hand told him the time had arrived. How long had he been sitting there? Hours? Minutes? It was difficult to say. He rose ghost-like from the chair and made his way slowly to the oncologist’s office, trying not to see the drying tears of the young woman leaving as she clung desperately to a stoic partner.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Kelleher, sit down please’ said the doctor. ‘The professor’, the nurses called him with obvious reverence. The tone was compassionate, yet brisk, borne and honed by countless conversations of this very nature. He had a file in his hand, stared closely at it, then looked at Michael, before returning to the file.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked, in that same practiced tone.

‘..I’m... okay’ he answered uncertainly, frightened for a second that he might somehow seal his own fate.

‘Mr Kelleher, you understand that at your initial appointment, when we last spoke, I outlined the potential scenario for you, based on the initial tests. I know that the shock of the news that you were burdened with a serious cancer in your bowels was difficult for you, particularly given that you were completely unaware of the presence of the tumour. My frankness was hard for you, but you understand, as your physician, I am ethically obliged to prepare you for every eventuality.’ 

What the doctor said came at him as if through a fog. He could hear what was being said, but it was a fragmented mess, his brain unable to translate the words into tangible meanings.

‘Mr Kelleher, I told you that this cancer may exist in something of an oncological blind spot, a place where neither our treatments, nor the very best of our expertise, can pierce. I told you that if my suspicions were confirmed, then there was little that could be done for you.’

  Strangely his eye was drawn to a copy of 'The Daily Star' laid out behind the doctor on his desk, opened on the soccer results. He thought of him sitting here when Michael and his sickly comrades had gone, lazily browsing the match reports, his mind a million miles from the life or death decisions that he dispensed so calmly for a living.

  ‘I am looking at your scan results now Mr. Kelleher and I can tell you that the position of your tumour is not where I expected from your initial tests. In fact a stint on the operating table will remove most, if not all of it. The Chemo has the potential to do the rest. There are no guarantees in life Mr. Kelleher. The unexpected can always happen, as these results have proved to me today. However, it is my medical opinion that the likelihood is that you will recover from your illness and resume your life, much as it was before. You will receive a letter regarding the operation within forty-eight hours. I wish you well’.

With that he turned away and for a second Michael was sure he saw the doctors’ eyes glance toward 'The Star', but he couldn’t be sure.

‘Thank you Professor,’ he managed before rising from the chair. From somewhere he could feel Tess hugging him, shaking with the intensity of all that she felt. The strength that had so recently abandoned him came rushing back now, and holding her into submission, he dried her tears on his coat. Like that, almost carrying her, they left the professor’s office and then the hospital, the sun now kindly welcoming them. They sat there together, the wall that had separated their love now dissipated, waiting for the bus, waiting to get home to their garden.