My Local Park

My mother died in Naas General Hospital on the 5th of March 2009. The weeks prior to her death passed in a haze with hospital visits, family gatherings, meetings with medical staff and awaiting family decisions for her funeral and burial. Afterwards, a unique exhaustion inhabited my being and brought both mind and body to a standstill.

One morning, the March sun cast a beam of light through a tear in my bedroom curtain. It sliced across the end of my bed and lit up a panel in the bedroom door. I woke from a dream where my mother was getting me up for school by pulling back the curtains to let in the light and calling my name softly. Within the hour I had coaxed myself, after warm porridge and coffee, outdoors to my local park. In ten minutes, I had walked to Tymon Park, in Tallaght, Dublin, in search of something to break through the numbness. I needed to breathe away the tart clinical smells lodged in my nostrils and fill my lungs with fresh air to replace the black and white images of dying and death with colour and regrowth.

The day was warmed with sun and sheltered under a crisp blue sky. Neighbours were taking any excuse to be outdoors in early spring, clipping a hedge, pulling weeds, or sitting quietly facing the light. By the time I had reached a side gate into the park from Limekiln Road the warmth made me pull off my winter coat.  I walked slowly forcing myself to look and see, to smell, to breathe in air, to hear, and to notice as much as possible in my surroundings, people, trees, grass, flowers, hedges, ditches, water, clouds, sky and colour.

Passing the first park bench, I noticed a man wearing a bright red jumper who sat looking out over the lakes. Beside his legs were two large shopping bags, one holding his groceries, the other some papers, and a book. He seemed about fifty years of age with a full head of grey hair and a narrow beard along his jawline. An atmosphere of contentment surrounded him, and I imagined he might sit forever.

I was distracted from my observations by a woman calling in a cross-tempered tone, Fiona! Fiona! This woman was leaning into yellow gorse bushes at the edge of a woodland area, shouting “Fiona, come back here!” She was a stout woman, wearing off-white clothing from head to toe. Her garb would have quickly faded into the background at Naas hospital. She wore her long grey hair gathered into a ponytail at the back of her neck. Her commands to Fiona became louder and sterner, causing passers-by to stop and watch. Eventually, Fiona, a large brown Labrador, emerged from behind a shrub. The passers-by continued, as the woman shook a leather strap in Fiona’s face with a warning.

Further, along the lakeside, the lemon-yellow water poppies floated on bright green leaves in contrast with the long, dried, and exhausted stems of last year’s Cattails, now headless and lifeless. I crossed through some rough ground towards the lake, placed my winter coat on the soft grass and sat down. Scanning the lake and its perimeter the life in plant, bird, animal, and insect, seemed effortless. Continuance easy to achieve, one season rolling on into the next, and the next, like an unstoppable chain reaction, their living following a simple prescription written out by nature’s hand.

My thoughts moved between the external vibrant landscape and images of lifelessness. I imagined my mother, now fifteen days dead, changed forever to lifeless flesh, with no more life to live, living to manoeuvre, or hopes to hope. Is she with Dad? I asked. Are they walking together in a parallel world enjoying a different sunshine, picking flowers, noting beauty and free of all concerns? Have they reached stillness? Tears built up behind my eyes for the first time since my mother became ill and flooded down my face. As they fell, I smudged them away with the back of my hands, but they rolled down faster. What was this crying for? For my own abandonment, or for my parents, because their life is gone, ended, and the ‘after’ may only be a fairy tale. More tears soaked my cheeks, and I wiped them away like a snotty-nosed child caught doing something bold and unable to take the blame, or shame or punishment.

The sun was still toasting my arms, but the dampness soaked up through my winter coat, so I gathered my belongings and walked further along the lake’s edge breathing in the fresh scents of water and reeds, and the less pleasant scent of small animals and their scat. I noticed a blue-green Mallard’s egg lying abandoned on the gravel margin. I gathered it gently using both hands and noticed scrape marks on the shell where, most likely, some animal held it in its paws having stolen it from a nearby nest. I recalled my mother’s attempts and joy at setting up a small hatchery at her home in County Wexford, and rearing ducks to sell. Mam tried many moneymaking schemes over her lifetime to supplement the household income or indeed provide the only income during tough times.

I completed my circle of the lake stopping to watch the coots and moorhens with their bright frontal shields of white and red manoeuvring about each other. I carried the abandoned duck egg home from Tymon Park.  In honour of my mother, I placed it in an ornamental eggcup on the kitchen windowsill beside the rose-scented candles I burned daily for her since the start of a terminal brain bleed.

The local park with its lakes, greenery, bird, animal, and human life drew my senses back out into nature and left me with a feeling of deep calm. I uttered a simple prayer ‘I love you, Mam’, and ‘May your soul rest in peace’.