By the time you’re reading this, I’ll more than likely be gone. Buried, cremated, scattered somewhere miserable and windy — whichever option they settled on in the end. Funny enough, that part doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. What’s strange is writing to people from the other side of it. Sitting here knowing there’s a version of you reading these words while I’m no longer anywhere at all. That takes a bit of getting used to.

The doctors never come out with it straight away. Not in Ireland anyway. Step inside

I don’t know how to begin this without sounding like the same disappointing old drunk I have been for most of my life. Maybe that is the truth of me in the end. A man who always found a way to leave things too late. Too late to stop drinking. Too late to fix his marriage. Too late to be the father his daughter needed. Too late to say the words sitting in his chest year after year until they became something like wounds. Step inside

Well, if you’re hearing this, then I’ve finally gone and saved you all the trouble of worrying about me.

Truthfully, I never imagined I’d make it to ninety-seven. Most of the people I loved left long before I did, and after a while you begin to feel a bit like the last person standing after the music stops. Still here mostly out of stubbornness.

I know funerals are supposed to make saints out of people, but let’s not do that today. Step inside

They took my baby on a Tuesday morning and by that same Tuesday afternoon, the nuns expected me back working in the laundry as though nothing had happened. That is the part people struggle to understand, now when they look back on places like that. They imagine screaming girls and dramatic scenes from films. But mostly it was silence. Exhaustion. Women moving through grief with cracked hands, sagging empty bellies and lowered heads because there was simply no other choice. Nowhere else left to go Step inside