I used to think soulmates were something people said when they wanted ordinary love to sound magical. I believed in kindness, timing, hard work, and the price of a decent pint in Dublin, but not in one person being made for another. Then I met Niamh outside Whelan’s on a wet Thursday night, both of us pretending we were fine with the rain while hiding under the same useless awning.
She was waiting for her sister. I was waiting for a taxi that kept cancelling. She noticed I had a paper bag from Hodges Figgis and asked what I was reading. I told her it was a history of Dublin, which sounded more impressive than admitting I had only bought it because the cover was nice. She laughed in a way that made me feel caught, but not embarrassed. By the time her sister arrived, we had missed two taxis, shared chips from Camden Street, and argued about whether the best walk in the city was along the canal or out to Poolbeg. She said, “You’re wrong, but you seem harmless.” That was our beginning.
For the first year, I kept waiting for the strangeness to wear off. I had been in love before, but this was different in small, annoying ways. Niamh remembered everything. She remembered how I took tea, which songs made me quiet, and that I hated being asked if I was okay when I obviously wasn’t. She never tried to fix my bad moods. She just put on her coat and made me walk with her, sometimes through St Stephen’s Green, sometimes down by the Liffey, sometimes all the way to Sandymount Strand where the city looked softer and less sure of itself.
She was a primary school teacher in Drumcondra, and she had that rare gift of making every child feel like the most important person in the room. Adults, too. My father had never warmed easily to anyone, but she had him telling stories about his first job in Ringsend within ten minutes of meeting him. My mother used to say, “That girl has light coming out of her,” and I would roll my eyes, because Irish families can make praise sound like a diagnosis. But she was right.
We got engaged in Phoenix Park, not in a dramatic way. I had planned to do it near the Wellington Monument with a speech, but a dog stole one of our sandwiches, Niamh chased it for half a minute, and I started laughing so hard that the ring box fell out of my pocket. She saw it before I said anything. “Is that for me or the dog?” she asked. I asked her properly with mud on my jeans and tears already in my eyes. She said yes, then told me I was lucky she liked chaotic men.
We had ten months of planning a wedding we both pretended not to care about. We argued over bands, table plans, and whether my cousin Declan could be trusted near an open bar. Then, one Tuesday in February, Niamh fainted in her classroom. At first, everyone said it was exhaustion. Teachers are always exhausted. But the scans found something in her brain that had no business being there.
I remember the consultant’s room in Beaumont Hospital more clearly than I remember my own kitchen. The grey chair. The box of tissues placed too neatly. Niamh’s hand in mine, warm and steady, while mine went cold. She asked questions I couldn’t have formed. Treatment, time, options. I stared at her profile and thought, stupidly, that this could not be happening because we had already ordered invitations.
For seven months, our world became appointments, tablets, lifts from family, and quiet bargains made in the dark. She lost her hair and made better jokes than anyone else about it. She kept teaching when she could, sending little voice notes to her class when she couldn’t. I became a man who knew hospital parking rules, medication schedules, and the exact kind of soup she could manage on bad days. People called me strong. I wasn’t. I was terrified all the time. Niamh was the strong one, not because she wasn’t afraid, but because she kept loving people while she was.
Near the end
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