Every Tuesday morning, I used to get off the DART at Tara Street and walk the same damp stretch toward Pearse Street, pretending I was the kind of person who had a routine because she was organised, not because she was lonely. It was the winter after my father died, and Dublin seemed to have turned down its colours for me. The Liffey was always the same shade of pewter. People hurried past with collars up, headphones in, and I liked that nobody asked me how I was.
There was a small café on the corner I won’t name, because I still go there sometimes and I don’t want it to become anything other than ordinary. I ordered the same thing every Tuesday before my counselling appointment near Grand Canal Dock: a flat white, extra hot, and a toasted brown bread with butter and raspberry jam. I only went on Tuesdays. Never Monday, never Friday. Tuesday was the day I allowed myself to fall apart, and the coffee was the small ceremony before it.
The first time he remembered, I thought nothing of it. He was ahead of me in the queue, tall, maybe late thirties, with a navy raincoat and a canvas bag from Dublin library services. He turned slightly, glanced back, and said to the barista, “And she’ll have the flat white extra hot, if she’s still keeping to tradition.”
I froze. The barista laughed as if this was normal. “You’ve a reputation now,” she said to me.
I must have looked frightened, because he immediately stepped back and lifted both hands. “Sorry. That sounded strange. I’m here every Tuesday too. You always look half asleep and very determined.”
I laughed because it was accurate, and because I had forgotten what it felt like to laugh before noon. He paid for his own coffee and left before mine was ready. On the counter, beside my cup, the barista had placed a folded napkin. Written on it in blue pen were the words: Tuesday is a brave day.
I carried that napkin in my coat pocket for weeks.
His name was Ciarán. I learned this gradually, in the way Dublin lets you know a person without ever formally introducing them. First his coffee order, then his bus route, then that he worked with archives, then that he had a habit of buying books he already owned because he liked different covers. We never sat together at first. We only spoke in the queue, two or three minutes at a time, while the rain tapped the window and commuters shook umbrellas like wet birds.
He never asked what I did after coffee. I think that was why I began to trust him. Grief makes you allergic to curiosity. Everyone wants the story, the details, the correct amount of sadness. Ciarán only asked small things. Had I seen the heron by the canal? Did I think the Christmas lights on Grafton Street went up too early? Did I know there was a bench in St Stephen’s Green where the sun landed even in February?
One Tuesday in March, I didn’t go. It was my father’s birthday, and I woke with that old heavy feeling sitting on my chest. I turned off my alarm, pulled the duvet over my head, and let the appointment pass. Around half eleven, my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.
“This is Ciarán from the Tuesday queue. The café woman gave me your number only after I swore I wasn’t a lunatic and showed her the napkin you dropped last week. No pressure to reply. Just wanted to say your coffee missed you.”
I should have been annoyed. Instead, I cried so hard I frightened myself. Then I replied, “Tell my coffee I’m sorry.”
He wrote back, “It forgives you. It’s very mature.”
That was the beginning of us becoming something more than strangers. Not quickly. Nothing in my life was quick then. He met me the following Tuesday and asked if I wanted to walk after my appointment. We went along the canal, past office workers eating sandwiches on benches, past cyclists ringing bells at nobody in particular. I told him my father had died in November. I told him I had been angry at the whole city for continuing to function. He listened without trying to polish it into hope.
In return, he told me about his mother, who had dementia and lived in a care home near Blackrock. “She remembers songs,” he said, “but not my name. So I sing badly and she smiles politely
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
