My father was not a sentimental man in public. He was the sort of Dublin man who would call an ambulance “a bit of fuss” and a birthday card “grand altogether” if it had a picture of a dog on it. He fixed shelves for neighbours in Cabra, argued with the radio, and never left the house without checking the immersion twice. But after he died, I found a tin biscuit box under his side of the bed, wrapped in an old Arnotts bag, and inside it was a life I had never been told about.
There were letters tied with blue thread, two black-and-white photographs, and a pressed cinema ticket from 1971. Her name was Maeve. In the photographs she was sitting on the steps near St Stephen’s Green, laughing at whoever was behind the camera. On the back, in my father’s handwriting, he had written, “The day I knew.” I sat on the carpet in my parents’ room with the curtains half closed and felt, for the first time since the funeral, that grief could still surprise you.
My mother had passed five years earlier, and theirs had been a good marriage, steady and kind. They danced in the kitchen on New Year’s Eve. He brought her tea every morning. So at first I felt angry, as if the letters were an insult to her. Then I read one. Then another. They were not dramatic. Mostly they were about buses missed, rain in Dublin, her job in a chemist, his apprenticeship, and the price of a pint near Camden Street. But every letter carried the same ache. They had been young, poor, and frightened of disappointing their families. Maeve’s people moved to Galway. My father stayed. Their last letter ended with her saying, “If we meet again, don’t look away.”
At the bottom of the box there was an envelope addressed to me. My name was written slowly, shakily, the way his handwriting became after the stroke. Inside was a short note. “Aoife, if you find this, don’t think less of me. I loved your mother. I built my life with her and I was grateful every day. But before that, I loved Maeve, and some loves don’t leave. If she is still alive, tell her I kept my promise. I never looked away.”
I did not sleep that night. The next morning, I rang an old number written on the back of one of the letters. It was disconnected. I tried online searches, parish notices, electoral records, anything I could think of. Eventually, through a retirement group in Rathmines, I found a woman who knew a Maeve with the same surname. She was living in a small flat near Portobello, widowed, no children. I rehearsed the phone call for an hour before making it.
When Maeve answered, her voice was soft but sharp enough to cut through all my careful words. I told her who I was. There was silence. Then she said my father’s name once, like she was opening a door that had been locked for fifty years. We agreed to meet at a café near the Grand Canal. I brought the biscuit tin in a tote bag, terrified I was doing something disloyal, terrified I was doing something too late.
She was smaller than I expected, with silver hair pinned neatly and a red scarf tucked into her coat. When I showed her the photograph, she put her hand over her mouth and laughed before she cried. “He always caught me mid-laugh,” she said. “I hated that.” We sat there for nearly two hours. She told me he had once walked from Cabra to Rathmines in the rain because he had spent his bus fare on flowers. She told me they planned to rent a room somewhere near Dún Laoghaire and live on toast if they had to. Then her father got sick, her family moved west, and life, as she said, “started making decisions on our behalf.”
I asked her if she had ever married. She nodded.
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
