Page 34 of Secrets in the Snow
I curl my feet up beneath me, Aidan glances at me with trepidation, and I press play on the remote control, all ready to hear what Mabel has to say to us next.
Despite having had all morning to prepare for this, and having months of knowing it was coming our way, I can’t help but feel so deeply sad when I see Mabel before us again. I lift her soft grey velvet cushion from where Ben had left it on the sofa just beside me, and I clasp it to my chest, closing my eyes for just one second to squeeze away the pain.
Apart from the hideous but quite hilarious colourful Easter bonnet she wears on her head, which I recognize as one of Ben’s masterpieces from school, Mabel seems to have recorded this new message around the same time as the first one, which means that she still looks quite healthy and well in comparison to how she had become before she died in November past from the cancer that gripped her so quickly and cruelly.
I’m so glad she recorded it at the start of her illness. No matter how wondrous her messages are and will always be to have and treasure, to see her deteriorating season by season in front of me all over again would have been too much to handle. I’m glad she had the foresight to do what she wanted to do so that we can still remember her in her prime.
‘So, how are you both doing, my little daffodils?’ she asks, in her oh so familiar, warm and soothing tones with just ahint of laughter. ‘I hope you’ve been looking after each other just like I asked you to.’
I nod, I smile and I shake my head at how she has no idea how much magic she has created from beyond the grave. She has absolutely no clue how much her wisdom and foresight has made living without her just a little bit easier, and how her message and guidance has helped me through each day as I’ve remembered how positive and encouraging she always was. I shudder to think of how I’d have coped over the past few months without Aidan next door to call upon and to lean on, to express my fears to and to know that I’m not alone in missing her, and I only wish she could hear my response to her question to how we have been.
I want to tell her about Ben’s new horse riding hobby, of how he has his eye on a new surfboard after trying it out with his friend Gino and his dad on the beach, and of how he still blows a kiss to the sky to her every night before he sleeps, and how he cradles this cushion when he needs a ‘Mabel hug’.
I really do hope she is watching us, watching her, and I know she’d be so happy that Aidan has taken the time out to stay in Ballybray and look after himself here for the foreseeable future, however long that may be.
‘So,’ she says, clearing her throat before taking a sip of water. ‘My first message was, I guess, a sort of introduction of sorts between you two. I know you’re probably wonderinghow I have it all so impeccably planned, but what I want to say is that there’s no point searching the house for the rest of the messages, guys.’
She lets out a raucous laugh and pats her delicate leg as she does so.
‘Youweredoing that, weren’t you, Roisin?’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I just knew if I left them lying around you’d be tempted to take an early peek at each one and that wouldn’t work at all!’
My eyes widen at her intuition and I giggle at the thought of me searching every nook and cranny of her house in vain.
‘They aren’t in the house, honey, but don’t worry, I know exactly what I’m doing,’ she continues. ‘You will get them. You’ll get them all in good time.’
Her eyes light up with excitement and I feel so much better to know how we both have played a part in making her passing from this world a bit more controlled and slightly more bearable in her eyes. I can only imagine the fun she had putting these videos together, and also the pain she was in as she did so, knowing she would be speaking to us in a one-way conversation that she would never get to know the results of.
‘Look, I don’t claim to know it all about life,’ she continues. ‘In fact, I don’t think anyone ever does know it all, and I’m not setting out to lecture either of you on how to live your own lives, but what I do know is that the wholedamn thing goes in a blink and I’m so thankful I’ve had a bit of warning that my time is almost up.’
She clicks her fingers to emphasize her point and I breathe in. The whole concept of the fragility of life is exactly what has been occupying my mind recently. I’m beginning to wonder if she anticipated how her death would raise these questions in those she left behind?
She removes the silly Easter bonnet, which makes me take her a lot more seriously, but her hair is sticking up a little at the front and I want to fix it for her. She was always so particular about her hair.
She shifts a bit now in her seat, then leans slightly forward and clasps her hands together, just like she always did when she had something really important to say to me. She stares at us too for effect. It works, as I’m all ears.
‘I’ve a simple message for you as the joy of spring fills the air,’ she says. ‘To yourself you should always be true.’
I can see Aidan shuffle at the edge of my vision.
‘If you hide your true self, it will follow you, it will haunt you, it will whisper in your ear in the morning, it will roar at you in the middle of the night,’ she tells us. ‘It will trip you up all through your day and throughout your whole life, because the truth will always get you in the end. No matter how fast you run away from it, the truth will always win, and your true self will always be revealed.’
Mabel talks slowly, emphasizing her words with her pale wrinkled hands and with her sparkling turquoise eyes and,as always, I’m totally engaged with everything she is saying as I quickly reflect on my own path in life over the past almost forty years.
I have tried to cover up the truth many times, but it always did get me in the end.
When I was just eight years old, my grandmother begged me to come and live with her, and I said no. I didn’t tell her the truth about my mother’s drinking. I lied to her about what I’d had for dinner. I lied about the bruise on my arm that I said had happened when I’d bumped into someone in the playground at school.
I lied when I was a teenager to my teacher who asked if I had enough dinner money to see me through the week, and I lied to her again when she asked if I was hungry.
I lied to myself when I left university early, thinking that all I needed in life was already all in my head.
I lied to my friends when they asked me if everything was OK with Jude, and when I seemed so agitated and irritable at times. I lied about feeling unwell when he wouldn’t let me see them any more.
If I’d told the truth to my grandmother back then, she’d have saved me from a childhood of pain. If I’d told the truth to my teacher, I wouldn’t have had to go so hungry I’d sometimes be sick. If I’d told the truth to my friends about Jude, I wouldn’t have been broken into a million pieces of glass and then been blamed for making him bleed.
Mabel’s voice lilts into a merry tone of reflection.
‘You know, my husband Peter once took me to visit the most delightful little village across on the east coast of Ireland called Breena where he and his only brother Danny worked for a hot summer on a farm when they were young men in their twenties,’ she explains, recalling Peter with such joy as always. ‘We had the most wonderful time there. We walked the pier, we sipped a beer and we dined on the finest foods overlooking the ocean. Peter said it was the happiest times he and his darling only brother spent together and he cried to me that day over a fear he had of a truth never told, but one he never could tell even to me, not even on his dying day.’
