2 - Exhaustion: 4 September 2024

Yesterday I got up at 5.00 am and I am still awake at 7.00 pm on Wednesday without having slept in a bed yet; I have napped on the plane but I have not yet slept in a bed.  It is now 46 ½ hours since I last had a proper sleep.

But something dramatic has happened in the time since I woke up from my last proper sleep.

Margaret is now back in Ireland.  She and I are both ready to say our final farewells to each other. For the final time, we have together made this astonishingly long journey from Australia to Ireland.  Yet again, I have forced my aching body to endure being cooped up inside a reinforced tin can with high performance engines for endless dreary hours.  Once again, I have endured security screening in multiple airports, emptied out my backpack multiple times and explained that the tightly sealed container inside the backpack is not a bomb nor illegal drugs, but something far more valuable.  Yes officer, that cylinder in my backpack that weights 2.1 kilograms really is my wife and we truly are making our final journey together.  Yes, in a few days’ time, my backpack will be significantly lighter and my wife Margaret will have finished her journey.  When that happens, we will no longer be a couple = and perhaps I can begin to heal after the ghastly events of the last few years.

Adelaide airport had not changed much at all.  Melbourne airport had got bigger again, but was still recognizable.  The last time we had been in Dubai airport, there had been construction machinery scattered across the airport and a bus had taken us from the plane to the terminal. The buses were not there this time.  All the work was finished and the sleek, Dubai airport was as overwhelming as it had always been, but more so now it was finished.

But Dublin airport had not changed.  It was still dirty, drab and dull the way it had always been – but today I noticed the dirt, the drabness and the dullness.  This had never happened on any of our earlier visits.  Back then, the joy of being there with Margaret had made me oblivious to the actual condition of the airport.  But today was different.  I was still with Margaret, but this time Margaret could not speak except in my head.  This time there was no excited laughter announcing the once again, we had arrived in her favourite country.  Australian was her home, but Margaret loved the country that her ancestors had been driven from because they could not eat air and live. 

So my cheeks were wet with tears as I lugged Margaret and the backpack out of the plane and through Passport control.  We were back in Ireland again, but Margaret was here only as a cannister of ashes, and the taste of ashes in my mouth felt so very depressing.  I did not really want to be here at all, but Margaret needed me to be here so I was making this final visit – and I felt like shit.  My body needed rest, my mind needed peace but Margaret needed me to ignore how I felt.  So I pushed my suitcase through the Dublin airport door and followed the signs saying Taxis This Way. Margaret had managed at least a temporary fix on the Irish weather.  The rain was only light rain and the temperature felt like the 17 degrees the plane PA had claimed as we landed.

I arrived at the hotel a tired, sorry looking old man.  I felt like a tired, sorry looking old man.  I walked up and down Grafton Street, staring at the shops, I had a hot chocolate at Bewleys, I looked in vain for something I felt like reading in the book shop and I finally staggered back to the hotel for a short nap in my room.

When I woke, I started this blog, taking time out for dinner in a pub. 

I wonder what on earth am I doing here?  Being here with Margaret was living joy.  Being here with an urn containing not the real her but only what is left after her carcass was cremated, feels like some sick joke dreamed up by someone badly in need of therapy.  Still, this is what I must do to honour my love for Margart, so this is what I will do.

Two days after Margaret had died, her phone had rung and I had answered it.  It had been her treating doctor at the hospice – the one who ordered the scan which revealed that the cancer had vanished and that she was not dying but getting better.  I had told him what had happened, that the cancer had not got her but a urinary infection had done what the cancer could not do.  He had reacted by saying it felt like a “A sick Cosmic Joke” and I knew he had been correct.

So here I am yet again visiting Ireland with Margaret and somehow this visit fells just like another Sick Cosmic Joke.  I doubt I will ever come back here after this visit is finished.  I have far too many memories,