‘In the Shadow of the Trees’ by Catherine Dunne

2016

We are sitting in the hospital café. It’s mostly quiet in the mornings. I like to visit then, when he knows me, and when others at the crowded tables around us can’t hear our conversation. I buy coffees and one of the cream slices he likes.

I wait as he tries to cut it into small pieces, but he can’t manage. The flaky pastry resists every trembling stab of the knife. I know better than to offer help. Eventually, he gives up and lifts the entire slice to his mouth. Cream spurts everywhere, down the front of his sweater, onto his cuff, onto the table he’s leaning over.

I wait for a bit and ask. Would you like a tissue.

He nods, looks helplessly at his hands. I take the wipes from my backpack and clean his fingers, one by one. He smiles. I’m a messy old thing, he says.

Always were, I say. And hey – I give him a nudge – less of the old. When I married you, you convinced me you were in your second youth.

He looks at me carefully. He seems to be studying my face. The cream stains on his sweater are the fingerprints of an unbearable vulnerability. I don’t speak for a moment.

I love you, he says. I take his hand then and tell him I love him, too. He looks puzzled.

Why isn’t my mother coming?

*

At first, the signs are curious, then they become troubling. The way he eases himself away from conversations with friends and family, often wandering off as though he can’t be bothered. Or the way he hesitates when I open our own front door, as if he is no longer sure of what he’ll find inside.

Then – always a stickler for punctuality – he becomes obsessed with timekeeping. Once, with a taxi booked for ten o’clock the following morning to take us to the airport, I am awakened by the light that suddenly floods the bedroom. He is up and dressed.

At first, I panic, thinking: can it be seven already? What are you doing? I ask.

I don’t want to be late.

I’m confused. But it’s only two. Our flight to Cyprus isn’t until this afternoon.

He looks at me as though he doesn’t understand the words.

We’ve plenty of time. Come back to bed.

He turns, walks away from me.

I watch from the landing as he makes his way downstairs. I barely sleep after that. At six, I get up.

He’s in the living room, in his usual place on the sofa. He has been sitting in the dark for four hours, waiting for the taxi that is another four hours away.

*

2011

We are in Eden Park, Auckland.

Ireland are about to play Australia in the Rugby World Cup. On our arrival, a couple of days earlier, we see a young man in a t-shirt that makes us all laugh.

I support New Zealand, it says, and anybody playing Australia. We ask him if we can steal the wording, substituting ‘Ireland’ and ‘England’ as appropriate. We banter about small islands and their complicated relationships with big neighbours.

We are here in New Zealand with our old friends J and D. Generous to a fault, they have invited us to join them on this adventure, halfway around the world.

But when their phone call comes, I am cautious. I leave the room, so that their invitation can’t be overhead.

You both need to think about this, I say. Seriously. We would slow you down, make some things difficult, others impossible. He’s not able to walk any distance at all.

We have thought about it, they say. We know what’s involved. The invitation stands.

When I tell him, his face lights up, then falls just as quickly. But can we, really? he asks. I mean, what about the wheelchair?

Yes, we can, I say. The wheelchair comes, too.

*

We book a disabled-friendly space in Eden Park for the Ireland-Australia match. Such spaces are strictly limited, so D goes along with him as his carer.

Both of them are rugby fanatics. J and I watch the match on the widescreen TV in the Maori centre in downtown Auckland. A young couple from Derry invite us. We meet them on an early morning tram, a tram that is jam-packed with Irish fans and an atmosphere I’d like to bottle.

Our match experience is surreal. J and I are surrounded by Maoris in tall green hats, leprechaun outfits, Kiss Me, I’m Irish t-shirts. One woman shows us her silver-painted fingernails, each one decorated with a tiny black fern. We learn that rugby isn’t a game in New Zealand: it is a religious calling, a way of living.

When Ireland defeats Australia, the noise is deafening. Outside, the streets ring with the cheers from Eden Park. When we meet up afterwards, the two guys are alight with the joy of such unexpected victory.

Afterwards, they recall the strategy, the penalties; the brilliance of O’Driscoll; Sexton’s drop goal. The mighty tackling of Paul O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan.

And the miracle, D reminds him. Don’t forget about the miracle.

What miracle? we ask.

He grins: his old grin, brown eyes alight with mischief.

I frightened the shite out of two fellas in wheelchairs beside us, he says. Go on, we say, as he savours the moment.

I stood up when the final whistle blew. He shrugs. They weren’t expecting it. Praise God, I said, it’s a miracle!

*

2012

The cherry blossoms are in full spate. A sudden gust of wind and the delicate blooms shower the path in front of us with pink confetti. I try to see this as a good omen.

We are on our way to the specialist, for the second time in two years. A gleaming desk; muted colours; carpet soft underfoot. I can’t help but observe the way this consultant’s surroundings, along with his immaculate suit and tie, speak of confidence, of his own professional certainties.

He says: It’s really nothing to worry about; just a slight shadow on the cerebellum. Enjoy your life; of course you can travel. Nothing to worry about, repeated with a smile, this time, and a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Whatever it is, we are given to understand its advance will be slow. It will claim its territory stealthily, steadily. There are many good years ahead.

But I’m not reassured. Day after day, there are things to worry about, things he won’t talk about. His balance is off, his gait more awkward than ever. His coordination has begun to falter, too. Occasionally, he miscalculates the edge of the table when putting down his mug of coffee. Or he stumbles at the bottom of the stairs, his foot missing the step, landing inches away from it on some surface that is visible only to him.

Over Christmas, we stay with J and D. I know they see what I see, and the relief of that acknowledgement is profound. It’s as though sharing out-loud words, feeling their familiar shape against my tongue, has taken me somewhere else, onto safer territory.

I begin to feel the ground beneath my feet again.

*

2013

I am awarded a writing fellowship in Liguria. Several months earlier, when we discuss submitting my application, he is enthusiastic. Partners are welcome, and he enjoys this tantalizing possibility of returning to Italy, a country he loves.

The photographs of the Bogliasco Foundation are enticing. An elegant, sunlit building. The garden, a perfect example of early twentieth-century design, is filled with agaves, aloes, umbrella pine trees. Together, they frame shimmering views of the Ligurian coast.

But by now, I know this is not going to happen. I turn down the fellowship. He becomes quiet. I exaggerate the amount of steps to be navigated; the uneven, stony surface of the grounds; the large distances to be covered on foot.

He has recently accepted that his ability to maintain his balance is compromised. After months of his stubbornness and my anxiety, I have had our bedroom moved downstairs. Unwilling to listen to me, he finally accepts the physiotherapist’s stern warning about the treacherous nature of steps and stairs of all kinds.

I thank the gods – in whom I no longer believe – that he is a man who still trusts the opinion of experts.

Now, Mr M, she says. You’ve just got six out of fifteen on your balance score. You have to accept that it’s dangerous for you to attempt to go up and down the stairs.

I watch as he processes this bit of information. He nods, meek at last.

I say a silent prayer of thanks to anything that might listen.

Later, at exactly 3.00 a.m., I awake to a loud whirring noise. I switch on the light. He has managed to climb, unaided, onto the exercise bike we have recently bought: the safest method of movement now that walking is no longer a possibility.

I’m irritated. I can’t help it. I’m tired and I’m stressed and I’m disappointed.

Come back to bed, I say. It’s way too early to be up.

Doggedly, he keeps cycling.

The next time I say it, I’m sharp. I hate the edge that my voice has acquired.

No, he finally shouts. Then he swears at me. If my legs get stronger, we can go to Italy. Leave me alone!

I hear his words, not with my ears, but with my gut. Each one of them a punch to the stomach. I switch off the light.

Then I turn myself away, facing the window where the first faint slivers of a greyish-pink dawn sneak through one side of the Roman blind.

I hate those colours, too, that light. Hate the beginning of another day.

*

I don’t leave the house without him anymore. I can’t leave the house without him. Every day brings new confusions. He presses the door handles up and down, up and down, frustration mounting because the room is still in darkness.

The switch is here, I tell him, guiding his hand upwards. When the light comes, he blinks in surprise, tests the door handle again. I catch him once, as he stretches out his hand to pull the television screen towards him. I can see what’s happening before it happens: the TV has become the front door, and he tries to wrench it open, intending to make good his escape.

I push the screen back from the edge, just in time, putting my left hand flat against his chest. My palm like this over his heart used to soothe him. Now it enrages him.

I want to go out, he says, his County Derry accent stronger than ever in the wide, rounded vowels. Out.

I try to turn him around, but he resists. Stubbornness takes the place of balance now, several times a day.

That’s not the door, I say. That’s the telly. The way out is over there.

His eyes clear for a moment. He looks at me, and back at the door. Then back at the television again.

I don’t know what’s happening, he says.

I put my arms around him and he leans in. I hold him steady. We stay like that for a long time.

*

At least one night a week now, we do battle with the soldiers who invade our bedroom. Faces painted, guns and knives at the ready, they are a fearsome force: they show no mercy to their captives.

I switch on all the lights. I stand in front of the retreating soldiers, spread my arms wide. Look, I say, they’re gone. They won’t be back. I have learned not to say that they are never there in the first place.

But I am no match for the marauding army behind his eyes. I can’t chase them away. Instead, I wait until they have done their worst. His hands clutch at mine, tears of blind terror course down his face.

Jesus help me, he says. Jesus help me.

I speak meaningless words, hoping that the sound will anchor him to me, or at least keep him afloat on whatever sea threatens to drown him.

He lies awake for hours afterwards, plucking at the surface of the duvet. He insists that the sheets don’t fit him anymore. He has outgrown them. They make him uncomfortable. Finally, he sleeps.

The following morning, he doesn’t remember a thing.

That, at least, I count as a blessing. I don’t want him to carry these memories as I do, through the brightening day and back into the darkness again.

*

Once, while preparing breakfast, radio on low in the background, I hear the word ‘carer’. I turn up the volume.

It is a phone-in. Carers all over the country call in to describe their days. Mothers and fathers of children with life-limiting conditions. Men and women with partners suffering from dementia. Adult children with parents who go missing, sneaking out of the house at the witching hour, wandering off into the traffic; taken back home to safety again and again.

Caller after caller talks of feeling abandoned. Of a health service that continually lets them down. Of a system that dehumanizes the people they love, strips them of their dignity, makes them beg for what every citizen should be able to claim as their right.

But there are other stories, too. Stories of devotion and sacrifice; stories of love undiminished by the ceaseless demands of caring. Stories of ingenuity and resilience.

And I am ashamed.

I am not as patient, as loving, as resigned, as some of these callers are. My best is a hopelessly inadequate one. I find no beauty, no solace in watching the disintegration of the man I love. A man who once played piano and sang. Who loved Gilbert and Sullivan as much as Puccini and Verdi. A man who once played a very pretty Mabel in his boarding-school performances of The Pirates of Penzance. I have photographs to prove it.

A man who completed complex crossword puzzles without filling in a single word. A man who played bridge and did mathematical conundrums for fun.

He hated to lose at Scrabble. He shouted at the television if Manchester United were playing: Twenty-five grand a week and Rooney can’t put it in the back of the bloody net ...

A man whose sense of humour would reduce me to helpless laughter several times a day. A man with an unparalleled sense of the absurd.

He could also be a royal pain in the arse – stubborn to the last, often cantankerous, a bigger drinker than was good for him. Antisocial. Impatient of company that didn’t share his view of the world. A lover of animals more than people. A man full of messy contradictions.

A man full of heart.

I listen to the presenter’s response to one caller in particular: a woman who cherishes a new and unexpected sense of intimacy with her husband, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. He needs me now, she says, in a way he never did before. I’m privileged to look after him.

You’re all saints, the presenter says. Anyone who cares in this way is a saint.

I’ve heard this before. Those exact words, or other wide-eyed variations. And all of them make me rage.

Saints don’t need practical support: they already have God’s ear and some supernatural powers of their own. Saints don’t need a break from their saintliness. Saints can be revered, cherished, even beseeched. And they ask nothing of us, other than our devotion.

Carers, on the other hand, work themselves to a standstill. They save the State a fortune. Without them, the whole creaking edifice of our ‘health service’ – itself neither healthy nor a service for those who most need it – would collapse, falling in on itself like trees felled in the woods.

*

2014

When I first hear the diagnosis, I think of Italy. Of olives and bridges, of warm blue sunshine and terracotta buildings that bake in the heat. The round, liquid syllables are a wave, rolling towards the shore.

Olivopontocerebellar atrophy.

It is atrophy that brings me up short. The rolling wave breaks over the jagged surface of the rocks below. It becomes a sound that is somehow indecent, shocking.

This new specialist is gentle. He keeps explaining until the wave recedes. Like a cousin of motor neurone, he says. Olivopontocerebellar atrophy is very rare indeed. But it’s also a disease that attacks the nervous system.

I ask, but I already know the answer.

No. There is no cure.

*

The nights are the worst.

I’ve learned that sleep is composed of several delicate layers. Mostly, I

manage to hover, however uneasily, between the first and the second. I need to be alert to every movement, every thought that he is about to get out of bed.

I’ve developed an uncanny ability to sense his intent. I am instantly awake, instantly ready. I have to be with him, to stop things from happening. I can no longer manage to lift him when he falls.

Only once, this internal alarm system fails me. I am so exhausted, all sense of the external has been extinguished. I wake with a jolt: the bed beside me is empty.

I can’t speak, my throat has closed over. I hurry to the bathroom, where I keep the light on throughout the night. He’s making his way, step by unsteady step, towards the shower. He has both hands on the wall for balance.

Some shadow draws my eye down to the tiled floor. A red line has followed him from the hallway. Somehow, he has cut his foot and is leaving a trail of blood. Its colour is startling, glinting in the light.

The moment is filled with its own internal logic. Like Hansel and Gretel, the trail will help him find his way back out of the woods.

But there is no escaping these woods. They are here to stay. We live all our days now in the shadow of the trees.

He’s becoming agitated; he keeps looking around the bathroom. When he’s like this, I try to get him to focus on my face, on the familiar. I often wonder if he can see me, or if he’s sleepwalking.

I ask him what he’s looking for.

Biscuits, he says.

So I take his hand and lead him into the kitchen. I bandage his foot and make tea, take out the biscuit barrel. But he has lost interest.

Where’s my watch? he asks.

*

Months of looking for help, and not finding it, have worn my patience to a single shred. I have consulted social workers and doctors. I have tried to make appointments at the hospital – any hospital. Waiting lists are months long at best. It is forbidden to be sick and terrified in the summer. As if illness stalks us only during the months of darkness. I have haunted the local public health nurse who, to her credit, tries to offer practical help.

Home care package? I ask. I am desperate. I have a contract for a new novel. I need to deliver soon and I hardly know how to write my own name.

Get on the phone and shout, the nurse advises.

When that doesn’t work, and I don’t have the energy to keep on doing it, I go looking for private respite care, stealing away for a couple of hours while some kind cousins, visiting from England, keep him company.

In one seaside town, my heart lifts. A two-week stay is possible. That just might be enough to give me a fighting chance to complete the first, long-abandoned draft. The nursing home is brightly painted, light-filled; the staff seem kind. I ask to see the room. As we climb the stairs, hope drains away.

Adult nappies block the fire escape. The top of the stairs is unguarded. The bathroom is at the other end of the corridor.

This isn’t suitable at all, I hear myself saying. I hardly recognize my voice: the cold politeness of it. The woman’s face falls.

The stairs, I say, pointing towards them. Has she retained nothing of our recent conversation?

My husband has serious mobility problems, I say. And he’s incapable of assessing danger.

Oh, we’ve somebody on duty on the landing throughout the night, she says, brightly, nodding her head at every word. The evidence, she seems to say, is here. A wooden chair rests against the banisters, a multicoloured cushion on the seat, a matching one tied to the back. I focus on the neat bows that tie them in place, just for a moment. I need to fight the weariness that suddenly descends.

And if that person on night duty needs to use the bathroom? I ask.

She’s less certain now. We have a camera, she offers, at last. A CCTV, right there.

Great, I say. My icy politeness cracks. So we can all get to watch him as he falls down the stairs. Great. Just great.

I don’t even wait for a reply. I make my way down the curving staircase, past the nappies, past the blocked fire exits, past the front desk.

I slam the front door behind me.

*

I try another route. A private care company promises a ‘gentle giant’ who will sit with my husband, keep him safe, for two nights a week, so that I can sleep. It’s expensive, but I can’t think about that, not now.

The morning after the second night, my son texts me. Briefly home from London, he has to leave at six the following day.

Did that guy not turn up last night? he writes.

He did. He arrived at 8 yesterday evening. I made him tea.

There was nobody downstairs when I was leaving – not in the kitchen, not outside your bedroom.

The following week, I tiptoe downstairs at five-thirty. The kitchen is empty. Across from the bedroom, the living-room door is closed over.

I open it, as quietly as I can. The gentle giant is fast asleep on the sofa. The remains of last night’s tea and cake are still on the coffee table.

He wakes, startled. Looks at me. Says nothing.

I point to the door. Get out, I say. Right now.

*

Later in the year, another MRI shows that the slight shadow on the cerebellum has now become a significant one. The darkness is spreading, conquering more and more of the half-circle of cerebellar territory. Folded in on itself, shell-like, it is a dusty pink, greyish colour, etched from top to bottom with horizontal grooves.

I learn that the cerebellum is a very small part of the cerebrum. Its Latin name means little brain. Nonetheless, half of the cells that make up our entire nervous system live within this compact space, underneath those innocent horizontal grooves.

Tucked away at the back of the head, clamped to the spinal cord, it is the brain’s control centre for balance, coordination, spatial judgement.

Emotions, too.

We continue to make our measured way from day to day. The passing of each one takes away something small, something essential, something that is him.

Incrementally, hope passes, too.

*

2016

I’m making my way to the hospital again. When I reach the main door, it slides open and the receptionist greets me with her usual wave. When I’ve signed in, I say good morning to all the visitors I’ve come to recognize. We nod and smile to each other every day: fellow travellers in a now familiar world.

We have never spoken, but we understand something of each other’s lives. I sit at a table in the busy café, and I watch as a man – whose visiting times always seem to coincide with mine – stands up from his table abruptly, making the cups and saucers rattle. He is grey-faced with distress. His wife has pushed him away from her, with surprising strength. She claims he is trying to steal from her.

I look away. Everyone in the café looks away. I wait until a member of the hospital staff brings my husband to me. He no longer wants me to come to his room. I am unable to lift him from the bedroom chair into the wheelchair and he doesn’t want anyone else to see what he can no longer do for himself.

*

It’s early May, so I push the wheelchair out into the hospital garden. There is a place that we particularly like: a wooden bench that sits in the burnished shade of a Japanese maple. It is hidden from view: from the hospital windows, from the rest of the garden. So far, we’ve not come across anyone else here and so it feels like ours. We sit in dappled sunshine.

Sometimes, during these visits, I can sense him hiding his uncertainty: he’s not sure who I am. He greets me warmly, but as though I’m a stranger – a benign stranger, perhaps – but someone whose intentions he can’t be entirely sure of.

He’ll skirt around a subject for a bit, waiting for me to confirm some cautious observation or other. Home is no longer a topic of conversation between us.

Sometimes, it is painfully clear that he knows exactly who I am, and where he is not.

Old friends are safer territory. Or sports. Or our travels together. I follow where he leads.

*

After twenty months, there are practical worries, too. This hospital care is eye-wateringly expensive. I am grateful that we have private health insurance, but there is a significant financial shortfall, nonetheless.

A couple of years earlier, I’d investigated the so-called Fair Deal. Slow-moving and astoundingly bureaucratic, it turned out to be not so fair after all. At the time of writing, it has been declared a scheme ‘not fit for purpose’.

Those four words ignite so many memories. Such a blunt assessment: one that does not even begin to tell the stories of all the people I have met in this stressful underworld of caring.

Irish citizens – taxpayers all their lives – plunged into financial ruin, personal distress, drowning in a sea of guilt that should never have been theirs to navigate in the first place.

*

Early in the second week of May 2016, I visit him in his room. The nurse tells me he’s not well, he can’t come downstairs, and so I go and sit with him.

We’re waiting for test results, she says. Her expression is careful.

For the next several days, we – a loose connection of family – keep him company. The hospital, Quaker in ethos, is a compassionate, practical place. The staff go about their caring regime with respect and sensitivity.

*

I know he can hear me. His eyes flicker from time to time; occasionally he returns the pressure of my hand. And so I talk.

I tell him the stories that always make us laugh, no matter how many times we hear them. Like the one about our stay at the eco-resort in India, where the mosquitoes are the size of small birds. When we retire for the night, we’re told to keep our shoes upside down, preferably on the bed, to avoid possible contact with scorpions.

I spend the night awake, wide-eyed: he snores beside me.

Or that time in Prague when we can’t find the Kafka museum. Someone has turned all the signs around, so that hapless visitors are sent back in the direction they’ve come from. Over and over again.

He believes this to be a fitting tribute to one of his favourite writers.

Or the night we make our way to the Sydney Opera House, bombarded by vigorous seagulls way bigger than they should be. We watch as practised waiters flap their aprons, sending the gulls off into the greying, stormy air.

*

I have been a city dweller all my life, but now I embrace the rural tradition of the wake. It feels right to bring him back home. Besides, he’s always loved a party.

When the day of the funeral comes, I feel that Gilbert and Sullivan should own it. As his coffin is brought in, I choose the best accompaniment possible:

I am the Captain of the Pinafore
(And a right good Captain too!)
You’re very very good, and be it understood
I command a right good crew ...

There are some startled faces in the crematorium, but most break into a smile.

His brother speaks of their teenage years. His cousin reads a poem. Her kindness, her generous tolerance for his former wild days is legendary.

I listen and remember.

*

Many years earlier, as we both sit together, listening to Gilbert and Sullivan, on one of those evenings that remain memorable, that somehow stay with us for no particular reason, he conducts HMS Pinafore with the extravagant use of a poker.

His dog howls.

I laugh.

And Pinafore sails off into the distance.

His ship may have foundered. But he carries on, Captain of his own Pinafore.

From issue #17: spring/summer 2024

About the Author
Catherine Dunne is the author of twelve novels, several essays and one work of non-fiction. The Things We Know Now won the Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013. The Years That Followed (2016) was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. She is currently Chair of Irish PEN. Her latest novel, A Good Enough Mother, is out now with Betimes Books.