Listen to the author reading this piece:
I hold my dad’s hand while the leaves fall. They swirl outside the window, a waltz of yellow and red drifting onto the grass. He breathes heavily in the bed, a series of hacks and rasps. The nurses say it’s just secretions and nothing to worry about, it’s worse for you than him.
My dad has always loved leaves, or more so the trees that hold them. When he inherited my grandfather’s farm, he turned acres of it into forest. The neighbours complained that it was a waste of land, an obstruction to their view of the rolling hills that surrounded them. But when the forest grew, my dad loved it. He would disappear for hours walking around and through it; gathering sticks for the fire, spotting foxes and partridges, digging ditches and fixing fences. This is my retirement, he would say as my mother rolled her eyes.
While my dad loved the land, my mother tolerated it. She would tend the garden to ensure flowers appeared in the spring, pick berries from brambles to make jam and have sandwiches on the outdoor table so that when my dad appeared there was something to eat. But she had no love for the country. She was a townie, but she liked that he liked the land and joined him on walks to fill her lungs with that clean country air he talked about.
Beside me something beeps. It’s muffled as if being strangled. I press the red button. It’s quiet in the hospice so you never have to wait long. The nurse appears and scans my dad, she knows what to look for. She pulls on a pair of gloves and touches his arm now paler than it once was, skinnier. “Now Michael” she says, “what’s going on here?”
For his 60th birthday, I bought my dad a bonsai tree. He looked confused when he unwrapped it, turned the box back and forth to take in what he was seeing. “What’s this?” he asked. “It’s a bonsai tree,” I replied. “You can grow it from seed and take care of it.” He laughed then, a lovely rumbling laugh that made an earthquake of his belly. “But, you love trees,” I said. He laughed again and my mum and I looked at each other. He held the box up - “it’s a bonsai tree, Julie!” - and rocked in his chair as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
“I just need you to step out for a bit,” says the nurse. “We need to check his pump and make sure he’s okay.”
The canteen is empty apart from a couple at the corner of the room. I order tea and take a table in the other corner. They look up as I sit down and give me that half smile of people who know why you’re here. Outside, the wind has picked up making the branches sway. More leaves detach - brown and orange - and jerk back and forth before hitting the ground.
When I was 13, we moved from Ireland to Canada. There was a recession and my dad couldn’t get a job. We lived in a Toronto suburb that belonged on a Christmas card. Everything was clean and ordered and the people were so welcoming. But it was the trees that captivated my dad. They had varieties that we couldn’t find at home with leaves that grew so big you wondered how the branches could support them. In autumn, the colours were spectacular - regal golds and reds that my dad and I used to stare at from a step in the back garden. “Just look at that,” he’d say.
The nurse calls my name and asks me to follow. A doctor is standing at my father’s bed. I sit down as he explains how they’ve increased the morphine dose to make my dad more comfortable, and that it won’t be long now if I want to call people. “Ok,” I say.
I open the door to the garden and let air in, it smells peaty from last night’s rain. Leaves shudder in a shrug, but they don’t fall. I take my dad’s hand and stroke the skin that once held my hand, that once lifted me onto his shoulders, that once taught me how to drive. I stroke his hand and talk about trees.
Clodagh O’Brien is…