(creative nonfiction), placed second in the Creative nonfiction category, and published in The Four Faced Liar, Issue 04, Competition Issue, February 2026

It’s hard to think of real death in the summer. It’s hard to think of real death at any time. 
Real death, you know, as opposed to the sort of death involved in lovely Agatha Christie murders in your headphones while you do a jigsaw on a rainy day, or the hyperreal television-drama deaths watched while you are snuggled under a blanket on an autumn evening, or the symphonic stage deaths experienced loud and glorious at a musical in a darkened theatre. 
Hercule Poirot, Christopher Moltisanti, Jean Valjean.
And even these not-real deaths are better suited to the not-summer. 
But there’s something about thinking of death at the start of May, when the birds are twittering madly and there’s a smell of warm rain and freshly cut grass, when the bluebells are dancing and an expectation of elderflowers is beginning to bud on the trees – such an abundance of life pulsing everywhere – that just doesn’t match up with talk of funerals and graveyards… and hospitals and Marymount Hospice before that. 

I call in sick the morning after the death sentence phone call. 
Twelve weeks. He has twelve weeks. Maybe twenty-four. 
I thought I could go to work, but I can’t. You see, I can’t stop crying. So, I drop my daughter to crèche and make my way to Mum and Dad’s house instead of school.
When I get there, Dad is firing on all cylinders. He’s getting all his ducks in a row. He’s trying to make light of the situation.
We’re using a lot of idioms and clichés and metaphors. 
Speaking in real terms about what’s happening is not happening – it can’t. We talk around it. If one element of what is happening must be confronted in conversation, then the next thing to do is jump away from it, talk about something else, make a joke.
Dad is simultaneously soliloquising about his funeral mass – readings, music, priests, coffin bearers, etc – and doing Tommy Cooper impressions. 
“What’s that?” He puts his hand out, upturned and floppy. 
“It’s a dead one of these.” The hand turns over, arachnidian. 
I wonder if this is some kind of test. Is he preparing us for when he is upturned and floppy himself? I’m still crying. I haven’t stopped crying all morning. Tommy Cooper is not helping. 
“You might do the eulogy, would you?” He addresses this aside to me, then redirects. “I’m sleeping like a baby. I wake up screaming every night around 3 am.” 
He laughs. I’m still crying.
My mother is storming around the kitchen. Throughout funeral arrangements and dead comedian impressions, Dad continues to interrupt her at every opportunity, gleeful, drawing power from every scowl she throws his way. 
He dismisses her suggestion of an uncle who might want to carry the coffin. “Sure, he can’t even walk, he certainly won’t want to be stuck under a coffin. And we’ve too many pallbearers now. Stop thinking of more people.” 
He is giddy. She might hit him. 
I wonder if that’s his plan. 
If my mother finally murders him, it will be a much quicker end. 
My brain does funny things with this thought. Murders and musicals. I’m back to dead bodies in the attic, in wigs and glitter. Wouldn’t it be much better if this was all a ‘whodunnit’? A ‘we both reached for the gun’ kind of story? 
Understandable. Understandable.
Tommy Cooper versus my mother. 
I should be at work, teaching algebra. 
The chances of a catastrophic event rise as both the lung cancer and the treatment against it progress. I think of simultaneous equations and wonder where these two lines intersect. A catastrophic event means a stroke, or a bleed in the lungs, or a heart attack. Anything that will get you before the cancer does, basically. 
What doesn’t cure you, might actually kill you. 
But I’ve zoned out. 
When I’m back in the room I see my mother is holding up the blender for her smoothie in a threatening manner. Dad is laughing and I wonder again if this is his plan. I wonder if a lot of things are his plan. He’s very good at a plan. 
We’re two years in now. They said most people with lung cancer don’t get two years, so in a way it’s a win, right? Last year they told him it would be six months to a year at best. We didn’t think he’d make Christmas. Here we are in May. He has defied the odds so far. There’s a sliver of hope that he will again. 
But then he coughs, and I know.
He coughs and he muses that a heart issue could have taken him out years ago. And sure, isn’t it his own fault really? The lung cancer? He coughs.
He coughs and I remember a house that wasn’t ours, a couch in a living room, and a green packet of cigarettes. I am six and I’m waving them in his face, telling him that smoking causes lung cancer, that he needs to quit, and that I don’t want my dad to die.
I don’t want my dad to die.
He eventually quit smoking when I was about thirteen, several houses later, after upgrading to Hamlet cigars for a while. They went with his gold tooth and his job as The Boss – ultimate mobster-chic for managing the company in Little Island.
Dad wonders if the chemo will make his hair fall out again this time. He was very Tony Soprano at my sister’s wedding last summer, he reminds us. His GP keeps making references to The Sopranos too. Dad likes this. 
Since his hair has grown back, Dad doesn’t look sick at all. Sure, he has a great colour and a fine head of hair, as people downtown keep telling him. I thought I heard you were unwell? They wonder, confused, having met him in the bank, or the coffee shop, or at the GAA pitch. It doesn’t add up, this man in a t-shirt and shorts with his tan and his bit of a belly and his air of recent retirement. Dying? No, no, they must have got that wrong.
I’m confused too. How can someone who has been given twelve weeks to live be asking me to move my car so he can just pop down to get some croissants and to call in to the GP? The innocuous blue wheelchair sticker on his dashboard doesn’t give anything away. But back from his adventures downtown, his usual pacing around the kitchen will be slowed, stunted… Breathless.
He coughs, and I know.
Dad disappears to the GP for a bit while I am supposed to be helping Mum with the clear-out. The clear-out has gone from focussing on the musical society costumes in the attic (and who knows what else is up there?) to tackling the whole house. The move has been confirmed, they are Sale Agreed on the bungalow across the road. The plan was for them to be in by September. You don’t have to be a maths teacher to do those sums. Twenty weeks, give or take.

Did you know you can’t buy a plot in some graveyards until you are actually dead? Tricky, right?
	There are politics involved in graveyards. Mum has been doing some research on how graveyards work, and how much room is in a plot, and tries to explain all this to me as we once again contemplate the clear-out and while Dad is at the GP talking about The Sopranos. She’s all muddled, and honestly, so am I.
	I ask her if she has even been to the graveyard.
	She hasn't.
	We exchange a look and get into my car.

There are two main graveyards. Old Kilcrumper and New Kilcrumper. 
‘Kilcrumper’ comes from the Irish cill, meaning cell, church, churchyard, or chapel, and cruimthir, meaning presbyter, church leader, or church elder – and most likely refers to Cruimthir Fraoch, a priest of St. Abbán, after whom a now-nonextant church, and consequently the area, was named (according to E. E. Ganly, in ‘The Life and Cult of St. Abbán’). 
Dad’s family are mostly buried in New Kilcrumper, but the plot is full. 
Mum and Dad have briefly entertained the idea of a new plot in New Kilcrumper for Dad, followed by (in theory) Mum and then whichever of us, their children, need a grave. 
Grim. 
But Dad isn't so pushed about the new graveyard, and then it emerges we can’t buy a plot until he actually kicks the bucket anyway. So, they look at the old graveyard. 
However, Old Kilcrumper is full, unless you are a Protestant; there’s plenty of room on the Church of Ireland side. 
The woman on the phone tells Mum that even though the County Council own the graveyard, it’s up to the churches to allocate the spaces. So, the only way you can be buried in Old Kilcrumper as a Catholic is if you are dropped into an existing grave with some family you have outlived, assuming there’s room in that plot. 
	Mum’s family are all buried in Old Kilcrumper, scattered (poor choice of verb, they’re not actually cremated) in various corners and plots. Her great-grandmother (Johanna Gallagher, Duntaheen Road, Fermoy, died 18th December 1920) is buried beside Liam Lynch (An ceann urraid Liam Ó Loingsig, Príom-Taoiseac I.R.A ). 
Dad thinks it would be absolutely gas if he and Mum were buried in with Johanna; sure, they’d have all the republicans coming down every so often with flowers and commemorative plaques and Mary Lou from Sinn Féin and everything. Dad would never vote Sinn Féin, and I’m sure is appalled that his children do, but for some reason, the idea of being beside General Liam Lynch tickles him.
	
At Old Kilcrumper, Mum fills me in on family history as we roam between the graves, some of which are neatly manicured and rectangular, some of which are undefined, misshapen lumps in uneven terrain, with crumbling headstones tentatively holding their ground. At the outer rim, where the graveyard wall has been mended or rebuilt, some graves have collapsed completely, decomposing long after their inhabitants have, reclaimed by wilderness and heedless of the nearby remade barriers. 
A hawthorn tree, more surefooted than rock, grows from the remains of a stone building that was perhaps once a chapel. I think of cill meaning cell, and how some things cannot be contained.
	There are all sorts of ghosts here. Wreaths of plastic flowers sit on graves, some vivid and new, some faded and lonely. Abandoned sachets of tomato ketchup lying beside crushed beer cans betray the past presence of delinquent teenagers. Wild primroses grow merrily in the long grass. A large sign tells us of The Old Kilcrumper Graveyard Friends Association – there are phone numbers, a Facebook page.
We begin triangulating locations. Granny is over there. My great-grandmother and other relatives are back beyond. And there, beside Liam, is Johanna.
	The major issue, as my mother sees it, the one she has been stressing about in the short time she has been considering Dad’s grave, is a man my mother is calling Johnny Nobody. There is a randomer in Johanna’s grave, and even if there is room, how could they possibly be buried with a stranger? 
	She will not listen to objections that neither she nor Dad ever met Johanna. 
Johnny Nobody must be identified and relocated. 
When we see the gravestone, I quickly realise that Johnny Nobody is probably Johanna’s grandson – the son of her daughter from a second marriage. The dates add up and his surname is that of the daughter. This could be a new problem. Mum’s wild, speculative plans of moving a random skeleton become less feasible. 
She will have to go back to the drawing board. More phone calls to more graveyard people. 
She does the calculations on the way to the car. Dad wants to be buried – always a classic – while Mum wants to be cremated. One coffin and one little pot. Wouldn’t they all fit? Even with Johnny Nobody? 
I imagine the jokes Dad will make: himself and Johanna’s Gallaghers, General Liam Lynch, and a little pot. Sure, a little pot never did anyone any harm.
	We leave in time to be back before Dad is.

On this episode of Dad and the GP, they’ve been talking about that boss with the lung cancer, and while Dad is recounting the tale, I try to figure out which boss they were on about. 
Back to talking about The Sopranos and not really the cancer. Safe. 
Bobby Bacala Senior had lung cancer, but it was a car crash that got him in the end – a catastrophic event, in which a fit of coughing rendered him unconscious at the wheel. Bang. 
I run through some of the other deaths, but it’s Johnny Sack they mean. John Sacrimoni – with the fat wife. 
Johnny Sack’s oncologist gave him three months, but a cancer specialist he met in prison told him he probably had nine to twelve months, that oncologists always low-ball you, to make themselves look good. Johnny took up the fags again after that. 
I wonder if there is time to rewatch The Sopranos. Dad still hasn’t seen The Many Saints of Newark either. Maybe I can get him the DVD as a birthday present. That’s only three weeks away. Definitely within the time limit. Time limit? Everything is surreal and time itself is bizarre.
“Johnny Sacrimoni, that’s the one.” He grins. The gold tooth is gone now. Replaced by one more respectable and tooth-coloured. Looking at his teeth I can’t even remember which one it was, which side of his mouth.
I hope the GP brought up Johnny Sack with good reason.  
I don't want my dad to die.
I look closer. His skin is papery.
My uncle Leo’s skin was papery too. 
I don’t want Dad to look like Leo, lying unrecognisable in a box, a yellowing waxwork in a foreign land, thin and somehow someone else.
Several years later and I am still very angry at Leo – my godfather as well as my uncle. I am angry that he didn’t go to a doctor sooner, when surely at the end of my aunt Anne’s life he must have felt ill too, must have spotted the similarities already. Dad’s siblings were all told there was a genetic element. I strain to recall how much Leo ate at Anne’s wake and am sure it was not much. Reduced appetite is a symptom, and he was always one to eat. Like Dad.
With the state of the NHS and the backlog of care in the UK, any help or treatment for Leo was impossible. It was too fucking late. I am angry that Leo didn’t come back to Ireland that Christmas, and angry at all of us for failing to recognise that he probably couldn’t, probably wasn’t strong enough even then. How could he have come home for Christmas when he was dead on the third of January? 
Flashes of fury take me off guard. 
He didn’t text me back that time. 
I didn’t get to talk to him or hug him.
He didn’t get to sell his bare little house in East Grinstead and retire to a nice home in Cork. He didn’t get to join the choir or help with the musical society or go for pints at the cross with Dad. 
They should have had that. Dad, and his little brother, retired together and jolly.
I am angry that Dad won’t be able to go for pints at the cross for much longer himself.
I am angry at my six-year-old self for telling him to quit smoking, and at his insides for somehow avoiding the genetically predisposed pancreatic cancer but instead falling victim to my six-year-old’s lung cancer prediction. 
That little witch.

We are all coping in different ways. I haven’t figured out all the ways yet, and I probably won’t until afterwards. I’m writing all this down. Is this how I’m coping? I’m not sure. 
My sister is determined that the two weeks after the news breaks will just have to go according to her existing plans and that she will have to deal with it all after that. She has a hen party, and a birthday, and work obviously, and too-much-on to fall apart, and she certainly won’t fall apart so long as there are no changes to her schedule, and she can keep a tight grip on the reins. 
My other sister smashes this rigid schedule fairly sharpish, asking last minute if she can stay over the night before she goes to Scotland, throwing that evening's plans into complete disarray. I am very understanding about all this on the phone. I like a tight grip on the reins myself. 
I also explain, in what is probably a very annoying faux-zen manner, that all we can control is our own response to things, that we should look on the plans for the next few weeks more as buoys, floating in a sea of uncertainty. Those events, those moments in time, will keep us afloat, will do their job. They are little things we can actually control and focus on. 
On that note, I remind my sister of the sibling summit, saying I will confirm the time and place once I have booked it. I ring the restaurant and when they don’t take bookings, I flip from zen master to unhinged lunatic in the blink of an eye, ready to smash my phone into little glass, copper, manganese, and tellurium smithereens.

The sibling summit, featuring my daughter, is an opportunity for the four of us to discuss our emotions, lightly bitch about our parents and how they are coping (or not), talk around how the rest of us are all coping (or not), plan the funeral (again/more), while we eat some nice breakfast, compare text messages from our relations, talk about Dad’s birthday in a few weeks, decide if we can book Hamilton for 2024 (for five family members instead of six) or if that would be in bad taste, and of course, remind one another to have black clothes ready.
I don’t really wear black, other than occasional running gear, and with the bad news comes the realisation that I will have to buy a black dress, or two, because of course there’ll be the removal as well. I recognise my own ridiculousness, but it is one thing I can control in all this. The sister is one step ahead of me: black dresses are on the way from ASOS. 
The brother and other sister hum and haw. 
The brother remembers Leo’s funeral in England. The awful iron at The Crown Plaza Hotel. The graduation suit he no longer fit into. The swearing in the hotel room we shared as he attempted to squeeze his new arse into old trousers.
Talk of black clothes and the end provides a focus. And somehow, it’s easier to talk about the end, than the present. And certainly easier than the near future. 
The cough will get worse. Dad will get sicker. He will need to go to hospital before it’s time to call an ambulance or he will be brought to CUH instead of the Bons and heaven knows we don’t want that, apparently. After the hospital it’s likely to be Marymount Hospice. I realise I have never visited Marymount. 
My Google searches are stranger than normal. Marymount, hospice care, types of chemo, gemcitabine, lung cancer, black dress, murders in Co Clare, running shoes, counselling, marathons, a black and gold belt to go with a black dress, Hamilton, do charity shops take teddies? and why can’t you get radiation therapy in late-stage cancer?

When I come home after the death sentence I have to write or sort. It’s just what I have to do. 
So, I take out the box of letters we found in the attic during one of the early clear-out sessions. It is large and pink and dusty, and full of ancient correspondence – the love between my grandparents.
I remove all the letters from the box and start putting them in order. The British postmarks are much clearer than the Irish ones. On some letters Granny has written the date on the front. Others I must open to check and resist the urge to start reading. I can’t get lost right now. I need to organise. 
I have a particularly good shoebox that I’ve been keeping. It held a pair of Sèzane trainers that my husband got me for my birthday. It is exactly the right size for the letters. I knew it would be. However, it is not long enough for all the letters, and I realise I will have to put the letters from my grandfather in one, and the responses from Granny in another. But I do not have a second particularly good shoebox. 
I consider buying a second pair of Sèzane trainers, mostly for the shoebox. There’s a pair on Depop, second-hand, but then they might not have the box, or if they do, who knows what condition it will be in. I can’t afford a hundred euro on a new pair of trainers I already have for the sake of a shoebox, but I don’t shelve the idea. I still haven’t shelved the idea.
If I write all this down – the organising, the letters, the sorting of the attic, the clearing of the house, the death of my father – will I remember it as it was, or will I remember the story I am telling now, that I am telling here, that I am telling myself?
Do we ever really remember things as they were? 
Do we ever really remember them more than once? 
Or is every remembrance after the first just a memory of a memory? Like a photocopy of a photocopy – less reliable, less detailed, less greyscale… more black-and-white? At what point does it become a story? When does it become just words on a page? And what about the feelings attached?
At what point in our lives do we start to truly remember things?
I don’t know what my first memory is. 

We are watching our daughter splashing about in the bath, pouring one tiny container of water into another then into the bath itself. She is pure joy. Until I try to rinse her hair. 
NO MAMMY. There’s a lot of NO MAMMY at the moment.
“It’s mad she won’t remember any of this,” says my husband, not for the first time in our daughter’s little life. 
	There are so many moments we will have forever that she will never know, despite being there, despite being the main event. The projectile pesto-style poo that first day we brought her home from the hospital (thank goodness the carpet was green and old). Bopping around the bed to DJ Jean’s The Launch. Her tiny hand finding and putting the dummy into her own mouth for the first time. Her first day in the crèche. Eating gyoza in Limerick on a summer’s day during lockdown. The first few times she said YEAH before discovering the infinitely more satisfying NO. Shaking her little finger at us, scolding. The first time we brought her onto the beach in the sling. The first time she walked onto the beach. That time I walked her into a door frame in Co Clare (I mean it’s probably good she doesn’t remember this one and also no indication of a brain injury, right?). That fucking crow she was afraid of for two weeks even though he never existed. The children’s book festival in Lismore, complete with dancing, chocolate crêpes, circus performers, a giant snail, fern resin in her hair from exploring the gardens… She was nearly two and a half then and won’t remember it, even though for the next few days all she would talk about was BOOKS and CASTLE. 
	We watch her now. 
BUBBLE, MAMMY. DADDY, BUBBLE. 
Her vocabulary is increasing exponentially. She has always been able to make her meaning clear, but now we are getting full sentences and orders. 
MAMMY, DADDY, NO, I WANT YELLOW QUACK. 
My husband hands her a rubber ducky dressed like Vincent Van Gogh, who he thinks is the image of Gerry Adams.
	“There’s Gerry now,” he says, looking at me, waiting for me to tut or laugh or correct him but I am still thinking.
Instead, in response to his previous comment about remembering, I start rambling. 
I am pouring out thoughts about our daughter maybe having a sense of things, and how she won’t have distinct memories of these early years, but how they form so much of what she thinks and what she likes and what she knows and who she knows… I trail off.
These things keep hitting me. Winding me. 
“She won’t remember my dad,” I say quietly.
I keep my eyes fixed on the tiny human in the bath, aware that my husband’s eyes are fixed on me.
“Hey, what’s this?” I say, holding out an upturned floppy hand. 
I wait, then flip it. “It’s a dead one of these.”