I have an urge to write about her at this time of year, always. She appears in our awareness, dreams, conversations, and hurts. It is twenty years, hard to get my head around that. Nevertheless, the family has kept going: A business, an apartment in France, major illnesses, graduation, marriage, grandchildren, COVID, becoming the old generation, and retirement. Still, there is the permanent aching loss. The state of the world sometimes puts it into context and then again not. It is unique to us and has put its stamp on us in a unique way. We mark her passing on 1^st August, as always. Twenty years missing you, Aoife.

So, the usual plea: Read, pass it on, and send comments using the mail below. 

Twenty Years of Undoing

A nurse listened as for the nth time

I recounted the events surrounding

your whirlwind departure

We shared lunch with a couple

who are in their second year swamped

in that black hole of absence

I mind the time you decided

in your infant child wisdom

how unfit we were as parents

With your younger sister you gathered

important items into bags – dolls and teddies

books pjs toothbrush - the both of you

arrived downstairs - faced us with

our deficiencies - laid out plans to leave

and set up home with Mamo and Papa

- then asked would we drive you there

Peter Clarke

July 2024