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and her thoughts blurry.
    Enough.
    She was sitting on her kitchen floor, moaning and halfheartedly attempting to sweep the fruits of her destruction
    into a dustpan when the doorbell rang.
    “Fuck off!” she roared knowing that it was impossible for any prospective visitor to actually hear her four floors
    down on a busy street. She answered on the fifth ring. It was her mother.
    “Clodagh, let me in!”
    “I want to be alone.”
    “Let me in for Christ’s sake!”
    “Just fuck off!”
    She buzzed her mother inside. She surveyed the kitchen while her mother ascended in the lift.
    “Just leave me alone!” she roared at the counter before smashing the plate that lay inoffensively in the kitchen
    sink. She answered the door a minute later.
     
    “Oh love! Come here to me, you’ve snots halfway down your face.” Her mother took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose. “Blow!”
    She blew hard and her mother held her while she
    cried and swore. Her mother cried too.
    Later, exhausted, Clodagh asked her mother to speak about the father she had been too young to know.
    “He loved the Boomtown Rats. He loved their restlessness, their anger. He was political. He wanted change. Old Ireland is dead and gone, he’d say. He was passionately opinionated!’
    She was smiling. Clo watched her softening with each memory.
    “When he laughed the room laughed with him,” she said, still smiling. “He was stubborn just like you.” Clo smiled, not offended.
    “He was always right even when he wasn’t. He loved the beach and he loved boats.”
    Clo made a mental note to replace the boat picture. “He was an overachiever — he always had a moneymaking
    scheme under his sleeve. He could drive me insane.” “Like me,” Clo said, attempting a smile.
    “Like you,” her mother admitted, stroking her hair. The Hallmark moment passed quickly and Clo felt the
    heat rising inside.
    “It’s not fair. I’m so angry!” she spat.
    “I know you are,” her mother agreed. “The state of the kitchen is a testament to that!’
    Clo couldn’t help but laugh. She was under the impression that her mother hadn’t noticed the contents of
    the other room.
     
    “You know, when your dad died you were only five, but on the day of the funeral you broke every single cup
    and saucer in your play set and they were plastic. I knew then that you understood that your dad wasn’t coming
    back. That was your way. Times haven’t changed.”
    Clodagh dissolved. “How?” she asked.
    “Well, you’re still smashing things,” her mother responded.
    Clo cried, for her mother, her friend, for me, for herself All the while her mother held her, safe in the knowledge that she would survive.
     
    Bargaining
    Noel called in every few days. He’d stay long enough to know that I was OK. Then he’d leave. He spent most of his time praying. He and John had been friends … no, they were closer than that. They grew up together. Noel was two years older than John, but they clicked. John admired all the traits that I had initially found so offensive. He liked that Noel didn’t follow the crowd — he liked talking with him about something other than the usual
    football, cars, girl conversations that ruled his universe. John made Noel laugh out loud and until he was sore in
    places. He would miss that. He would miss their religious debates; God versus science was an old favourite which they would return to over and over again.
    God, please, don’t let me forget! If you had to take him, please allow me to hear his laugh!
    He wished he could tell us that John was at peace and
    that his death meant his resurrection in heaven and that
    we should be happy for him, that we should celebrate his
     
    homecoming. He couldn’t. His heart wasn’t in it. He missed his friend too much.
    Please, God, make me understand.
    He was working through his pain the only way he
    knew how. He said Mass; he visited the old folks’ home, the hospital; he gave a scheduled talk