Knock Knock, Open Wide

by Neil Sharpson

“Why tell me all this?” she asked. When he spoke, his voice was soft and almost regretful. “Promises were made,” he whispered. “Promises were not kept. So, maybe I’m feeling a bit bold, too.” “What promises?” she asked. “What do you think happens when you die?” he asked her. She did not need to think. “Nothing,” she said. “Blackness. Silence.” He gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “Sweet merciful Jesus,” he whispered. “We should be so lucky.”

Instead, Ashling tried to write a letter and wept with frustration when she realized that beautiful flashes of inspiration did not magically occur even when you needed them most desperately. The words wandered dumbly on the page, stunned and meandering like sheep without a dog to guide them. In the end she simply wrote: “I love you. I love you. I love you. I always will,” and left it on her pillow.

A minute crawled by, in which empires must have risen and fallen, and risen again.

“The question, child, is what are you willing to do?” Mairéad asked. “To save Betty, what would you be willing to do?” “Anything,” Ashling said. And she knew it was true. “I’d die for her.” “Dying is easy,” Mairéad said dismissively. “What we are going to ask of you is so much harder than dying.” Ashling swallowed nervously. “What is it?” she asked. “The opposite.”

“If I may offer some advice, I have always envied those who knew not the hour nor the day of their ending. Time is not stone. Days can be years if lived wisely. Years can be lifetimes. Find your joy where you can. Live now. Live well.

Sayers has often been unfairly held up as a scapegoat for the failure of Irish language education policy in the Republic of Ireland, as her autobiography, Peig, was a core syllabus text for many years. It is my personal opinion that if her presence on the curriculum had consisted less of accounts of the bleakness of Irish peasant life at the turn of the century and more farmers’ wives cuckolding their husbands with corpses possessed by the devil, the Irish language would be in rude and glowing health today. Ah well. The century is still young.

I have an aunt Mary, who is lovely. This is not surprising. I’m Irish. If, through some exceptional circumstances, you are born without an aunt Mary, one is provided for you by the government along with your birth certificate and book of grievances.