When All Is Said

by Anne Griffin

They say women are good talkers. If that is true, then your mother was the exception. I didn’t know her to have many friends around; acquaintances sure, but no one really close. Early on I suppose, when we were just married, she may have spoken to her mother. But I’m not convinced of that either. Their relationship didn’t strike me as being that type. There was a love but of the Irish kind, reserved and embarrassed by its own humanity. These days people are all for talking. Getting things off their chest. Like it’s easy. Men, in particular, get a lot of stick for not pulling their weight in that quarter. And as for Irish men. I’ve news for you, it’s worse as you get older. It’s like we tunnel ourselves deeper into our aloneness. Solving our problems on our own. Men, sitting alone at bars going over and over the same old territory in their heads. Sure, if you were sitting right beside me, son, you’d know none of this. I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s all grand up here in my head but to say it out loud to the world, to a living being? It’s not like we were reared to it. Or taught it in school. Or that it was preached from the pulpit. It’s no wonder at the age of thirty or forty or eighty no less, we can’t just turn our hand to it. Engineers are not born with the knowledge of how to construct a bridge. It has to be learned. But despite all of that for some reason, back then, with all that hurt and absence in our lives, I felt the urge to give it a go.