In her last years, wheelchair bound and partially sighted, my mother began to notice trees.

She was in her mid-80s by this time, and had been an active woman throughout her life; a worker, a cleaner. She’d cleaned my first school in Stoneybatter (Dublin); then a clothes factory in the lanes behind Capel Street; a pub beside the pro-Cathedral, and finally Penneys in Mary Street, where she stayed until she retired. She loved her work, and I wasn’t sure she wanted to retire at all.

Retirement

She and my father – also retired – settled into a leisurely routine of friendly bickering, telly-watching, and minding the grandchildren. Then, when my dad passed away in 2000, she continued to look after my brother Alan’s children for the few hours between school closing and parents finishing work. I’m sure it helped her cope with the grieving process.

Phoenix Park

Trees had played little or no part in her life, up to now, as far as I remember. We’d always lived close to the Phoenix Park but my memories of being with her in the park were all about feeding the ducks, fishing for pinkeens, going to the zoo and picnics by the monument. I do remember her showing me and my brother the monkey puzzle trees in the People’s Gardens but that was because they looked and sounded so exciting, exotic even, to our young eyes and ears — I’m not sure it was a precursor to her later interest in trees — but

I could be wrong. Maybe she loved trees all her life and I was too young or too self-absorbed to notice. Maybe she kept it to herself. Maybe she told me and I’ve forgotten.

Sight

Her sight began to deteriorate in her mid-70s, and then further illness caused her to lose her mobility in her 80s. This is when I noticed how trees had become important for her. I lived in London at this point and so my return visits became more frequent as her care needs became more complex. Alan and his wife Theresa took on the major part of this care, and I returned when I could to fill in gaps and give them breaks.

‘Would you look at that—’ we were in the Phoenix Park walking along by the Garda Headquarters. Having been born around the corner, in the maze of little streets off Infirmary Road, it’s a part of Dublin that’s close to my heart (although I never — of course — when I was a kid, expected one day to be pushing my very elderly mother around those very same streets in a wheelchair).

Time

I checked to see where she was looking and sure enough it was at one of the massive chestnut trees that line the road there.

I stopped pushing and we both took time to admire the beauty of the lush green giant. ‘He’s been around a fair few years’ she remarked, admiringly.

‘He certainly has’, I agreed.

She laughed: ‘And sure he’ll be around long after us…’

So, it became a regular thing. Stopping to admire trees. Because of her sight impairment those magnificent shapes caught her eyes in a way that smaller objects simply couldn’t. But there was something else to it.

Something about the majesty of the trees, their apparent timelessness, and their unspeaking, unmoving witness to the world around them. ‘How did I get so old?’ she would sometimes ask, and I think she was only half joking. ‘I don’t feel like an old woman. Where did the time go?’

Trees and connection

She spent her final days in St Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park. Surrounded by trees. We’d take walks along to the Pope’s Cross, she in her chair, well wrapped up, me pushing. She’d loved the park all her life, so in most ways she was happy enough to be here.

At the beginning of her last week on earth we were in the hospital dining hall alone. I’d just got in from London late that afternoon. Alan and Theresa were having a much-needed holiday abroad. Mam’s health was precarious but none of us expected to lose her that week. Yet something was odd. Throughout her life, she’d been obsessed with draughts, with avoiding draughts; to sit in a draught was anathema to her.

Windows were always and without fail to be closed tightly in the evenings in case a draught got in. God forbid!

But this evening, in late April, she asked me to open the window for her. It was dusk outside. A full moon shone down, brightly. We were on the third floor of the hospital; the top floor. Eye to eye with the trees. They swayed lazily in a cool breeze, throwing shapes against a starry Dublin sky. You could hear the wind whisper in the leaves.

‘Are you sure you’re not in a draught there?’ I asked. But she didn’t reply. Then I saw her face light up as she gazed out the window: ‘Would you look at those trees out there… Aren’t they lovely…’

Pascal O’Loughlin is the Festival’s Festival Coordinator. If you’ve enjoyed Pascal’s writing, you can see another of Pascal’s tree stories here: https://treestory.me/ Pascal will also run an event during #LIF2024: All That Fall: A Listening Party. More info here.