Oisin Clark lives at number 2, Nether Oak Close. This fact has not changed, despite everything else doing so. His father died six months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By most outward measures, Oisin has done grief properly. He has moved through the stages as defined by Elisabeth K\u00fcbler\u2011Ross, shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, though never in that order, and rarely one at a time. If there were certificates handed out, he suspects he would have earned one. What remains now is a sense of emptiness that arrives without warning, with tears never far behind it. Six months, he has learned, is both a long time and no time at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some things have changed. Others stubbornly have not. His father\u2019s mug, the chipped one with the faded joke “Teachers do not die, they just lose their class”, still sits at the back of the cupboard. Oisin neither uses it nor throws it away. It occupies its space like a truce neither side wishes to test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dog needs walking regardless. Grief, Oisin has discovered, does not exempt anyone from routine, least of all dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That afternoon the park is ordinary in the way parks usually are, damp grass, tired benches, the distant sound of a child laughing and immediately falling over and crying for “Muuuuuuuum!”. Oisin walks without much attention to where he is going, letting the dog set the pace. Halfway around the loop, the dog stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is unusual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Normally, it ignores strangers with polite indifference. Today, however, it plants its feet and leans into the outstretched hand of an old man sitting on a bench, allowing itself to be patted with the solemn concentration of a creature convinced this is exactly what it was born to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell,\u201d Oisin says, more to the dog than the man, \u201cyou\u2019re clearly making friends without me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man looks up and smiles, as if he has been expecting precisely this moment and no other. He is slight, wrapped in a coat that seems older than fashion, his hair white and unruly. His eyes are sharp, amused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe knows,\u201d he says, his accent thick, unfamiliar. \u201cDogs often do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin shrugs. \u201cThat makes one of you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man chuckles, a sound like gravel poured gently into cloth. \u201cMost people do just not when alive.\u201d He pauses, then adds, \u201cI am called Ogmios.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOisin,\u201d he replies, after a moment. \u201cAnd apparently this is my dog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAww\u2011sheen,\u201d Ogmios says, tasting the name. \u201cNames were heavier in my day. You could stub a toe on them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin smiles despite himself and sits at the far end of the bench. The dog settles between them, paws on Oisin\u2019s knee, content, having clearly chosen sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have a side occupation,\u201d Ogmios continues, scratching behind the dog\u2019s ears. \u201cI am tasked with looking after human Eloquence, mostly. And when required, I guide the dead from one place to another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin considers this. He has found that agreeing with strange statements is often the quickest way through them. \u201cOf course you do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ogmios turns to him. \u201cTell me,\u201d he says gently, \u201cwhat is it that troubles you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question lands without force, without expectation. Oisin immediately distrusts this. Questions are rarely so polite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He exhales anyway. \u201cMy father died,\u201d he says. \u201cSix months ago. He was\u2026 central. And I thought by now things would feel normal again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ogmios laughs, not unkindly, though there is a hint of delight in it, as if Oisin has stepped exactly where the path intended. \u201cNormal,\u201d he repeats. \u201cI have known millions of souls, and not one of them would answer to that name. Life has only the faintest outline of what it intends to be. Most days it wanders off, distracted by a pretty flower,a squirrel in a tree, or the death of a father, and becomes something else entirely. Still ordinary. Just ordinary with an extraordinary shine\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin looks down. The dog sighs and presses its weight more firmly against him, a small but decisive vote of confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe dead,\u201d Ogmios says, more softly now, \u201care never finished with the living. They move quietly through them, borrowing breath and memory, shaping what remains. Someday you will join them, not as a loss, but as a weight added to the world. A pressure that makes each moment matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin looks up, then around the park, checking, briefly and without much hope, for hidden cameras, dramatic lighting, or any other sign that this is not a perfectly normal afternoon gone somewhat weirdly wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He does not feel a revelation so much as a disturbance. An idea settling where it has not been invited. He thinks of his father, foremost among a crowd. Not watching. Not judging. Simply present, as soil is present around the roots of a tree. Every step he has taken has been crowded with footsteps that ended before his own. The thought is unsettling. It is also, annoyingly, comforting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ogmios tilts his head. \u201cWhat endures is not the pain, but the fact that it was earned. To have been changed is not a failure of survival. It is its own evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin is silent for a long time and Ogmios reaches in his pocket and takes out a half eaten cheese sandwich, which is pulls apart and scatters on the grass infront of the bench. Two large ravens, feathers Iridescent in the afternoon sun flutter down from a nearby tree. Ogmios nodded at them and one stopped pecking and nodded back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin understands, or at least suspects, that he will not last, and that this will not be an erasure. He is not entirely convinced. Still, the idea lodges itself stubbornly in his chest, refusing to be dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stands. The dog licks Ogmios\u2019 outstretched hand with the easy familiarity of someone saying goodbye to an old friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d Oisin says, uncertain exactly what he is thanking him for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ogmios inclines his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oisin walks out of the park and home, to continue his life. Nothing has been resolved. His father is still dead. Tomorrow will still arrive. But the path feels wider than it did an hour ago, and that, for now, is enough, his journey continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Grief does not pass; it changes shape. At first it arrives like a tsunami of tears, and later as something quieter\u2014an ache that dulls, a tear that comes less often, but never quite leaves the edge of memory.<\/p>\n
This came home to me at a concert Val and I attended. One of the support acts played a song called \u201cCrow\u201d to a crowd of over ten thousand people. Written for the singer\u2019s father figure, the crow becomes a stand-in for memory itself\u2014persistent, sometimes haunting, a mixture of love, loss, and the difficulty of moving on.<\/p>\n
Around the same time, I listened to an Irish actor reading \u201cThe Dead\u201d by James Joyce. What struck me was not the story itself, but the ending: the quiet realization that the dead continue to live within us, and that one day we too will survive only as memory. In Joyce\u2019s hands, this is not despair, but a profound affirmation of life.<\/p>\n
So this story is “after” James Joyce and Andrew Davie and probably not as good as either and dedicated to all those that grieve<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","category-nether-oak-close-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n