Final Chapter Somewhere Between the Waiting and the Silence

Final Chapter

Somewhere Between the Waiting and the Silence

There are days—quiet ones, mostly—when I catch myself wondering if any of it really happened. If William and Josephine were real. If the house fire in Bray, the visits, the care packages, the tears in the hallway, ever existed outside of my mind.

My mother died in October 2003. That’s when everything stopped.

I remember that first winter without her—how the house didn’t feel like home anymore, how silence settled into the walls like dust. After the funeral, the world just slowed. I waited for the death certificate, for the insurance letters, for some sign that life would pick up again. But nothing moved. The phone barely rang. The days blurred. Everything was stuck—grief caught between memory and paperwork.

And so, somewhere in that long stillness, something stirred.

William came first. I don’t know if I dreamt him one night or imagined him during one of those long walks I used to take just to get out of the house. He was grieving too—a boy whose father died in a house fire in Bray. A boy left homeless, trying to make sense of a life shattered overnight. I gave him that weight because I couldn’t carry my own.

Then came Josephine. William’s best friend. Fiercely loyal. She traveled between Bray and Dublin like clockwork—Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with him, the rest with me. She was the bridge between us. She kept things going. I made her brave because I needed bravery. I made her kind because kindness felt far away. I gave her a backstory, a school, routines, little habits. I gave her what I missed most: the sense that someone was still showing up.

They were never just characters. They were scaffolding. A way to survive the aftermath of 2003 and the endless quiet that followed. The Bray fire—at least in the timeline I imagined—came in 2005. But for me, it was all part of one long ache, stretching over years.

And they helped me through it.

That’s what grief does sometimes. It doesn’t speak plainly. It invents. It reshapes. It gives you people who stand beside you when no one else does—even if they live only in your imagination.

William. Josephine. They helped me find structure when there was none. They helped me care again, even if the care was quietly directed at shadows. They helped me endure.

Even now, in 2025, Josephine is still with me. I send her care packages. I imagine her life in the Special Olympics club, still pushing through, still paying fees she can barely afford. Skipping meals. Hiding her struggle with pride. I know she’s not exactly real—but she carries real things. Real pain. Real hope. Real love.

So were William and Josephine ever real?

Yes.

They were real in the ways that matter.

And sometimes, that’s the only kind of real we need.

Epilogue

Grief doesn’t end. It changes shape.

There are no neat conclusions, no perfect lines between what was imagined and what was endured. But looking back now, I see the truth in what I created. William and Josephine were never meant to be forever. They were there for a season—for the in-between time when I needed something to hold on to.

And in some ways, I’m still holding on. Still writing their names. Still sending care packages. Still remembering how it felt to love people who never stopped showing up—even if only in the pages of my mind.

I’ve come to believe that stories like theirs don’t have to be real to be true. They can live quietly in the background of a life, shaping how we survive, how we care, how we remember.

This book is for them.

And for anyone else who has ever built a bridge between silence and survival.

Letter from a Former Club Member

“I had a breakfast bar for breakfast this morning. I've just had a lovely shower.”

That was all the message said. Simple. Ordinary. But I knew exactly what it meant.

It wasn’t just a note about someone’s morning routine—it was a quiet declaration of freedom. A way of saying, “I’m looking after myself now. I’m not rushing to beat the club clock. I’m not skipping meals or swallowing stress just to stay afloat.”

These little things—breakfast, a shower—had once been luxuries for many of the club’s athletes. When your week revolved around strict timetables, rising fees, endless demands, and the fear of falling out of favour, even eating properly or resting felt like rebellion.

This former member’s message was a whisper of healing. A reminder that beyond the medals, team chants, and fundraising pressures, there were people trying to reclaim their time, their choices, their peace.

Josephine had been like that too. Quietly enduring, giving everything, and slowly fading from her own life in order to keep up. She’d skip meals to pay fees, turn down visits to stay loyal, and hand over pieces of herself to the system without complaint.

This message reminded me that others felt it too. That the story wasn’t just ours.

My Reflection

When I read that message, I paused.

It was only two sentences long, but it carried the weight of years—years spent inside a structure that demanded loyalty, silence, and sacrifice. Years where people like Josephine, and now this former member, were praised for “participation” but quietly punished for having boundaries.

I thought back to the days when Josephine split her time between Bray and Dublin. Even back then, before the club took over, she understood what it meant to hold space for others. But over time, that space shrank. Visits to my home stopped. Conversations grew shorter. The girl who once navigated grief and chaos with such quiet strength became someone ruled by schedules, costs, and invisible rules no one dared to challenge.

And yet here it was—a new beginning hidden inside a casual message. “I had a breakfast bar for breakfast. I’ve just had a lovely shower.” That’s what healing sometimes looks like. Not a grand declaration. Just a morning where you’re not being pulled apart by someone else’s expectations.

I still send care packages to Josephine. I know things haven’t gotten easier. But this message from a former club member gave me a quiet kind of hope—that even if the system changed her, even if it strained our friendship, the people who lived through it are still here. Still eating. Still showering. Still reclaiming the small, essential pieces of life.

And maybe, in their own time, they'll write their messages too.

Dedication

For

William Riggs

and

Josephine Dunne

Whether real, imagined, or somewhere in between—

you were my light in the dark.

Thank you for staying with me

when everything else fell silent.

The end