The Clark's Shoe Box
My father, Dermot, was an auditor for the Irish Revenue Commissioners. He was a man of few syllables, pressed wool trousers, and strict ledger columns. In fifty-two years of marriage, none of us ever heard him deliver an emotional declaration of love or sentimental poem.
When he died of a sudden coronary in March 2023, my mother was too shattered to enter their bedroom. My sister and I took on the grim task of sorting through his wardrobe on Upper Rathmines Road.
Under the wire spring frame of the double bed, hidden behind two spare blankets, sat a green cardboard Clark's shoebox, secured with two thick rubber bands that had perished and crystallized with age.
The Museum of an Unspoken Life
We sat on the carpet and opened the lid. What lay inside made my knees buckle.
At the very bottom was a faded paper ticket to the Savoy Cinema on O'Connell Street dated October 14, 1971: *'Love Story - 8:00 PM'*. Written on the back in my mother’s youthful handwriting: *'Dermot paid for my Maltesers.'*
Layered above it was the receipt for the maternity hospital delivery fee from the Rotunda when I was born in 1976. The blue plastic identification wristband from my sister's birth in 1980. A torn bus schedule from our only family holiday to Kerry in 1985. And twenty-two dry, pressed hydrangea petals from my mother’s bridal bouquet.
The Love That Kept the Books
Men of that generation in Ireland were emotionally muted by societal convention. They were taught that feelings were unseemly and vulnerability was dangerous. But my father wasn't cold; he was an archivist of devotion.
Every time my mother felt unloved because he didn't buy roses on Valentine’s Day, he was quietly preserving her footprint in a green shoebox beneath their bed.
When I handed the box to my mother, she held those cinema tickets against her eyes and wept for three hours. Solas Haven holds our tribute to Dermot Gallagher: love isn't always shouted from rooftops; sometimes it is filed away in quiet cardboard reverence.
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