I wonder how Gran feels when she looks at the empty space on the headstone

In April 2022, The Irish Times deputy foreign editor Dave McKechnie died unexpectedly. He was a highly valued colleague who left behind a rich journalistic legacy.
A gifted editor with a background in subediting, Dave McKechnie was also an accomplished reporter and writer. As well as landmark reports from Colombia and Myanmar, he also had a long track record in sports journalism. His work across all subjects showed considerable insight and flair and no little humour.
To commemorate his work, The Irish Times launched a journalism prize in his memory. The Irish Times Dave McKechnie Memorial Journalism Prize took the form of a writing competition.
The winner was Liz Cookman with her Letter from Ukraine. The first runner up was Ailbhe McMahon with her Letter from Varanasi. The second runner up in the competition was Sorcha Lanigan.
The school playground across the road is eerily silent, swings flailing in the August breeze, the chalk used on the hopscotch game is faded against the tarmac. The church bell rings a solitary chime as I pull into her driveway and she’s there behind the window waiting, soft little white face beaming. The big old sycamore tree’s palette of red and yellow leaves dance and flicker against the sunlight, casting a kaleidoscope of colours over her small dusty garden.
I give her a big hug. She’s small and plump and smells of soap and cigarettes, I’m towering over her and notice her pink scalp through the strands of limp white hair. More pink seems to appear every year. “You finally made it!” she smiles.
We go for a walk, the air has that tang of soot and prickly scent of decaying autumn leaves that smell like fresh pencil shavings. We pass Moloney’s butcher shop, the burnt out petrol station-cum-Chinese restaurant, the brand new Centra with bright logos, pots of flowers and fresh paint that look so jarring against the backdrop of a town that sags into its streets. A little girl is pulling on her mother’s hand walking in front of us, a truck blares past and honks the horn. Gran waves cheerily.
We pick up her groceries and I carry the bag, laid down with sausages and freesias and ginger ale and Werther’s Originals, all the things she enjoys but hopes that I like too.
We walk past the green motor sign “Welcome to Athlone”. The gate swings forward too quickly as it always did when we open it, our feet crunching against the stone gravel. I hold the gate open for her, noticing how much slower her pace is since I last saw her. She’s a little out of breath and holds on to my arm for support. We make our way through the maze of winding paths, she knows the way off by heart. Names embossed in gold on marble headstones wink in the sunlight. I catch the eye of a silver plastic angel sitting on a cross.
Trudy, 2008-2016; James, 2002-2007; Diamond, 2003-2011. I always found the children’s ones hardest to look at. As we go further along, she points out the names of people she knew in the town – Agnes who would phone her every week for games night; Tom who liked to call in to play the tin whistle in exchange for a cup of tea. We pass pictures of happy faces with the years marked underneath, until we come to the grave she’s looking for. She lays down the small bouquet of purple freesias that we got in Centra for €2.
The headstone has the name and the date, with a conspicuously large space underneath for a second name to be added someday. I peep at Gran as she stands there, observing her as she observes the grave, her watery blue eyes blinking behind her big tortoiseshell glasses. I wonder how she feels when she looks at the empty space. We stand there for a while, and I listen to the pigeons cooing and rustling in the trees nearby and the traffic out on the road as it gets busier. Eventually she squeezes my arm and we make our way back to the house.
Gran fries the sausages while I set the table, using the old plastic placemats with the tropical birds. Mam used to whisper to me to set her aside a different cup that she could boil and sterilise before drinking from it each time she visited. I think of this absent-mindedly as I pour ginger ale into the red cups. I watch Gran as she stoops to throw out bread crusts for the birds. She told me before about the little robin that sits on her windowsill every morning and how she watches for him all day sometimes.
I finger the plastic cord of the red telephone set on the wall. I can’t remember the last time I heard it ring. Gran has hung cards we used to make her next to the telephone, old scratches of paper thick with uneven splotches of paint, blue-tacked on to the beige paisley wallpaper. I smile.
After dinner we do the crossword puzzle together, and she’s sharp as a magpie, eyes glinting as her shaky hand with its gnarled little fingers scrawls each word carefully into the boxes.
I clean up the plates and she dozes off on the couch as we watch Coronation Street, surrounded by faces in framed photos of wedding days, graduation days, birthdays. I hug her goodnight and she gives me a tight squeeze, as if she’ll never see me again. When I get into my bed the electric blanket that she put on before I came has kept it toasty warm.
Sorcha Lanigan grew up in Cork and studied at University College Cork, University College London and Leiden University. She has recently moved to Arnhem, the Netherlands where she will begin work as the communications officer for a global healthcare organisation