They all called me the literary pen 
But she said she wouldn’t live it again 
And I felt flattened, raw 
Til I was thirty five in the great thaw
And it’s an age I haven’t reached as of yet 
But it’s also something I cannot forget 
And she was it all to me 
Twenty years since I saw myself future hence
Living with her in the past tense 
And it cuts like a knife 
To know that he and his wife
Are no longer around 
And every breath relays the sound 
Of the emptiness of a chair 
And the person that once sat there 
It’s purple and maroon 
And there was once life in that room 
And saying goodbye nearly killed my soul 
So I just roll 
With the tidal waves 
And the people nothing saves 
Except the angels who come to collect 
The edges of the dreams I have wrecked
I lay on the floor 
Of the bathroom I abhor 
Near the ward in Roscommon Hospital 
But there’s nothing soothing about the cross of it all 
Because I know what’s coming 
And she half raised this young ‘un
And the nightmare is that it’s true
And I know there’s is no keeping you 
Not in the way things were before 
Then I realised something about you, mo stór
My grandmother’s prayers are still protecting me 
Even when it seems life is rejecting me 
I have another fifty years to go to reach the age of depart 
And I thought my whole heart 
Went with you when you go 
Didn’t realise it meant that you stay with me though 
Because the thump thump in my chest 
Still holds the strings of those I love best
And the glass shatters all over the tiles
And I pick them up for miles and miles 
Because there is a coffin across the road 
And I can’t escape the road 
That we all must take 
Til I collapse and wake 
At the wake 
And the person I will not forsake 
Not for all the money or the tea in China 
Is that all it will take to remind ya 
That love lasts forever 
Not a memory of a lost endeavour 
That sank to the bottom of the ocean 
And all this emotion 
Comes in waves 
Like seasons come in days
Slowly, bit by bit 
I come to know who I’m walking with