by Fiona McKay

Read her story Visiting Time here

“Visiting Time” is a tiny piece I wrote one day during the first year of the pandemic, when I had been to visit my mother in her nearby nursing home. I live by the sea, so the drive is nice; the visits, less so. That particular day had a Kodachrome feel to it, as though the world had an Instagram filter already overlaid, and it gave an out-of-body feeling, as though I was driving through a 1950s movie. The sea was almost green.

My relationship with my mother is wonderful – if I am exactly the person she dictates. If I am too loud, or too large, or in a myriad of other ways fail to conform to her expectations, then things aren’t so good. Or weren’t, before the dementia, which is worse now than it was when I wrote the piece. On the day in question, and many others, I procrastinated my visit by taking a longer route, looping through the harbour, instead of taking the shortcut. I couldn’t face another discussion where the dead appeared and I was always in the wrong.

I thought, as I drove, of how things change, over the years. I thought of how my mother had attempted to control me for so much of my life, without me realising it. How confused I had been by the difference between what she said and how she acted. And I thought about how, even still, I was driving to see her every week. About how I was taking care of her finances and paperwork. About how I would keep doing these things even when she said terrible things to me. About how I continued to care, when maybe others might not. About the relationship between the child I had been and the adult I now was, and what that meant for the duty I had towards my mother. And I wondered if that day, she would introduce me to the staff of the nursing home, again, as her sister.

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Fiona McKay lives beside the sea in Dublin, Ireland with her husband and daughter. She writes flash fiction, short stories, and is also revising a novel. Writes with Writers’ HQ. Words in various places, including: Reflex Fiction, Janus Literary, Scrawl Place, Bath Flash, Lumiere Review, Lost Balloon. Supported by Arts Council Ireland Agility Award. Tweets about writing at @fionaemckayryan