Where mirrors bounced darkness backward and forward as if it was a game and the playground was his mind. Then, he was aware, as his eyes crawled through this haze and were greeted with light.

He was standing on a pavement, on a street, in front of some sort of building. The top half of the building was pale yellow and had windows that had many smaller panes of glass encased by a white wooden frame. The bottom half was black, a deep black, like oil and had a wooden shell. Just below the division of these two colours were the words “The Drop Inn,” painted in dark gold. As his eyes cascaded down the building they abruptly stopped as they reached the door. A sign on one of the glass panes had the word “ENTER,” printed on it. He walked in a straight line as he had been standing directly across from the doorway. He reached his withered hand out for the door but just as his fingers met the dead wood the door was ripped open from the other side and there stood a man with thick black rimmed glasses and dirty yellow teeth. The mans lips moved as if to speak, but he hesitated, as if the words that trembled his throat seized up and retreated back down, into his stomach. He shuffled his feet then began to walk and as he brushed past he said, as if to himself, “goodnight Paddy,” and then he was gone into the stillness of the night.

The door stood open in front of him as the stranger had left it so. He wandered in unaware of what lay inside yet he wasn’t scared or hesitant. The pub had no peculiar design. To the left was the bar and to the right there were tables and chairs. The bar turned to the left at the end and behind there were a few more tables and chairs. The place was empty except for two elderly gentlemen who were seated at the end of the bar. A man then appeared from behind the bar, “hello sir, why don’t you take seat”. His voice was soft and gentle and as the words left his mouth his hand motioned downwards resting just at his waist. The man standing in front of him looked down to his left and there was a stool and in his own time he sat down, circling the stool once for assurance. A voice then stirred at the other end of the bar with the words “give Paddy one on me Stephen,” yet this was met with “ah Tommy will ya get out of that sure there is enough in the jar to get an elephant hammered,” and as these words were spoken, Stephen Sorrow, manager of this fine establishment reached under the bar and produced a large glass jar. The jar was three quarters full with money, both coins and notes, and it all rose just above a white label that read “PADDYS MEMORY,” in big blue letters. People had been so kind since the alzheimers had destroyed his father, it had restored his faith in God.

Paddy was sitting on the stool, mouth open, taking everything and nothing in as his son poured him his first of seven nightly pints of Guinness. Seven was the magic number, Stephen had discovered, to entice the memories into his head, to allow him to look at his son as a loved one and not a stranger. Paddy drank the pints quickly as if he had forgotten he had just taken a swig as his lips dived back for the rim of the glass. The disease had taken over his mind two years earlier after the death of his wife, Angela. She was coming back from visiting her sister in Galway when she had a head on collision with a truck. She was killed instantly yet the truck driver took two weeks to die. He had fallen asleep at the wheel and veered over to the other side of the road smashing into Angelas car. He was thirty three and had a wife and two young daughters, she was sixty four and had a husband and one son. Paddy couldn’t express the pain he felt so he buried it inside himself, deep down, so he couldn’t feel it, so he couldn’t feel anything. This is what the doctors said brought on the disease, that his body just couldn’t take the stress and over the last two years he had been slowly deteriorating.

It had started out with small things forgetting to meet friends and his own birthday but Stephens heart broke the day he knew he had lost his father. Stephen had gone round to the flat to pick his father up for mass. First he just knocked on the door but he got no answer, knowing his father had lost his hearing a bit he began banging on the door and shouting through the letterbox. There was still no answer even after ringing the house so he became worried and rang for an ambulance. Since he had forgotten his key he decided to waste no time and kick the door in and after five powerful blows the door was down and he was inside. With pictures in his mind of his father stretched out on the floor dying he rushed into each room yet as he entered the kitchen he stopped dead. Breathing heavily he tried to take it all in. The kitchen table had been overturned and behind it was his father half standing , half crouching. He was completely naked and in his hand he held a golf club with a white tea towel attached to the end of it. He was swaying it slowly from side to side, a terrified look in his childlike eyes. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and took him to hospital. He was diagnosed with alzheimers then. In a breath Stephen had lost his mother yet his father was going to die of torture and he was going to be doing it to himself.

Paddy had just finished his sixth pint and the surroundings began to become familiar. He took a big slug out of his final pint and looked up to meet his sons eyes. “Stephen,” “yes da,” “don’t let me have too many, your mother will be home early tomorrow and she ¢ ll give me a right ear bashin if I stink of gargle”. Stephen smiled “don’t worry da, I ¢ ll watch ya”. The two men sitting at the end of the bar got off there seats and made for the door, there gaunt faces grimacing at the thought of the cold night air. As they passed Paddy turned around on his chair, “ ah Tommy how are ya?” Tommy stopped in his tracks “ eh good Paddy good, hows yourself?” were the only words he could get out. “ Ah I can ¢ t complain sure aren ¢ t we all just countin to infinity anyway”. Tommy laughed and turned for the door and the last words to be heard were “goodnite Stephen”. The pub was dead quiet now as Stephen had begun to close up for the night. Paddy sat glued to the stool staring into space and he remembered the boardwalk at Capecod and seeing so many people at once after spending so much time at sea. “They are like sheep,“ one of the lads had said as they unloaded the boat, but Paddy didn’t see it, they weren’t sheep they were like the sea, flowing in different directions, some parts deep and others shallow. After that he never felt lonely at sea again because as he lay in bed at night he felt the whole world rock him gently to sleep.

He jumped suddenly as a hand came down on his shoulder, “come on da, time for bed”. He grumbled twice as Stephen helped him to his feet and up the backstairs to the flat where the two lived. Paddys feet shifted awkwardly as his son manoeuvred him through the doorway and onto his bed. As he slumped onto the mattress the water wobbled then settled slowly as his body lay to rest. “ Like the ocean Stephen, like the ocean,” he slurred. “ Like the ocean,” Stephen replied as he turned off the light and closed the door and as the floor boards creaked as he made his way to his own room he laughed as he thought of his dad waking up in the morning with a hangover and not remembering even having a drink.