As we drive across the city we keep seeing the cherry blossom in flower. We pass clusters of the tree in the city square and a small park, a bandage of colour on the washed-out cityscape. Single trees stand in front gardens, transformed in the past few days by the sprays of bunched flowers that gleam a pink luminescence. My mother seems transfixed by this harvest of colour that valiantly clings on, harried and bothered by the constant wind. There is a storm warning in operation, the first I ever remember in April. It is due to pass over soon. Nevertheless, it has upset our plans considerably.

     “There's another one,” my mother says pointing towards a lone cherry blossom at the entrance to a housing estate.

     The tree is thin and undernourished looking with only a few stunted branches. Still a few bunches of pink flowers have succeeded in blossoming.

     “It hangs on in the wind,” my mother says admiringly. “Isn’t nature wonderful?”

     Her voice now carries a soft rasp, and I can hear a slight catch in her breathing that is new.

     “How are you feeling?” I ask.

     “Oh fine,” she replies. “Tip-top.”

     I am bringing her for a medical appointment at three pm and we are running late. My mother has lung cancer. The treatment options available are limited and we are dealing with the repercussions of this. She has lost weight, and I sense an encroaching frailty. But for the moment all the routines are still in place. She is finding it impossible to locate anyone to cut an overgrown hedge. The NCT on her car is due. She wishes to renovate the upstairs bathroom.

     “You know in Japan,” my mother says, “the meteorological service forecasts the "Cherry Blossom Front" so that people know when they will flower. People gather for parties under the trees to view the flowers. It’s called the Hanami festival.”

     A gust of wind blows a ricocheting milk carton across the road, and I brake automatically. The sudden stop throws my mother forward against her seat belt She sighs loudly.

     “Sorry about that,” I murmur.

     When the storm warning was announced I wanted to cancel the appointment, but my mother would have none of it. She wants to stop at the tile showroom on the way home. That bathroom won’t renovate itself as she likes to say.

     I accelerate again and we pass a small hedge rimmed park, just off the road. One cherry blossom is glowing in pink, amongst the cluster of bare trees at its centre. My mother tilts her head and stares at it intensely.

     “You know the cherry blossom, was the tree of the samurai,” she says.

     “Really? The samurai? I’ve never heard that before.”

     “It’s true. Orlaith told me. She knows so much about Japanese history and culture. It’s an education. We will miss her, won’t we?”

     “Mmmm,” I murmur, not wanting to engage further in this conversation.

     Orlaith is the palliative care nurse that has recently come into our lives. She arrives at our house in a white Prius which I feel has a certain otherworldly quality to it. She sits with my mother in the living room and tries to talk about the reality of the situation. This I believe is known as the dying process. My mother will have none of it, instead preferring to quiz Orlaith about her life and varied travels. Patiently Orlaith talks about her time in Canada and her ten months working in the International Clinic in Tokyo. At some stage my mother decided that Orlaith was the perfect match for me. Her illness would bring us together. She loved the 1950’s melodrama of the idea. But as she freely admits to me and to anyone who will listen, I am a hard sell.

     “My son is divorced,” she told Orlaith on an early visit, “he lost his job in the University a few years back. The less said about that the better. These days the government is paying him to be my carer. It’s a great country, isn’t it?”

     She says all this with a strange resentment. My mother is one of those people who likes to blame the generous.

     “Anyway, just to be upfront,” she continued, “he has an overactive thyroid that causes him to overheat. Hence the man-in-shorts look that he has adopted. He’s thirty-eight but only learned to drive last year.

     “On the plus side he’s got most of his hair. He’ll get the house here. Not bad with the property market the way it is. How about we all share a cocktail next time you call? A margherita maybe?”

     I was mortified and yet because all of this seemed to take my mother’s mind off the reality of the situation, I passively played along. I have not dated any women since my marriage with Kristina ended five years ago and she returned to Poland. The thought of being intimate with another woman still seems impossible. But I did admit to my mother that Orlaith with her pixie haircut and broad smile was quite attractive. My mother was delighted. It was all very promising.

     But then this morning after her short call to the house, Orlaith announced that she was moving back to her homeplace in Cork. She said it in her dreamy and yet practical way as if this is all inevitable, like a salmon returning home.

     “You might have had a chance if you weren’t going around in shorts,” my mother barked at me, frustrated that yet again her plans for me had not worked out. 

     As we drive through the city, the streets are quiet. We see the odd pedestrian and worried tourist braving the weather. Most of the shops have closed and there is a despondent air in the city centre. I avoid the blown wheelie bins and overturned traffic cones that spill onto the road at certain points. At Woodquay we come upon a lone Guard standing at the roadside in high visibility gear. Behind him ESB workers are using a cherry picker van to repair wires that have been knocked by a fallen tree. My mother waves to the Guard who waves back with a weary smile.

     “Can we make a stop?” my mother asks. “It won’t take long.”

     “Where?”  

     “I want to look at the cherry blossom in the University. We’re practically there anyway.”

     “It’s not really the day for it,” I counter.  “With the storm.”

     “You take the day that you’re given,” my mother replies assertively.

     I haven’t been back to the University. Not since I left my lecturing position which is a whole other story. But given the circumstances it doesn’t seem the time or place to voice my misgivings. And so, I grit my teeth and take the next right turn into the main entrance. We pass the nineteenth century quadrangle, following the road to the former engineering building. As I turn the corner an unexpected spectacle unfolds in front of us as the line of cherry blossom trees appears. The pink flowers are being shed in a constant spray as the gusts of wind drive across the campus. The released petals float free, rising and falling in eddies of movement, almost it appears in patterns. The air itself is tinted a light pink as the blossoms weave back and forth. I bring the car to a halt. The road in front of us is covered in a harvest of blushing colour. It is wonderful. Even the pain of my memories fade.

     My mother’s breath is shallow, and I can hear the soft wheeze from her chest. She hypnotically watches the soft rain of blossom weaving and descending. She appears calm and yet I note after a few seconds that a trembling pain flickers across her face. I sense confusion, unspoken fear as she stares at the veil of blossom that glides from the trees.

     She speaks without breaking her gaze.       

     “I wish I had longer,” she says. “Even a couple of years.”

     For the first time there is a bitter edge to her words. She coughs and clears her throat with difficulty. Her body slumps in the seat as if she is aging right beside me.

     “We don’t know the future,” I say.

     “Oh, we do,” she says. “We most certainly do.”

     To my surprise my mother starts to talk hesitantly about my father. How they met not far away from here along Newcastle Road at a party in her sister’s rented flat. And how in later years she and my father would return to walk here on the University grounds. The years passed and time accelerated. But the cherry blossom was their special time. The brief flowering of the trees was its own season, nature in a miniature, so focussed and expressive that it illuminated everything around it. I have never heard her speak like this before and for a few moments I am transported by the clarity of her words. Perhaps I understand the delicate blossom’s association with the warlike samurai. The flowers blossoming and quick loss is cruel, almost violent.

     There is another spasm of wind and the car shudders. I watch twigs, leaves, the inevitable litter being pushed across the nearby carpark. The torn blossom blows across the windscreen, resting like faint wings on the glass.

     To my surprise, my mother reaches out and takes my hand. Her fingers are unexpectedly cool. The skin is ridged and firm and I feel the soft heat of her palm. I glide my fingertips along the deep lines, finding the band of her wedding ring. How many years, decades since I have done this? I look over at her now. I wonder what she is thinking, what pain she feels. She turns to me as if sensing my question and offers a faint smile. It is comfort enough to sit together in the warm car. We are safe as long as we are here with the blossom wavering in front of us in this pocket of time where the future cannot find us. We sit like that, hands gently touching, until my mother breaks the silence.

     “This has been very…. nice…. but we'd better go. There' s no point in keeping those doctors waiting. You know how they get.”

     “Are you sure?” I ask. “We can stay longer. They can wait for you.”

     The truth is I do not want to leave this place. With her I feel capable, strong. The child will always take from the parent. Right to the very end.

     “No, we will go,” she insists as she withdraws her hand.

     I start the car and laboriously turn it on the narrow road since my three-point turns have never been good. My mother is unimpressed.

     “You know who’s a great driver?” she asks.

     “Who?”

     “Orlaith,” she says. “She could reverse that prius onto a penny.”

     We leave the trees behind and the quiet buildings of the University. Back on the main road, it is only a short trip to the hospital. At the entrance, I take a carpark ticket, and we drive around looking for a space. As ever it is hard to locate one. My mother spots a woman emerging from the hospital reception, and we drive her behind her at a distance as she walks to her car. We wait patiently until she leaves, and I can drive in and park. My mother readies herself then, searching through her handbag, ensuring her purse and various documents are ready. As is her habit, she checks her face in the car mirror.

     “You know,” she says as she does so,” I don’t think that we will bother with the tile showroom on the way back.”

     "Are you sure? If you want to go, we can drop in for a few minutes." 

     "It's fine," she says. "There's no need to complicate things."

     She reaches over and pats the back of my hand.

     “Thank you for the detour.”

     “I should thank you,” I mumble. “It was good to see the cherry blossom again.”

     My mother doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead, she takes a deep breath and looks at her watch.

     “I don’t like being this late,” she says. “We’d better go.”

     We open our car doors and step out. The wind claws at us immediately. To my surprise I see that the car roof is covered in a mosaic of pink petals. I am about to point this out to my mother, but she has already gone ahead, moving out of earshot. The wind rises and falls but she walks head-first into it, unflinching as ever into the face of what is to come.