It wasn’t really that quiet. Small waves lapped the shore, and a late-summer breeze stirred the fescue and gorse. Skylarks sang overhead, and Aer Lingus jets rumbled faintly into their descent. But to me, it may as well have been silent. Dad walked a few steps ahead, and I wondered what he was thinking—about his next shot, about this trip,about Mom. When we planned it back in February, it was hard to picture what this trip would look like, how it would feel, whether it could help us find something we both seemed to need but didn’t know how to talk about.
We walked briskly but unhurried, neither of us speaking. We were tired—five days, 90 holes, countless pints, and too little sleep had seen to that. It had been a great week. A long week. A long year. A long decade. As we approached the final green, cleaned up our putts, and replanted the flag, we fell into the ritual we’ve always kept: Hats off, handshake. Good playing. Fun playing with you.
When we planned the trip, we put it on the calendar with pencil. Back then, Mom was so sick that she was praying for mercy, and through tears, asked us to do the same. The house had become heavy with her illness—her quiet groans from the living room, her whispered prayers, the half-smiles we forced for her benefit. For 10 years, a web of rare and complicated diseases had confounded doctors across the country, including my dad, her husband, a cardiologist, who spent countless nights hunched over medical journals, searching for some overlooked clue, some thread of hope that might spark a new treatment. But in that last year, hope shifted to comfort. My sisters and I watched as hospice nurses administered morphine and fentanyl, trying to act strong, sitting by her side while she writhed in pain, waiting for the drugs to do what nothing else could. Father Frank was always nearby. A bottle of Jameson too.
Amid the chaos of her illness and the unrelenting guilt of our helplessness, golf remained a constant. Dad introduced me to the game when I was young, and what began with my temper tantrums and club tossing ultimately became the thread that wove us together. Sometimes we played with others, but most often, it was just the two of us. Sometimes we talked a lot, but more often, we didn’t. As a kid, losing to him stung. He always outdrove me, always closed me out when it mattered. As I got older, the balance finally shifted. We’ve had years of neck-and-neck battles—down-to-the-wire matches that came down to a missed approach here, a long putt there. He’s taken most of my losses, and all those post-round beers, on credit.
There was a time when Mom picked up the game. A few years after her illness began, before her mobility failed her, she became captivated by what she once found trivial and uninteresting. She fell for golf, its beauty, its challenge, and its history. What started as reluctance on my part—selfishly worrying about pace of play, having to explain the obvious, or her well-meaning celebrations of what I felt like were my mishits—quickly turned into gratitude. The thing I had long held as sacrosanct between Dad and me felt good to share with her. It meant more golf, and more time together. Dad loved buying Mom new golf clothes and clubs, and Sunday afternoon rounds became their ritual.
She didn’t hesitate to insert herself into golf’s traditionally walled domain. She was never one for walls. Soon she was arranging rounds with other couples, some of whom would become their closest friends. She joined a women’s group at the club, and she always looked forward to her weekly rounds. Her joy was infectious, her arms raised high in triumph after a par, her radiant smile beaming as she marveled at small victories. She admired great players, obsessed over the game’s nuances, and intuitively understood its etiquette and quiet depth. For her, too, golf was an escape—a battle she might not win, but one she certainly wouldn’t lose.
Eventually, her failing strength made golf impossible. One round, unknowingly, would be her last. I think about that sometimes—whether she knew. Whether she felt it in her swing or thought about it as she loaded up her car. Her royal blue bag, always spotless and meticulously organized, heavy with dozens of Titleist golf balls monogrammed in pink letters, began to gather dust in the corner of the garage, a quiet monument to all she’d lost. What we were losing, too.
Even when she could no longer play, her appreciation for the game remained. She knew what it meant to Dad and me. She listened as Dad recounted meaningless matches shot by shot, asked about how his playing partners and their wives were doing, often dozing off mid-sentence, her voice trailing into fragmented rest. In the last few years, after I’d moved away, my visits home followed a pattern: mornings and evenings with Mom, and quick rounds of golf with Dad while she slept. On the course, we rarely spoke about her illness. Instead, we talked about the tasks at hand: the shots we hit, the ones we tried to hit, the bad lies we got, the good bounces the other got. We reminisced about courses we’d played, dreamt of those we hadn’t and laughed about the ones we hoped to never play again. Golf allowed us to simply be.
When the opportunity for the tournament at Portmarnock came up, I pressed for us to book it. We knew we might not make it, and in truth, we hoped we wouldn’t. Dad hesitated, knowing what it would mean if we went. But I insisted. Something on the calendar—something as special as a father-son trip to Ireland—felt like a small light during a dark time.
On Mother’s Day, Mom passed away. The tears came, but not out of shock. They came like a dam breaking, a flood that had been building for years. The release was overwhelming, a torrent of grief and relief tangled together. Since then, the sadness comes in waves, usually when I least expect it—a calendar reminder to wish her happy birthday, a fleeting thought to call her when I get into my car, a special meal that reminds me of her cooking.
Two days after she passed, Dad and I went to the golf course. To some, it might have seemed too soon. To us, it was the only way forward. We needed to go—to escape the stillness of the house, the weight of her absence. There was nothing else to do but walk to the first tee and start again. We played a quiet round in about three hours.
Four months later, Dad and I met in Dublin. We drove to Portmarnock for a warm-up round, just the two of us. The long drive into the club meanders along the bay, reaching out toward the distant Irish Eye and across the inlet from Howth, where pastel homes, their paint softened by the salt-laden air, line the shore. A lot had changed since our last visit seven years ago. A lot had stayed the same. We brought rain gear, but the forecast for the week was kind. If it hadn’t been, we’d have played through it anyway.
By trip’s end, we stood on the 18th green for the last time. The wind brushed at our sleeves, the sea stretched endlessly beyond the horizon, and I wish I had thought of something profound to say, but I couldn’t. Nothing about the week felt pivotal. There were no grand gestures, no epiphanies, no finality. Just us, walking fairways and playing through. And somehow, that was enough. It’s always been enough.
