Katherine Zappone: I stare into the future, Ann Louise is no longer here — I am heartbroken

Katherine Zappone’s new memoir is a story of enduring love between two trailblazing women. Here she writes about the loss of her beloved wife Ann Louise Gilligan

Katherine Zappone in St Stephen's Green. Photograph Moya Nolan

I glance out the study window of The Shanty, my home in the Dublin Mountains. 

August, my golden retriever, lies on the floor close to my desk. She sleeps quietly in the emptiness of the house.

It’s just the two of us now, after Ann Louise’s passing 11 months ago.

I have been hunched over the desk for most of the morning, working on the text of my next Dáil speech as minister for children.

The birdsong outside interrupts my concentration, which is why I look out to the small enclosure, filled with wooden tubs of late spring flowers.

The magnolia tree has begun to bloom magnificently again, a gift from our solicitors to celebrate the initiation of the case we took against the Irish State because it would not recognise our 2003 Canadian marriage. 

15 years ago. 

My stare freezes. Grief enters, and slows me down, again.

Eventually, I pull my attention back to the desk and notice an unopened envelope. 

It is likely another sympathy card — I am lucky enough to have received many from people across the nation, each one easing the pain, at least for the moment.

I open it to find a beautiful letter from a colleague who worked with me to save Seanad Éireann from abolition, a referendum put before the Irish people in 2013.

He had met Ann Louise a couple of times, witnessing the playfulness and fidelity of our love. 

His letter concludes by quoting F Scott Fitzgerald, from a letter in which he spoke about his wife, Zelda: “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”

I put down my pen. I cannot work anymore.

I see Ann Louise running to class in high heels, at Boston College, where we met in 1981. 

We were going to be late because our squash game had run over, she defeating me yet again, as one of Ireland’s champions in the sport. 

Her spirit held exuberance so naturally. Her beauty blew my mind. How magnetised was her power. My life would never be the same. 

We would begin a life journey together, looking for social change based on love.

This study where I work used to be part of the learning space for women from Tallaght West who were determined to get a second chance at education. 

Katherine Zappone: "We did change the world. But mistakes were made, and the opposition and media wore me down at times, calling me to re-think who I am and how to keep going in the midst of a torrent of public criticism." Photograph Moya Nolan

We had transformed our garages into a community education centre — right outside our kitchen door. 

I see Ann Louise standing in front of a flip chart, the paper covered with the words “feminism”, “imagination”, and the French feminist philosopher “Luce Irigaray” in her vigorous script. 

Her face fills with an invitation to each woman to step on to the path of finding her prologue own life dream. 

Much later, it is these same women, and their families, who join us to line Dublin’s streets as we march together for marriage equality. 

What solidarity we feel. They are not afraid of difference. They rejoice in our love and a referendum that represents the heart of a nation opening towards us, and people like us.

And that was only part of it. In 2011, she gave up a dream that the two of us would start some new work so that I could pursue politics.

I tried to do politics differently. Time and again she showed me how to be collaborative: “Be kind, Katherine. Trust your team.”

Before a challenging Cabinet meeting she’d ask: “How can they be your companions in what you want to achieve? And how can you support them?”

Her petite frame appears in my memory as she listens to how I find allies in the politics of modern Ireland. My drivers, political and constituency teams, civil servants, neighbours and family. 

We did change the world. But mistakes were made, and the opposition and media wore me down at times, calling me to re-think who I am and how to keep going in the midst of a torrent of public criticism.

August still sleeps. I stare into the future, realising even more deeply that Ann Louise is no longer here. What does “everything” mean now? I am heartbroken. 

A couple of minutes pass. Maybe writing will help me to live with grief and heartache, and to find meaning again.

Remarkably, Ann Louise herself stretched towards new meaning in the last year of her life by writing. 

But her book remains an unfulfilled intention, because something happened to her and she was not able to complete it, despite her best fight. 

Maybe I can take up the mantle and do it for both of us.

To make a record of our last years together and reach for the new.

I pull out a drawer to find an empty journal. I crack the spine and write one line:

“Somewhere between grief and joy...”

And I am transported back to a time, before politics or illness or grief, when our home was filled with the happiness of our forever love.

• Love in the Time of Politics by Katherine Zappone, published by Hachette, is out September 25