There were several nods to Taylor Swift at my wedding two years ago. It was the first summer of the Eras Tour and the singer loomed large as I joyfully planned the event in a few months while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer at the Mater hospital. The table plan, for one example, featured a lyric from her gorgeous song Lover. “At every table I’ll save you a seat” was written in a swirly pink font directing guests to tables named after television programmes. We put Fintan O’Toole on a table called Mastermind, obviously.
Our master of wedding ceremonies, Paul Howard – I’ll just warn you in advance that he does not come cheap – wove Swift beautifully into his hilarious speech. The singer had played Dublin a few days before and I’d gone to the Aviva Stadium with my daughters, weeping with happiness in my wig for much of the concert, wearing a T-shirt that asked How Can A Person Know Everything At 18 and Nothing at 52? This was a play on another Swift lyric from her song Nothing New, and I was delighted with myself and the T-shirt I’d had printed in the Ilac Centre especially for the occasion, queuing with other Swifties of all ages.
My daughters have teased me for years about my parasocial relationship with Swift. I’d often talk about her as though the pair of us were intimately connected by some kind of invisible string, like I knew what she was thinking and had deep insights into the latest twists in her career or personal life.
This madness went into overdrive when her “people” got in touch shortly before the concerts to offer me tickets to the Eras Tour. They knew, by which I decided to intuit that Taylor knew, I had written a lot about how much I admired the singer over the years. I imagined Swift reading my gushing articles and, back in the day, scrolling through my pro-Taylor tweets and thinking “yep, let’s get this middle-aged queen some Eras Tour guest passes”.
This ongoing Swift delusion hasn’t been helped by the rumours, swirling for months now, that she chose our actual wedding date, July 3rd, to get married to her football player fiance Travis Kelce. “Of course,” I thought parasocially when I first heard the news. “That makes perfect sense.” But I’ve since surprised myself by not being overly interested in her rumoured wedding plans. I’ve apparently reached the stage where I can maintain some distance.
Of course, I hope my favourite artist gets hitched without a hitch. I hope it is The Best Day, to borrow from another of her songs. But I think she’d be happy to know I’m not hanging on every detail the way I might have been before, and that this feels right for where I am in my life now.
Where am I? I am in the waiting room. We all are of course, but when you get a stage 4 cancer diagnosis or are dealing with difficult health issues, the waiting room exists in more vivid detail. I can see the clock on the wall, the tatty curtains, the uncomfortable plastic chairs, the bad lighting. I see all the other people also waiting. It’s a curious place, this waiting room, and most of the time I don’t think about being here but sometimes I can’t help it. Here I am. Waiting.
You’d think, having been given the gift of more acute awareness of the waiting room, that I might have adopted a more urgent approach to life. Started to tick off things on a To Do list. Write a novel. Learn how to play the F chord on guitar. Go to Paris. Kate Middleton, who was diagnosed in 2024, recently did the Three Peaks Challenge raising money for a cancer charity. Fair play to her.
I’ve not been climbing any mountains. I’ve been existing lately in a kind of stasis. There is nothing to be done so I mostly do nothing. I wish I had something else, something more profound, to report.
This sort of paralysis took a new turn during the recent heatwave. While Portmarnock’s velvet strand and the ladies’ swimming spot at Dollymount became second homes for my daughters, I mostly hid. I spent a lot of those sunny days in my bed, the curtains drawn, laptop on my knees. I did not want to let the light in.
I found the heat oppressive. A cruel summer. I could not sleep at night. I played games on my phone, distracting myself from the uncertain reality of the waiting room for more hours than I’d like to admit here. The heat wasn’t good for the ambience in the waiting room, where there was no air con to hide the faint smell of egg sandwiches.
I know I’m nothing special. Nothing new. We are all in the same waiting room – even my good friend Mrs Taylor Swift Kelce, or whatever name she decides to go with once married. We may share the same wedding anniversary, but I’m newly equanimous about Swift’s life decisions. I have bigger questions. How do we spend our waiting time? Should we climb every mountain? Keep those tatty curtains closed or open them to the sunshine? It’s hard sometimes, but I’m trying to let the light in.
