Richie Makes His Confo…At 39

Richie arrived by himself. It’s at moments like this he missed Sarah the most.

An archway of silver balloons marked the entrance. It was his best friend Johnny’s son’s big day, and the confirmation was in full swing, easily seventy people packed in to the upstairs function room of Downey’s. Richie adjusted his blazer as he walked in, shoulders pinched, sleeves pulling at his wrist. He made a beeline for Ben, Johnny’s son.

“Richie!” said Ben

“How are ya kiddo? This is for you.” As he hands Ben his Confirmation card.

Everyone who’s made their Communion or Confirmation in Ireland knows, the first rule of Communion or Confirmation Club is you don’t open cards in front of the people who gave them to you.

He knew almost everyone in the room. Johnny was one of his oldest friends, he knew all his family and they stayed close to the lads from school.

Their group had pushed two tables together so they could sit as one big gang, same as always, pints flowing, constant slagging, and card after card handed to Ben like he was collecting for a wedding.

Liam, a bald guy with thick dark eyebrows, leaned over to Richie with a smirk and spoke.

“Easiest €700 he’ll ever make.”

“€700? Sure he probably got more than that just from our table alone.” said Scott.

“And the rest,” added a raspy voice to his left.

“Can you make your Confo twice? I’m asking for a friend.” Laughed Liam.

Everyone laughed. Richie smiled.

Later in the day, the function room had emptied out. The girlfriends and wives had taken the kids home, leaving just the lads behind to help Johnny clean up.

Empty glasses were stacked, sandwich crusts cleared, and stray blue Confirmation confetti swept into piles.

“Swear to God,” Liam said, shaking his head, “he’s walking out of here with at least a grand.”

“I’d say more,” said Scott, wiping down the table.

“Sure, didn’t Siobhán’s crowd give him fifties?”

“What’s the going rate now for a Confo?”

“No less than €20 and even then, there would be comments.”

“Least you didn’t have to split it. Back in the day, we might have got a card each but there was £10 each, not £20 each.”

“Oh yea course, for twins” said Sean.

“And we got coins. Kids nowadays are only short of asking for your Revolut.”

“Do you think he even knows what the day’s meant to be about?” one of them asked.

“No,” said Johnny, without looking up.

“He made it because everyone else made it.”

There was a pause, the kind that only slips in when people are finally too tired for slagging.

“You don’t want him to be the only kid in the school not making his Confo”

Richie took a breath.

“Funny thing about that,” he said. Johnny looked up.

“What?"

“I never made mine.” Richie kept his tone light, like he was telling a random fact about someone else. Johnny frowned.

“Stop. You serious?”

“Yeah. We moved to England in fifth class, remember? You didn’t make it in school and… we just kinda forgot about it.”

Johnny leaned back.

“So you never made your Confo?”

“Nope.”

“Then you never took your Pledge?”

“My what?” Richie blinked.

Johnny laughed.

“Ah you’re doomed.”

Richie laughed too; but the thought had already taken root.

That night, lying in bed, scrolling with the TV flickering in the background, Richie opened his phone and typed into ChatGPT: “Can adults make their confirmation in Ireland?”

Turns out you can.

He found a local parish offering adult confirmation classes, led by a semi-retired priest named young Fr. Noel who kept a Nespresso machine on the altar and had a drawer full of Werther’s Originals. The group was a mixed bag: a Polish woman whose husband wanted her ‘fully Catholic’, a teenager doing it for school entry, a quiet older man who said nothing but never missed a week. And now, Richie.

He told people he was doing it for the craic. For the card money. But deep down, he knew it was more than that.

Richie had always been half in. In life, in love, in everything. He cracked jokes when he felt uncomfortable. Nodded when he meant no. Apologised for taking up space in conversations. He’d spent most of his adult life achieving what he thought success looked like, a job in finance he didn’t care about and struggled to be vulnerable with his partner of 6 years, until both disappeared in the same month.

The course became a kind of strange lifeline. He started walking again, like he had as a kid. He walked through the industrial park that is Parkwest but was known as the backers, when he was growing up. He walked without headphones. He cried watching Secret Millionaire on TV. Something was shifting.

One night, when young Fr. Noel asked why he was there, Richie surprised even himself.

“Because I never let anyone see the real me. And I think I’m finally ready to try.”

“I thought I was doing this to find some kind of answer. But it’s not about answers. It’s about learning to have faith, not in some higher power, but in myself. That no matter what happens, I’ll find a way through it.”

When word got out, the lads renamed the group chat Christ Almighty.

“Will there be jelly and ice cream?”

“What Confo clothes did you get?”

“What saints name are ya pickin?”

But then Sarah found out. His ex. The one person he wanted to see past the jokes and humour.

She text him.

“You’re making your Confirmation? Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“With them?” “It’s not about them,” he said. “I’m not signing a contract with the Vatican. I’m just… trying to give myself permission to grow up.”

“You could’ve done that without stepping into an institution that abused children and nearly worse, protected abusers for decades.”

“I know. I’ve wrestled with that. I’m already a Catholic, I’m just missing a level.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because I’ve spent most of my life looking for certainty. Thinking if I just found the right answer, I’d feel something. But this… this is about learning to have faith. Not in them. Not in God. Just… in me. That I can face things. That I won’t fall apart. That I can commit and finish something.”

There was a long pause on her side. Then just one message came back.

Sarah:

“That’s actually kind of beautiful.”

He stared at the screen for a while before locking his phone and slipping it back into his pocket. Something about her reply,  not forgiveness, not closure, just kindness, stayed with him.

The ceremony was simple, almost anticlimactic. No music. No incense. Just Richie, in his Confo suit and his medal pined to his collar with his three friends from the group, and young Fr. Noel, who looked like he was in a rush to get home for The Chase.

When it was his turn, Richie stood up slowly.

“Richard Patrick Byrne,” Young Fr. Noel asked, “have you chosen a saint’s name?”

“Augustine,” Richie replied.

“The patron saint of those seeking transformation.”

He didn’t feel transformed. But he felt still. Present. Like he’d finally stepped into the room of his own life.

Later that evening, Richie arrived at Downey’s, expecting a few quiet pints with the lads. He figured they’d be down the back near the snug, swapping stories and pretending they weren’t all knackered from the day.

But when he walked in, the barman nodded upstairs.

He frowned. Upstairs again?

He climbed the familiar creaking stairs and stepped into the function room, low-ceilinged, warm, and full of life. Balloons bobbed at the far end, tethered to a pint glass. The carpet was that classic swirly pattern in deep red and navy, the kind you only ever see in old Irish pubs or hotel bars that haven’t changed since the ‘80s. Dark mahogany tables were pushed together, the surface shiny and sticky in patches. The chairs, upholstered in green velvet, had gold studs running neatly along the trim.

At the centre table, someone had brought a sponge and a fresh fruit cake, the kind with the sugary jelly glaze and tinned mandarins, set out like it was someone’s 70th. There was even a “Congrats Richie” card propped between the napkins.

He stood in the doorway for a second, taking it in. The noise, the laughter, the effort. It wasn’t just the usual invite. He wasn’t just along for the ride. He was the reason they’d booked the room.

Brian appeared beside him and handed him a giant novelty card, signed by everyone in the room. Of course, Richie didn’t open it at the table but inside was €2,500 in cash and a scratch card.

“It’s what He would have wanted.” As he pointed to the ceiling”

“Is it yeah?” laughed Richie

He looked around the room and a strange feeling settled in his chest. Not nerves. Not awkwardness. Just something unfamiliar.

He wasn’t being included out of politeness. He was being celebrated.

And for once, he let himself feel it.

The next morning, the sun sat still in the sky about to clock in for its day’s work. Richie laced up his runners and headed for the canal.

He hadn’t jogged in months, but something in him needed the rhythm, feet to path, breath in time. Around the third kilometre, he slowed to a walk and sat down on a bench overlooking the water. The surface was glassy and still, broken only by the occasional ripple of a plastic bottle drifting past.

He just sat.

With his feelings. With the silence. With the echo of Sarah’s voice in his head and the quiet hope that maybe, just maybe, connection wasn’t something you earned. It was something you let happen, once you stopped pretending you didn’t need it.

His phone buzzed.

Sarah:

Coffee?

Richie smiled, looked out over the still water, and began to scratch off the numbers on the scratch card.

A short story by Wendy McGlone | Wendy House Digital