Eileen, Mary, Brian and I would like to thank all the people who have worked with my mother to make the last years of her life as comfortable, pain free, dignified and fulfilling as her condition allowed. The teams of carers who tended her several times a day for such a long time are owed an enormous debt of gratitude by my family, and all of our families who have someone close to us in a similar condition.  

We are grateful too to the medical staff who worked with her, particularly Dr Barbour, whose gentle compassionate manner was appreciated by all of us more than he knows. 

The support that a legion of friends and relatives have given us in recent days has been almost a joyful experience. Our cousins Alan and Louise, within hours of my mother’s death, delivered a van full of things they knew we’d need and so many other people arrived to help us by preparing things in the kitchen, coming to pay their respects and offering their sympathy. You know who you all are and what you have done and we thank you with all our hearts. To the person who lent us the urn, thanks for your thoughtfulness. Brian will send you the bill for the damage to the paintwork.                                                                                       

The two things that defined my mother were her devotion to her family and her Catholic faith. Even though she was housebound for many years she kept that connection strong. Mary O’Hara brought her communion, itself an act of great kindness and we were pleased and thankful that Father McCafferty, for whom she had a special affection, asked to say her funeral mass. He also said the mass for our brother John and the spiritual comfort that my mother got from him in the time following that unspeakable loss was one of the sources of what a friend described as her “quiet, unassuming strength”. 

One of the prayers that Father McCafferty said in front of my mother’s coffin in her living room has been making me reflect on her life. Shakespeare says “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”  

My mother never did an evil, bad or malicious thing in her life and the prayer which says  “now they can rest for ever after their work, since their good deeds go with them” can stand as her epitaph.  

Our family shapes us more than we understand and in ways that can take a lifetime to become obvious to us, but I’ve come to understand it a bit more. 

My mother’s father, and it’s a source of some pride that he knew James Connolly, gave his children, our uncle John, our late uncle Barney and our late aunt Molly a great love of learning for its own sake. My mother gave that to us. Her favourite reading was always the death notices in the Irish News (a pastime that Mary now enjoys) but she made sure that we understood the importance of education and you can see the look of pride on her face in the graduation photo in which John and I are standing on either side of her. “Learning’s easily carried” was one of her catchphrases. 

Our father died unexpectedly when Brian, the youngest, was five and I was eleven. How does anyone find the strength to bring up five children after a loss like that? But, we never once went hungry, never felt anything but the unconditional love that she had for us. Whatever grief and pain she was feeling she protected her children from it. 

It’s hard to think of a heavier blow that could fall on a woman with a young family, but like many families in Belfast in the 1970s ours was to be affected by the most awful violence.  

My mother’s only respite from looking after five squabbling, demanding children was a little occasional job she had in a shop on the other side of the street. One night gunmen walked in with the intention of murdering the three women behind the counter because they had a different religion. My mother survived, but her friend Mrs McKenna lost an eye and sixteen year old Anne Magee died. 

How did my mother cope with life after that? She just got on with it. We moved house, she set up a new home in Downfine Park, life continued and  she worked as a home help until she was no longer physically able.  It was only when she was reliving the trauma during her dementia that we got some glimpse of what she had sheltered us from by her silence about it. The only person who must have had some concept of what my mother went through was her sister Molly. The love they had for each other was, I think, one of the things that must have made it possible for her to endure.    

I’d like to conclude by reflecting on how I think something permanent about my mother will be present in years to come, and like her own parents’ deeds, will be visible to the world in the far future.  

Over the last few days I’ve felt a deep sense of pride in my family. My nephews and nieces have displayed a quiet devotion that has often left me in tears. They slept in the living room with her on her last nights at home, keeping alive a tradition that my mother would have honoured. They have helped in countless practical ways and in the ways that are more important. They waited by her deathbed; for years they looked after her and visited her even when it seemed that although she was with them physically her mind was far removed. Yet despite it all, we all know that at some level she was aware of the love that surrounded her from so many people. They too have inherited her unassuming strength and they too will pass it on. 

Finally, there is one person whose life’s purpose in these last years has been to make sure that my mother had the best quality of life and care that was humanly possible. For year after year Brian was with her every morning and every evening manifesting the same strength and selflessness that she shared with us. Few children have ever done as much for a parent.  

Brian, Mary, Eileen, our uncle John and I will shortly be taking his sister and our mother to be reunited with our father. Our admiration, devotion and love for her will remain as constant as hers was for her children.  

Now she can rest in peace. Her good deeds go with her.