​At this time of year, lots of worthy charities are vying to raise much-needed funds.  One charity I like to support is The Irish Cancer Society.  It is the national charity in the Republic of Ireland dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem, and improving the lives of those who have cancer. 

​This weekend 50 years ago, my family and I were getting ready for a life-changing move.  I was two months shy of my 9th birthday.  Our house in Mass Road had been earmarked for demolition by the Council and we had been rehoused in St. Mollerans….the bit on the Dungarvan Road renamed Hill View to make things easier for delivermen  The old houses, you see, on Mass Road had no running water or sanitation. None at all.  Most of our former neighbours had been rehoused at that stage so we were one of the last few remaining. 

​My first doggy friend as a little girl was “Tan” Guiry, the dog belonging to our lovely shopkeeper neighbour, Bridgie, three doors up on Mass Road.  At that time everyone kept their front door wide-open and, whenever he wanted, Tan would stroll down the road, cross our threshold step polished red by Peggy and stick his head around our inside door to see if I would play.  

​This week 20 years ago, I was going through trauma.  On 13th of April 2004 – it seems like yesterday - my (then) 75 year-old mother, Peggy, collapsed in the kitchen at home in Carrick while making the tea for my dad, Mickey.  In my lifetime up ‘til then, none of our small family of 4 had ever been in hospital.  Peggy had bad health early on in their marriage with the loss of her first 5 babies, she had had a tubercular gland removed from her neck in the early fifties and had suffered bad headaches when Martin was a baby that was put down to neuritis.  But nothing since I was born.
 
So, it was a huge shock to get the phonecall in Dublin that she had been taken to Waterford Regional Hospital (now WUH) by ambulance with a suspected sub-arachnoid brain haemorrhage (SAH).  The neighbours on the road had been wonderful in picking her up and calling the ambulance.  Peggy had gashed her head off the cooker.  It was the Tuesday after Easter and I had been down visiting home over the weekend.  She hadn’t been feeling 100%; feeling nauseous and headachy so I had picked up flu remedies at the pharmacy. I can’t describe the shock my 89-year-old dad Mickey, my brother Martin and I felt to see a woman that was always so fit and healthy completely knocked out.  

​For over 27 years I have sponsored a number of little children through CCF (now Child Fund of Ireland).  It began in the summer of 1996; I was doing well at work and thought it might be a nice idea to help out a child less fortunate.  I asked to be matched with a little girl if possible as I hoped to be able to help in her education even in a small way of £15 a month. Studies have shown that an 

​In 1987 I passed my final accounting exams and for the next 30 years I worked in finance.  I worked in general accountancy with Jim Gilligan and John Walsh at Gilligan & Co., then in international tax with Arthur Andersen, then in aircraft leasing with Sunrock (the Irish subsidiary of the huge Nissho Iwai Japanese sogo shosha) and then as Head of Finance at the Irish Stock Exchange until 2017.  I made lifelong friendships.  I also had the privilege of working with businesses from the 

​My mam and dad grew up in a time when many rural families had a working donkey or two.   Nowadays, not many Irish families have donkeys of the four-legged kind anymore.  My parents often told me stories of how stubborn they could be but also how hard they worked.
They also told me the story of the donkey and the well.  It goes like this…

​When I was at school, one of my favourite poems was “Per Iter Tenebricosum” by Oliver St. John Gogarty (Along The Dark Way) (see the first photo below).  It talks about the inevitability of death and it being “a fate that leads the natural way”.  I always thought it odd that even the most practical, organised people went through life acting as if death would never happen to them.   A couple of years later when I started working in an accountancy firm, I saw at first hand the upset and trauma 

​I came across my 4th class school photo recently from the Presentation Convent, the late Mrs. Connolly's class, and the memories of getting it taken flooded back.  I’m balancing, aged 10 ¼, on top of a wooden school desk trying to avoid the ink well scraping my knee.  Dressed in my navy-blue uniform gymslip and white blouse.  My poem about trees is hanging on the classroom wall over my left shoulder.  I’ve taken my long hair down from its usual ribboned pony tail and I’ve discarded my recently acquired glasses.  I really hated those glasses back in the day!

​When I was about 8 years old I was shopping on the Main Street with my mother, Peggy, when an elderly gentleman fell on the footpath nearby clutching his chest.  A few people knelt down to help him while a small crowd gathered and looked on helplessly.  Suddenly a younger chap stepped forward, knelt down and started pumping his chest and straight away we could see the colour returning to the prone man’s face.  I was ushered away before the ambulance arrived but my mother explained that the young guy was trying to save the older man’s life by doing CPR. I don’t know what the elderly gentleman’s fate was but I remember thinking the younger chap was amazing and I had just seen a real life superhero.

So ….like a lot of people during this Covid-19 lockdown, I’ve been tidying up "stuff"….including files and emails on my trusty laptop.  I clicked on this letter which transported me back to ​those 

At the time of writing, I am cocooned in Dublin due to Covid-19.  I’m conscious that this is affecting people in very many ways; not least that Organ Donor Awareness Week 2020 (28th March – 4th April 2020) had to be postponed. 

More than ever, this crisis gets me thinking of all those who struggle with their health all of the time.......  particularly those waiting for an organ transplant.  Organ donation is something that I strongly encourage.  Now, I know that for many the idea of blood and body parts makes you squeamish.  But try to get past that to think of the second chance of life you might be giving to another human being.
​
The main motivation for me championing organ donation is that I’ve seen at first hand in my own