Generations..

(these words all fell out of me earlier today, so I'm not going to bother fixing any of the grammar...)


It's amazing what you remember 20 years on….A phonecall from a friend broke the news in the middle of Christmas Day, and I remember going instantly weak at the knees, collapsing into the chair beside the phone, as she spoke saying words that I couldn't comprehend. The lights of the helicopter I watched hovering over town in the wee small hours was searching for them, and I still bitterly regret not saying hello to him outside McGarrigles a little over 24hrs before that news came through.

The only part of the next few days that stand out are their pictures on the fronts of all the papers as I stopped into PickNChoose - two gorgeous grins. How alike he and Sean were, despite the different hair-styles. How much he'd have hated the fact that they used the Young Scientist photo of him, taken when he was in secondary school. An array of papers, but the same pictures repeated on all. "Christmas Eve Tragedy"... Trying to ignore them as the queue moved forward, and the kindness of the lady behind the counter who instantly understood my choked-up request for 10 Silk Cut Purple and didn’t ID me, as I looked up from their faces to hers, trying not to cry.

A bitterly cold sleety evening outside a place lit up by brake lights and indicators as parents dropped their kids off. Rows of dark ripped jeans covering the tips of converse trainers and doc marten boots, which provided no grip on the snow-packed icey surface of the carpark. Black woolly hats and coat collars turned up against the sleet and snow.

Cigarette smoke wafting through the air as you wait in a queue outside, unsure of what to do or where to go. Nobody thinks to explain funeral home protocol to a 15 year old, so you talk and cry your way into a hot stuffy room with friends. Glasses fog up the second you reach the inner room, and you see people who must be their family sit ashen-faced as they shake hand after hand and occasionally lean into a hug. Numb faces all around the room as the newcomers make their way towards the two coffins in the corner. At a first glance, they could be twins, both dark haired boys with short curly hair, and you don't know which of them would laugh at you more for saying they almost looked the same age.

Shaking hands with a woman who must be their mother, the same frame around the eyes, and you want to just pause time for a while and tell her how cool you thought her youngest son was; how independent, how grown up, how gorgeous, how funny, how wonderfully kind and hilariously witty he was. How he tried to bring you and your ex-boyfriend back together by essentially locking you both in a room until you finally talked to one another after several months of no communication.

How his flat became your go to place for a gang of you during school lunchbreaks, and yet you never once felt like you were intruding on him, no matter what he had going on. How his bleach blondey short curly hair seemed to be immovable and yet totally flexible at the same time. How talented he was (did he really make that amazing looking electric guitar that hung on his apartment wall, or was he just messing...?!) how vast his CD collection was.

How you couldn't stop laughing as he and Cormac danced to the rather rude "Kyle's Mom" song from the SouthPark album. How he just exuded a kindness of soul that you, as a 15 year old appreciated so much in the short time you knew him. (was it a year, was it two?) How he just always seemed to be a part of your life as a teenager, but you can't remember when exactly your paths crossed for the first time..he was just always....there.

And how you'd love to meet him now for a pint and tell him of how his leaving life so early changed you, changed your friends. You'd love to tell him that it impacted in ways he probably never imagined it could. How it made every one of us appreciate each other so much during those years when we needed it most, how it made us look out for each other that little bit more; and how many of us carried that on in to our adult years...we're almost a generation away from him; and he is now dead longer than he was alive.

It made us understand that brutal lesson, so exposed in the anger that grief often brings, that life really is far too fucking short. It taught us that we should take the time to make the memories, the silly ones and the fun ones, and the inbetween plain ones…..because sometimes just sitting around on a couch talking about nothing and everything in between is a wonderful memory in itself.


He and Sean taught us that Death visits everyone, taking no heed of ages, nor the time of year or the devastation a bereavement will cause, and so, the only way you can fight Death, as best you can, is to just enjoy your life while you have it. Be kind, be silly, be an open soul and leave a legacy of fun-filled and love-filled memories that make those who knew you smile so many years after you have left. To quote from Terry Pratchett, "Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?'

Cronan and Sean's names are still spoken, and those memories, that legacy of love, and fun, lives on in all who knew them.

Big Sister and Little Sister....

If this were a scripted movie, it would be much easier to describe....jump cuts could help us travel through time, starting in the late eighties seeing through the eyes of a small girl as she watches her big sister stop breathing and collapse yet again, watches as her lips start to turning that blueish tint that she knows means big panic from her parents, watches as her sister's eyes slowly start to open and look around her, blinking slowly several times before big sister utters the simple words "....not again". Normality resumes. Normality always resumes.


Jump cut to big sister sitting proudly on top of a gentle giant of a horse, trotting around the stables of an old country house, cut to the two sisters playing alone together in caravan parks around the country (but parks that are always near to a hospital, and near to family, just incase there's a very bad turn) playing alone again because the other kids don't want to play with the weird kid. Cut to another holiday, this time in a holiday centre that Downs Syndrome Ireland have organised to be just for families like theirs, and holidays suddenly feel like they're supposed to; idyllic and fun. No-one stares at the two sisters, big sister makes new friends, little sister meets others siblings like her; and is relieved to know she's not alone in her experiences, it's a different kind of normal, but it's normal.


A brief montage, sisters playing football with their big brothers in their back garden, sisters trading library books in their shared bedroom, little sister learning to speed-read because big sister gets to decide when it's lights out for the night. Giggles and grins at the cinema with their Gran, helping their Dad dig potatoes in the garden, arguments over who gets to put baby Jesus in the crib on Christmas Eve; and over the years, little sister and big sister share their room (although the mess is always little sister's) they share their toys, share the same hair colour, but rarely hair styles and eventually, they share their height. Big sister has the cheekiest sense of humour, sneaking food from right under people's noses, teasing people, and occasionally, pulling their noses too. They fight, as all sisters do, but big sister doesn't know that little sister fights a lot more, at school, in the estate, on holidays; fights anyone who dares to call the big sister she idolises any bad names. Big sister instead idolises Michael Jackson, sings his songs, copies his dance moves, and guards her tapes of him with her life. She shares her Enid Blyton books with little sister though.

Jump cut to the teenage years, the sisters have their own bedrooms; and everything is changing, rooms, styles, houses and homes. In a new neighbourhood, they no longer share a room, no longer share secrets, and rarely share day to day stories, little sister and big sister's lives are diverging.


Big sister is now in a training centre, adding to her everyday skills, little sister is in secondary school, dealing with teenage friendships and boyfriends, heartbreak and bereavements and all the angst that comes with that. In the midst of it all, big sister has taken up golfing with her Dad. They travel to the local golf club, almost daily, Dad pushing her wheelchair, or occasionally driving across, and she pitches and putts and her heart holds out through it all.

Big sister plays with Team Connaught, as well as for herself, and the Special Olympics arrive properly into her life. In the past, she has won medals for swimming, for horse-riding, but she reckons golf is her thing now. She decides she's a bit of a Tiger Woods, little sister shrugs and says she'd prefer to be Dolores O'Riordan. Little sister often wonders why big sister bothers.

A slow fade to a dreary November weekday morning in 1999, little sister is grumpy and doesn't want to go to school, big sister is quiet and upset as she always is when Mum's away; and barely eats her porridge. Dad fusses and grumps at both of them to get ready for their respective buses. Little sister comes home to a quiet panicked house that evening. A Doctor is there, then there's wailing coming from big sister's room, talk of ambulances and whether it's already too late, and little sister retreats crying quietly into her room, choosing not to listen to her usual melancholy music but big sister's current favourite song, Westlife's "Flying Without Wings", hoping for a miracle, not ready to say goodbye, even though little sister has known all her life that this day would arrive.

Crash cut to a hospital bedside, big sister is awake, talking, and moving, but not on her left side. She's had a stroke. At the age of 20, her body has decided to test her with something completely unexpected yet again. In the hospital and at home, there's talk of physio, of rehab, of how much damage may have been done between it happening and her hospitalisation; and all the while, little sister wonders how she didn't notice the previous morning that big sister was struggling. Big sister's tenacity gets her through yet again; 3 weeks later, she has some movement back in her left hand side, and she's wheeled across a golf course to take her shots and putts to help Team Connaught to a Special Olympics title; yet another trophy, yet another medal.

A slow sequence, shots of gym work, and home physio with her parents, while big sister slowly recovers, and trains daily; as she practises her putts, her chips, her golf skills, the years pass, and it's 2002. Little sister has moved to England; and, in a yellow reg'd car on a country lane one sunny evening, gets a call to tell her that big sister has qualified for Team Ireland for 2003's Special Olympics, to be held in Dublin. Big sister's caddy and coach, her Dad, works with her at home as well as at the golf club. Little sister knows big sister is different person to who she was before her stroke, but there's so many signs she's coming back to who she was before.

A wide shot of a colourful Croke Park, 82 thousand people cheer as one as the Olympic flame is lit, as U2 play, as Nelson Mandela speaks, and countless other celebrities march through with different countries...but the biggest cheers come for the athletes. You could cut to any face in the crowd and see the same love, the same stories echoed throughout the continents, the countries; each family there knows what they have all been through, and the shared love radiates.


Video screens show the scenes in the stadium, the fans, the athletes and all of a sudden, big sister's face appears on one, grinning as she's interviewed on live TV as the Irish team enter; and with her usual confidence, reckons she'll do well. Her family are thankful she didn't say she'd kick ass as she was watched throughout the world; as is her typical response when asked how she'll perform. The next few days prove her right though, she does kick ass.


Shots of a golf course, of athletes and their families, little sister watches as big sister faces 5 different tests of her golfing skills, everything chipping over a high wall from 10 ft away, to short putts; and with hugs and well wishes from Colin Farrell as well family and friends, she works her way up the scoreboard towards the top. Little sister quietly raging that big sister never pointed Colin Farrell her way, but overall, in awe of big sister and the shots, the concentration and the dedication required to get her to this point.

Final shots are a montage again, with the overlay of an announcers voice rising over a cheering crowd, saying the words "and the gold medal winner, with a score of 217, representing Team Ireland, Bairbre Callagy...." and you see her family in the crowd, her Mum, her Dad in his coaches t-shirt, her Gran, her Aunt & Uncles, her big brothers, and little sister all with tears in their eyes, but smiles that couldn't be bigger or brighter, finally, it cuts to a beaming Bairbre, who, after receiving her medal, urges the crowd to cheer for her louder and louder, who all respond. Little sister knows no matter what else life throws at her, at big sister, at this family, this is a moment of hope, of joy forever etched in their souls.

It could just end there, fading on a cheering crowd, no need for a follow up, but everyone always wants to know what happened next.....


Since 2003, it's not been a totally happy ever after. Loss of family and friends have hit big sister hard; and physically and mentally she's regressed a lot from the madcap kid, the cheeky teenager and young adult before the stroke happened. Yet the flashes of that Babs shine through sometimes; and sometimes it feels like we're 6 & 10 again, planning to run away together (we made it as far as Carraroe...) and sometimes it feels like we're 10 & 14 and trying to figure out why we're so similar yet so different....and sometimes, nowadays, it feels like we've swopped roles; and I'm big sister looking out for little sister.

So a brief summation before the screen should fade to black....big sister celebrated her 30th birthday in 2009, and is planning already for her 40th in 2019. She still visits the golf club regularly, sometimes for practise, sometimes just for tea and a scone. She has three madcap nieces who she quietly adores; parents, siblings, neighbours and friends in awe of her on a daily basis; and she still adores Michael Jackson. Almost as much as she adores her soaps, Westlife, One Direction and a plain ham sandwich on brown bread with a cup of tea for supper. Little sister is sitting here, almost 15 years to the day after that gold medal win, reflecting how just how lucky she has been to have a big sister like Babs.

Rescue 116

For me, the sound of a helicopter brings me back to Christmas Eve 1998, hearing the rescue copter in the wee small hours, and seeing it's lights hovering over Sligo town for far, far too long to be a training mission on that night of all nights. It wasn't until mid-way through Christmas Day that I discovered that they had been trying to locate the bodies of my friend and his brother who were in the water. I have never forgotten that feeling, that sound, nor watching those lights.

Rescue 118 flies over my parent's house on it's way home on a regular basis, and I have yet to hear that familiar sound without remembering that night in 1998. Every time I hear it, I hope beyond hope that they are out on a training mission, nothing more than that, that no-one is awaiting their arrival, that no lives are about to change irrevocably and that the crew are merely training; and hopefully, on their way home, taking in the beautiful bay and mountains as they prepare to land.

Those of us on the coast, who have people in and on the water know the value of the Coastguard, we know the value of the RNLI, of the volunteers who drop everything to rush to help others, of those whom, when you thank them, tell you that they're just doing their job. It is a job that appreciated by coastal communities, by mountaineers, by outdoor enthusiasts around the country, and especially in the last few days mores than ever.

 

The sea is a beautiful yet cruel mistress, and all I can wish for this evening is that the sea, the waves and the seabed and nature somehow show some clemency and returns the three missing men to their families soon; and I hope that we, as a country, never forget the daily debt we owe these men and women who guard our coasts, in the air or on the sea.

Some memories

of a neighbourhood of laughter. A neighbourhood of late summer evening kickabouts, futile games of hide and seek as we all knew the best hiding spots from when we began to walk. Of big brothers and big sisters standing up for you, a neighbourhood of love, a neighbourhood in which every house felt like home. It must have rained when I was a kid, but I have no memories of rainy evenings.... The Sligo Park wall was supposed to be a boundary but it was part of the games, of hide and seek-you could stay lost in their trees for what felt like years. 

The neighbourhood pets who felt like mine, Kimmy across the road, my best friend Ash next door who  would run to greet me when she saw I was coming home from school each day. And a magic dog called Kirk who used to put a pound in his mouth, and waddle up the road to Glynns to get the paper each day.

And the neighbours-the wonderful, wonderful neighbours in the best sense of the word. If I misbehaved at someone's house, it meant double punishment-once from them for misbehaving and then again from my parents because Mr/Mrs.Next-Door shouldn't have to be punishing me! Fitz's on the our right, McGetrick's on our left. Surrogate Aunties & Uncle figures for me, friends for my parents.

I  called to McGetricks one rainy evening toward the end of July, and was warmly welcomed by Kathleen and John-"ahh sure would you look who it is!" Kathleen's voice was one of the most comforting sounds of my childhood. As she and John talked, I was instantly thrown back to being a kid again, part of me felt like if I closed my eyes for a sec, when I re-opened them, Kirk would've been lying on the floor, tail softly wagging, and I'd only be 6, waiting for Mum to come back. 

I have vague memories of one of the times Babs was taken to hospital, of curling up in front of their fireplace with Kirk beside me and escaping into a bookworld. When Mum and Kathleen came in to tell me all was ok and  I could go home, I was actually quite disappointed-I was quite enjoying my alternative book/fireplace/dog-owning life!

As a neighbourhood, as a community, as a family, we lucked out. Our neighbours either side of us weren't just neighbours, they were extended family. I can't  seem to put it into words just how wonderful, how close, how love and care-filled a community it was to grow up in, and I feel incredibly lucky that I did. Kathleen may be gone but I will never forget her kindness, her love, and that beautifully comforting lilting voice that exuded love and care every time she spoke. Always  beautifully dressed, always welcoming, at all times a nurse, a teacher, a neighbour, a friend, to me, she was a lady who will stay in my heart-Ní bheith a leithéid arís ann.

musical moments...

...and what a week of moments they were....

There are times in life when you find yourself in the middle of a moment, and you knowingly acknowledge that you'll remember it for the rest of your life. Last week was...well...a week full of them. I'm not even sure where to begin, there were so many magical moments, in the school, at the gigs, watching 3 musicians attempting to practise hurling with malteasers as a sliotar-hell, even in the car en route from one place to another there were some magical moments!

Where to start with the music...? It's probably best described with the little adage - music is the language we use when words don't work. There were so many breathtaking moments, so many funny moments, so many lovely moments, that it's hard to isolate just one.... Liane's version of God Bless The Child, The Impossible Gents tribute to JT, the kids jamming away throughout the week, and those lovely little moments of wandering into a class to find a beautiful jam or chord progression happening....just...bliss.

I think it's pretty fair to say that music is one of the most important things in my life-when I was a kid, before I got guitar lessons, I would pick up my brother's guitar and try and write songs. (ok, they were usually crap and all played on one or two strings, but I enjoyed them!) As a teenager, it's fairly safe to say that music kept me going when I felt everything else was failing around me. In my 20s & 30s, there has been very little that has bet the buzz of live music, of witnessing a moment of magic between musicians and the crowd, when the right notes hit the heart at the right time and between the crowd, the stage, the gig, it somehow feels like the universe has created a moment of unity between all that can never be repeated....and yet it feels all the sweeter for that!

Between everything recently, life's been pretty annoying. More surgery on the knee, more stomach problems, generally, a lot more pain. But I've to try and stay off the painkillers, as they exacerbate the stomach issues. Which isn't so fun. Last week was agony a lot of the time. And yet, sometimes, a series of notes, a voice, a face, a thoughtful lunch, would just lift my soul enough to get through to the next period of pain free time. The company was also rather brilliant, between the lovely Lieve, my co-conspirator in many a shooting scenario, and the talented Kris & Dominika, I was able to actually chill out and enjoy a lot of the music as it happened; unlike previous years.

For those of you who have no idea of what I'm on about, it was the Sligo Jazz Project. While it is all about jazz in one respect, it's all about life in another. There's a love, a philosophy, a feeling from the week that I've not quite found elsewhere in life. Quote of the week from our guest of honour Chuck Rainey "it is, what it is...." ; something which I think many of us have stolen as a life adage. Everything was what it was-the non-stop musical madness, the fleeting moments of closeness and peace and quiet. The faculty, the returning students, the new students, all combined to leave a feeling of pure love-love of music, love of people, love of life.....just....love.

Between watching the progress of the returning students, being majorly impressed by the new students and the fun with the faculty, (I know I've mentioned it before, but you've not seen fellas playing hurling until you've seen it being played with malteasers- a memory that will always make me smile when I'm over that side of town!)  Despite the week finishing majorly sleep-deprived, with a dead laptop, banjaxed memory card, microphones & all round sheer exhaustion, it was still something rather wonderful and special....roll on next year!

Incurable but Managable...

Here is a tune for a Thursday
And here are some words I've written because I needed to get them out of me.


Because it never really leaves your mind. It's never really gone. Every time you see the word cancer, you remember. You remember the sick to your gut feeling. You remember staring at the boiling pasta in the water and calmly and surreally taking it off the hob as your Mum tried to break news gently. You remember pacing in the garden on a June evening as dusk falls with a drizzle, the uncut grass soaking through your converse as your Mum keeps talking without having the words to explain the unknown. You can't accept that your biggest brother, the vegan, the clean-living, never-smoking, country-living tee-totaller, probably has cancer.

You remember the fucked biopsies, the talk of potential treatments and the unknowns, the fact that it's cancer but one that's unknown to those attempting to treat it. Without knowing it's identity, they can't fight it. Echoes of a guerrilla war-how can you fight the enemy when you don't know him from a friend? 

You remember him having to go through more surgery because of "human error"; a biopsy taken from the wrong spot. He seems to get weaker every day. You listen over the phone as another big brother's love radiates through his swearing, his shouting, his sheer vehement rage at the incompetency and the cancer, this all echoes down the phone as you sit in your office, wishing he were there beside you-this brother doesn't ever really do losing his temper. 

Your heart breaks when you get the texts from your Mum. "V.Weak today" "Not sure abou wanting chemo"  "We doing ok. Dad in garden. V. upset because he can't fix this."   "Bairbre v.quiet with us, but upstairs singing now!"

You lie in a hospital bed with a new kneecap on the same day your brother starts his first chemo. Your Dad travels across the country by train and luas to see his youngest kid in a hospital bed hours after leaving his eldest in another hospital bed. Your Aunt, his little sister-in-law reassures him that all will be ok, and despite the fact that he's gotten weaker by the day since diagnosis, and despite that the fact that if chemo doesn't work, he'll be gone in a few weeks, you all believe in her words, because you need to. 

You watch on crutches from the kitchen as he's carried from your parents car by them both, he's barely strong enough to stand on a dry windy August evening. It's his first time out of the hospital since that evening in June and his wails and cries, your Mothers tears and your fathers broken hearted face as the trio slowly make their way to the front door ensure that this moment will never leave your soul. Your sister stands beside you staring quietly and you've never hated the weakness in your knee more because you can't help them carry him. His cries echo through the house and you phone your little big brother to come out to the house because you feel he needs to be there.

The sorrow lifts a little later in the evening when he gets enough strength to be helped into the kitchen. You sit as a family while Mum makes tea, and his little sister makes a chicken sandwich. Then the hitherto vegan suddenly feels like he could try some chicken. The only problem is the last piece of chicken in the house is in his sister's sandwich...and she doesn't do sharing. Eventually, she's persuaded to give him a little and, slightly begrudgingly, she hands some over. You all crack up with laughter and it's in this moment more than anything, you realise how lucky you are with the family you got.

The treatment progresses and while he seems to get weaker, you know it's working. Friends and neighbours and strangers you don't know but who know him stop and ask after him. Prayers are said, candles are lit, stars and seas and waves are wished upon and the rest of life carries on. Suddenly it's Christmas, chemo is kinda done and, although weakened, you sit down to a Christmas dinner that has never been filled with more strength, more thankfulness, more laughter, more love for one another.

His treatment talks of moves from chemo to maintenance, he has long stents placed inside to help his body to try and recover from the battering the cancer and the chemo gave it that sometimes leave him in pain. But he's smiling more. And walking outdoors more. And generally, being able to look toward a little bit of life more. Yes, it's an incurable cancer, but the first round is over and he's won it. He may not feel it, but he has.

In the midst of this, your Aunt, your Dad's little sister-in-law, your Godmother gets a diagnosis that sickens everyone to the core again. Another form of fast-moving unidentifable cancer. It's attacking her faster than anyone could imagine, Doctors included and all of a sudden, you're all talking again about tests and chemo, about markers and cells and treatments and alternatives. You all call the cancer every name under the sun, she occasionally calls it "the israeli army" , a constantly attacking force with little regard for human life. Her husband quips that she'll always support the underdog.

Her chemo stops almost as soon as it starts-the cancer is everywhere, and although one area responds a little, the rest don't. It's made harder by the fact the Doctor is so excited by the result that he told her the good news before he himself found out the bad news. One Monday in April, she's told that they'll decide for definite about the chemo on Friday, to see whether she's strong enough to continue with it or whether it should stop and let her have some quality of life before she dies. Friday comes and she's the one comforting the Doctor after he tells her there's no more that can be done for her; telling him she appreciates how hard it must be for him to deal with it too. She hopes to make it to June for a wedding. 

It's Good Friday, April 18 2014 and you spend all day with the phone glued to you, waiting for the news, good or bad. The longer the day goes on, the more sure you are of the news, so much so that when your brother who's working near her that day calls you, you don't answer the phone, you just watch it ring on your bed. You walk outside to a silent dark garden listening to a voicemail that's full of half spoken sentences and pauses and deep sighs and you sink to your knees and cry and wail until you can't breathe. You call him, you call them, you call home and you sit on the ground in the dark and wonder how much time you'll have with her.

Enough time to see her, to spend time with her, to laugh, to cry, to hug, to be loved by her. Her last few days three weeks later take everyone by surprise. There's no final official goodbye, instead almost every conversation is peppered with subtle love, her quip to her big brother about smelling the turf fire from him, her reassurance that she wasn't dead yet when her breathing had shallowed and she had seemed to be leaving us. She doesn't admit to how much in pain she is and so, when she takes that last injection that she knows will ease the path across for her, it still takes us by surprise

She passes just after 9pm on a dry May Tuesday evening at home in her bedroom with Leonard Cohen's voice a constant companion, in the arms of her soulmate and with her big sisters beside her. Her siblings surround her, her in-laws were her sisters & brothers too.....love emanates from every corner of the room and you watch as she opens her eyes and looks around before her eyes stop moving. In an instant her face is at peace and your hearts are broken. Her funeral is equally beautiful and heartbreaking, a wicker casket, so light to lift you felt she might not be there, covered in flowers from her garden. She turns heads everywhere as the hearse passes by, no different in death as in life, two ladies in Dublin slow their walk as they voice their appreciation of her flowers and her casket, unaware you can all hear their every word. 

Her colleagues from the hospice help in every way they can, but this is a different death for them too. Her memory and her love live on, in the stories from strangers at the funeral home, in little gifts she had given over the years before she passed and mostly, in the love and support that is shared amongst all who loved her-and especially in her husband, who holds and shares hers and their memories, so that even though she is physically gone, her words, her kindness of spirit and tales of her past are not lost to us. He is your link to her and you his link to her, a link that even death that cannot break.

These words, while intensely personal to me and my family, are just one story of family dealing with cancer. My brother's cancer is "incurable but manageable", so we know at some point, hopefully far off into the future, there will be more rounds with it, with chemo, with everything that it entails, the hospital stays, the texts, the calls, the constant worry and then either the relief or the heartbreak of a round finishing for whatever reason.

 In the meantime, it's never really gone away. Every time you hear the word, every time there's a new diagnosis, every time you think of the family and friends you've already lost to the fucker of a disease, you're thinking of "incurable but manageable".

Every time there's an ad urging people to "fight back against cancer " you wonder what idiot thinks that the majority wouldn't "fight back". Even though you find yourself saying it, you hate the phrase "fighting a battle" or hearing that someone "lost the battle" because it implies that if only someone had fought harder, they might have won. Which is bull. When cancer decides it wants you done, you're done. 

The closest to a positive ending I can bring this is to say that cancer reaffirms faith in family, in friends, in the kindness of strangers, in life and in love. For me, it has reaffirmed my belief that sometimes bad shit happens to good people for no reason. It has made me appreciate every day I get with those I love, even though I might not always show it. It has reminded me, that while cancer can kill off those you love, it cannot kill off their love for you-that remains even after they do not. It cannot kill the memories of the happy times, of the bad times (for they are what make the good times seem so good) and in the end, the life, the laughter, the love remains-that love, like life itself, is incurable but manageable.

Tony & Terry...

The problem with caring is that at some point, the loss of what of you care about will bring sorrow and pain. Yet despite that, we still form attachments to people, places, things, so often not realising the depth of our attachment until they're gone from us.

I never realised how much I loved Tony Fenton's genuine enthusiasm and pure love of music until today. There were times in the last few years driving for work and I'd catch his voice and instantly smile, because of his enthusiasm and love for his work....and also because of the instant nostalgia of years gone by. To hear him intro or outro a tune from the mid-90s, if you closed your eyes, it could have been that time, that year, that month it was released-his positivity shone through, and you could, quite literally, hear the smile in his voice as he spoke.

He was the voice of the Hotline for me as a teenager and I remember Babs and I being allowed to sit in the car to listen to the radio at Garden Hill Nursing Home while Mum went in to see Gran as I'd rang in a request before we left our house. It was the first time we heard our names on 2fm and we were both delighted with the shoutout to "ita and her big sister Babs in Sligo". It's funny, I can't remember what song we requested, but I do remember Tony's enthusiastic greeting. 

In the latter years, I was always impressed by how, just when I decided I couldn't listen to more random new pop crap, he'd throw in some amazing new indie tune or an old classic. He knew his stuff, and his love for his work shone through every day. You couldn't fail but to smile when he was talking and the love that he showed in his work everyday is being shown right back today, judging by the amount of tributes that have appeared everywhere, from his former station to his current one and to those of us who listened in over the years. He'll be missed, I think, much more than he ever realised he could be.

And Terry Pratchett. Terry, Terry, Terry. That series of tweets in the pic below left me crying as I looked out at a rainy Dublin street this afternoon. Damn the embuggerance, dammit to hell and a little further beyond A'Tuin's vision. Terry was the Spike Milligan of fantasy writing to me. Just when you thought a piece of writing couldn't get any stranger, it did. And yet, it did so in the most hilarious and subtly philosophical way at times.

I loved his bio on his books, which was something like "Terry started work as a journalist and saw his first corpse three hours later-work experience actually meaning something in those days". I loved his characters, from the mad professors at the Unseen University to Granny Weatherwax to Vimes (and his dedication to that children's classic..."Where is my cow?") .... from Igor(s), Otto, the non-blood-drinking-vampire, Rincewind, Mort, and of course, almost everyone's favourite, Death (with his trusty steed, Binky.) I loved Ankh-Mopork, even if I could never really get my head round how to pronounce it. I imagined it to be a mix of Edinburgh's oldest streets and cellars with Dublin's village like-silly attitude and London's hecticness-somewhere I'd like to visit, but not stay for too long for fear of meeting Gaspode the wonder-dog and getting caught up in some scam!

I loved how as I got older, his older books became "classics" in the fantasy world, and reading his newer ones felt like stepping back into a room you'd not been into in years, yet somewhere that was instantly comfy and recognisable.

Yet while his writing had a comforting humor to it, at times, it could make you think. It could make you think about the concept of time, how life goes by so quickly, how the loss of someone changes your world, and how to sweep properly….! His documentary a few years ago on euthanasia was heartbreakingly moving piece of television. If you've not watched it, do.https://vimeo.com/105168003

I will miss seeing new books, new mad wizard or magic filled covers. I will treasure my copy of the Thief of Time which kept me laughing during an almost 48 hr journey from Carlisle to Sligo, due to landslides, floods and flight cancellations. My walkman died from the sheer volume of rain, I couldn't write, and so, reading was my only escape-the book remained, even though the cover came off and the pages are all curled up from the water damage. (I managed to dry it out under a hand-drier in Edinburgh airport...!) and I will finish with a typical Pratchett point of view...slightly silly, slightly philosophical and slightly wonderful.

"DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING,’ said Death. ‘JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.