Cork woman embarking on 100 mile charity challenge

The song goes ‘I would walk 500 miles’....

And I will walk 100 miles in March for the Irish Hospice Foundation, the only charity in Ireland dedicated to death, dying, and bereavement.

The Foundation funds services like the Nurses for Night Care, and the bereavement support Line run by dedicated volunteers, who offer a safe, comfortable space to help with your own grief.

This organisation that offers practical, emotional, and spiritual support for the ill and their loved ones deserves to be supported for offering a mix of extraordinary care, competence and compassion that helps people die with dignity and without pain.

My dad, Larry Roche, and my good friend and colleague at The Echo, Sharon O’Reilly Coates, passed peacefully away in the loving care of the Galway Hospice, and in the Marymount Hospice Cork.

Hence I’m ‘Walking 100 Miles in March’ for the Irish Hospice Foundation, in recognition of the support they gave.

My dad and my friend Sharon were rather alike.

They were both free-spirited, generous of spirit, and always had the joie de vivre vibe about them. They engaged easily with people, and they always included people.

They never seemed like people who would be destined for hospice care.

“I’m not going,” dad said, when the Night Nurse had done all she could for him and the night vigils were taking their toll on him and on everybody.

He had to be gently persuaded to go into the hospice in Renmore, Galway, now that he was terminally ill and there was a bed available for him.

And I had to do the persuading. It was not a mission that I relished.

The car journey, 25 years ago, to Oranmore via Castlelyons, Fermoy, Limerick, Ennis and Shannon, Kinvara and Clarenbridge, seemed endless.

The ambulance for dad was waiting outside the homestead. The engine was running, waiting for its run into the Galway Hospice, with a reluctant patient on board.

“I want to stay at home here,” dad said. “I’m not going to any hospice.”

“It’s like a hotel,” I told him.

“You’ll have a room all to yourself, dad. You can bring your cassette tapes and your radio. The food in Galway Hospice is second to none.

“You can even request a drop of whiskey, and we’ll all be in to see you whenever we like.”

The Night Nurse helped dad to dress himself and to collect a few belongings. He didn’t need much.

“If I go in, I’ll never come out,” said dad, who was always ready and waiting to go for a spin with whoever called to his previous residence, The Fox and Hounds, Oranmore, and now to his house in Maree, Oranmore.

“The rest and the 24/7 attention in the hospice will do you good,” I told him.

He had a poor swallow, and for a person always ready to give a bar of a song, this was detrimental.

“I’ll get your buddies to call in and sing a song or two for you.”

I knew his close cronies would only be delighted.

The ambulance engine was still running. The medics were patient.

Dad, weak and poorly, gave in.

The next day, visiting him before I returned to Garryvoe, he was perky and bright-eyed.

“You were right,” he said. “It is like a hotel and all the staff couldn’t be nicer.”

The drugs eased dad’s pain and his symptoms. When he was not on meds, he was there, in the room. When he was sedated, he was in dreamland and often hallucinated.

Once, he thought he was back in the Galtymore dance hall in Cricklewood, Kilburn, where he met the love of his life, Kitty Lyons.

“I sang I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen for her,” said dad in his euphoric state.

“Sing it for us,” said the nurse, who was making him more comfortable in his bed.

And he did give us a verse of his favourite back-in-the day song.

All the while, the nurses, like gold, cared for him. They propped him up to sip water, they spoon-fed him, they cheered him up, asking him to hum a tune. They treated him like he was their own.

They became our family.

“He couldn’t be in a better place,” his wife Kitty agreed.

“Larry will keep everyone entertained.”

And he did.

He owned his space at the hospice, whose philosophy is that everyone has the right to die free of pain and with dignity. And that families should be supported to make that possible.

Dad died as he had lived - with music in his ears and a spoon of whiskey for breakfast.

He had told the nurses who cared for him that he wanted a lone piper to play the bagpipes at his funeral. And they did.

The caring nurses turned up for the person they called ‘the singing publican’. They always turn up.

Sharon O’Reilly Coates became my friend and confidant from the first day I met her in The Echo office in Academy Street. She was full of the joys of life and her sense of fun and her natural exuberance rubbed off on me.

I visited her in the South Infirmary when she got ill and had surgery. I wasn’t surprised to see her sipping from a cup while typing away on her laptop, no doubt banging out a story about her fellow patients in her own inimitable, humorous way.

I was surprised and taken aback when Sharon was admitted to Marymount. I knew she would be in the most capable caring hands on earth. Her cancer was terminal.

“Don’t worry Chrissie,” she said. “It’ll be alright.”

She trusted herself and she trusted others to take care of her. And they did.

“Sharon passed away,” our mutual friend and colleague told me on the phone when I was heading up to Marymount nine years ago to see Sharon.

Her family, husband Graeme, daughter Enya, and son Liam, received compassionate care and support. They knew the most important person in their life had died as she would wish, with dignity and without pain.

“The staff at Marymount supported us as much as they supported Sharon,” says Graeme.

“They were so sensitive and kind. We were offered counselling and other wonderful supports.

“I could not praise all the people associated with Marymount enough.”

The Irish Hospice Foundation can never do enough for the terminally ill and their families.

That is why I am walking 100 miles in March, to raise vital funds to support the work of end-of-life care and bereavement care to help people cope with grief and promote well-being.

And I would walk 500 miles.

The Galway Hospice Foundation: 091-770868 info@galwayhospice.ie

Marymount University Hospital and Hospice: 021-4869100 info@marymount.ie

See:www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/ChrisDunne840