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Memory

She Sat With Me All Night

I am not going to put my name to this because it is private. I was a patient on the ward when Kathleen was the night sister, and I was in a very bad place, not medically but otherwise. I was frightened and I wasn't coping and she saw it. She sat with me for almost an hour in the middle of the night when she had a ward to run. She did not say anything particularly profound. She just stayed. I have never forgotten it.
Anonymous · 8 Jun 2026
Condolence

From a Neighbour on Kenilworth Road

I live two doors down and I have known Kathleen since they moved in. She brought us a casserole the week we arrived. She remembered my husband's name and mine. She brought Christmas cards every year, proper ones with a handwritten note. She was the kind of neighbour who makes you feel settled in a place, and those people are rarer than they should be. I will miss seeing her light on in the mornings. Our thoughts are with the family.
Miriam Katz · 8 Jun 2026
Memory

The Communion Preparation Classes

Kathleen ran the First Holy Communion preparation classes for almost fifteen years. She had a particular gift for explaining things to seven-year-olds without being condescending, which is harder than it sounds. She used a lot of biscuits as teaching aids. One year a small boy asked her why God allowed suffering and she answered him properly, seriously, without blinking — and then gave him two extra biscuits for asking.
Margaret Walsh · 8 Jun 2026
Memory

The Choir

Kathleen joined the St Osburg's choir in 2001 and immediately became the most unreliable soprano we have ever had, because of her shifts, and simultaneously one we could not imagine being without. She had a slightly rough voice, which she knew, and it did not concern her in the least. She sang like she meant it. When the choir sang at the Requiem on Wednesday, we all felt her absence acutely. The second soprano section was very quiet.

The Choir
Margaret Walsh · 8 Jun 2026
Memory

Night Shifts

I worked with Kathleen for eleven years on the surgical ward and I would not have lasted the first two without her. She had a way of managing the ward at three in the morning — everything slightly difficult at that hour — that was absolutely calm without being cold. She knew every patient by name within hours of their admission. She remembered who had family coming in the morning and who did not, and she adjusted accordingly. She brought soda bread on nights. It was an act of mercy.
Patrick Flanagan · 8 Jun 2026
Memory

The Christmas Cake

She baked a Christmas cake every year from the same recipe she got from Mam, written in Mam's handwriting on a piece of lined paper that had been folded and unfolded a thousand times. She kept it in a little plastic sleeve now because the paper was getting fragile. She baked the one that was served at the wake in September, when she was still well enough to stand for an hour. She said she wanted it to be a good one. It was the best one she ever made.

The Christmas Cake
Siobhan O'Connell · 8 Jun 2026
Eulogy

My Sister

Kathleen was the person in our family who made things happen. Not noisily — she was not a noisy person — but with a steady, cheerful determination that meant things got done, problems got solved, and anyone who was struggling found themselves somehow sorted without quite knowing when she had managed it. She chose nursing at seventeen and never doubted it. She used to say that people were at their most honest when they were frightened or in pain, and that was where she liked to be — not because she enjoyed their suffering but because she felt she could do something real there. I think that was true. I also think she chose it because she could not bear to be in a job where she was not genuinely needed. She came to terms with her diagnosis in a way none of us managed. We were angry and she was not. She said she'd had a very good go and didn't much see the point of spending the time she had left being cross. She wrote letters to Thomas and the children. She organised her filing. She baked a Christmas cake in September because she wasn't sure she'd manage it in December. She did manage it. We ate it at the wake. I am so glad she was my sister.
Siobhan O'Connell · 8 Jun 2026
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