Miriam Lord has a lovely piece in The Irish Times yesterday on Dessie O’Malley and it’s certainly well worth a read.
At the end of her personal story she relates how Dessie loved his wife Pat.
“At her funeral Mass Dessie said: ‘The thing should have been the other way around. I, and most people, expected that I would be the first to go. It would have been better for everyone if that were so, but the better one went first.’
“Two weeks ago, still politically engaged, he voted for the last time in the Dublin Bay South by-election.
“Wonder who got his number one.”
What a fabulous piece of writing. And how it catches the man.
Elsewhere Lord tells of a conversation Dessie, his wife Pat, and John Hume had in a pub in Omagh in the aftermath of the 1998 bombing. Miriam Lord is present.
John Hume gives them a lecture on how to spot a good French wine. Pat’s family owned a pub in Omagh.
As John held forth, Dessie, trying to stifle a smile said: ‘really’ with an expression that was priceless.
Lord explains how it was a bizarre moment in the midst of terrible tragedy.
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