'If there be no God we'll never find out'

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column

Michael Commane

During a number of my years working in the press office of Concern Worldwide Paul was my boss.

Both of us no longer work with Concern but we have stayed in touch.

Paul contacted me last month to tell me his mother had died. She had been in a nursing home in Cork since 2017.

Patricia O’Mahony died on January 19. She was the noble age of 91 when the cruel hand of Covid took her life.

Two weeks ago I saw Patricia’s photograph in ‘The Irish Times’. Every Saturday the newspaper dedicates a page to a selected number of people who have died from Covid.

 

Naturally I was attracted to the page when I saw the piece on Mrs O’Mahony. Instantly I spotted the similarity between her and Paul. He was certainly his mother's son. Having spent five years in Cork City, I was familiar with many of the places associated with Mrs O’Mahony’s life. 

Right throughout the piece I could see all sorts of links between her and Paul. I knew Paul was interested in music and here I see Patricia was an enthusiastic pianist, who was a regular visitor to the Cork Opera House.

I moved on to read the life stories of the other six people on the page.

There was Nancy Vereker from Dominic’s Place in Waterford. And that interested me because she must have lived close to the Dominican priory and church in the city. Being a Dominican I was wondering did any of my fellow Dominicans know her, her husband or any of her seven children. Did she have any links with the Dominicans?

There was the story of Finbarr O’Shea. With a name like that he had to have been from Cork. He was an avid Cork City Football Club supporter. Indeed, he travelled all over Europe watching them play. RTE broadcaster John Creedon said he was a ‘sweetheart of a man’ who always had a smile on his face.

 

Paul McDermott was a GP in Dublin’s Rathfarnham. 

His nickname was ‘Polish’ and his brother said of him that everyone had a funny story about him. His filter didn’t work 100 per cent and one would not know what he was going to say next.

Flora Nugent was born near Oranmore but on marrying moved to Tipperary and later to Limerick.

She farmed and her husband ran a timber mill. She never allowed her  nine grandchildren to call her granny because she didn’t want to sound old.

Reading through the lives of those seven people it kept crossing my mind of the importance, the uniqueness of the individual person and then the circle of friends and acquaintances we know during our lifetime. We may well feel secure and grounded but come to think about it we hang in there under the most fragile of circumstances and what seems so certain and fixed is all held together by the tiniest of threads.

Is everything to do with our lives pure randomness or is there a grand plan? Who knows?

A 98-year-old priest, who is a man of great faith said to me some weeks ago: ‘Michael if there is no God we’ll never find out’.