My mother's life is written in what she gave to her husband and four sons. Everything. From the day she married Jack in 1912 until his death in 1951 she loved him with an all unquestioning love, a love that endured until her own death five years later. And to her sons her devotion was absolute. An early studio portrait of her with Charlie and Barry may be found at the end of Charlie's "Requiem for a River".

Permeating our home life at all stages was her sense of humour. The freedom we boys enjoyed with our parents is best summed up in an extract from one of Brian's letters:

"For only a month each year was I able to enjoy the company of Dad and Mama and John. The first week or so I felt I was still a stranger, with special things being laid on in my honour. But by the second week I was accepted both as target and accredited marksman in the daily verbal jousts."

Of the many stories about Mama I like two the best. The first took place in Letterkenny when we were living in College Row. (See St. Eunan's College--A Memoir).

We had a cat named Mick. How he got that name is obscure, but Mick was a Russian bravado and émigré. I like to think he belonged to the Czar's royal household and escaped from St. Petersburg following the historic seizure of the Winter Palace. He strolled on board a ship at dockside, and with an independent air just as casually strolled off it at Derry quayside. There he adopted Pa McAdam who, in turn, presented him to the Court of Mama, where he took up residence, eventually travelling with her entourage--my older brothers and her consort--to the diocesan capital of Raphoe in Donegal. Here he mated, and mated, and his descendants continue to mate until this very day.

Next time you go there, take a close look at the cats of Letterkenny. Some have a distinctive meow, more akin to that of Russian felines of royal descent than to that of the homogenous cats of Ireland. Check it out for yourself and see if I'm telling a word of a lie.

Mick had a ferocious temper when roused. Other times he was content to lie in the sunshine streaming through the parlour window, and view the outside world with equanimity.

Past that window each day came two figures, the Most Reverend Dr. William McNeely, Bishop of Raphoe, and his dog, a most respectable duo out for their constitutional walk. The Bishop's dog was a little dog, and whenever he saw Mick he would yap, and yap, and act as if he wanted to have a go at the cat in the window, safe in the knowledge that the window was between them, and anyway who would dare be hostile to the dog of the Bishop himself?

Mick had to endure this insulting behaviour for the longest time. Then came a day when the front door had been left open. When the Bishop came along, and his wee dog again started his impertinent yapping, out flew Mick. The Bishop flailed away with his walking stick, and in the fuss the dog bolted indoors, followed by Mick, and His Lordship after them both.

Mama was in the kitchen, heard the commotion, and looked up to see a man's legs, clad in black trousers, disappearing up the stairs. And when she herself ran up the stairs, there were the same black-clad legs sticking out from under her bed.

The dog had been chased under the bed by Mick, and His Grace was down on all fours trying to separate them and save his dog.

When Dad came home from work and asked how her day had been, Mama, very innocently, replied that she had had a visitor.

"Who?"

"The Bishop."

She added that she had even spent time with him in their bedroom!

The details soon followed, saving Dad from apoplexy.

The second story concerns something that never happened. Sometime in our verbal jousts Mama had gained the nickname "The Gaffer". In Ireland a gaffer was the man in charge of road repair gangs. And he had a whistle which he blew to mark the start and end of work. Nowadays the title is bestowed on a member of a crew engaged in film making but I doubt he has a whistle. Mama was known to whistle when dinner was ready, hence the appellation.

Now it so happened that, at a time when the family newspaper was in dire straits, (see The Vindicator Story) on a Saturday afternoon my eye fell on the racing pages of one of the dailies and, lo and behold, one of the entries in a certain race bore the name "The Gaffer". It was a genuine longshot, carrying the almost unheard of odds of 100/1. Ten pounds invested with Bernard Sweeny, the bookmaker, who had an office in the Purt of Ballyshannon, would have had a return of one thousand pounds, enough to satisfy the National Bank and keep the Vindicator afloat for some time longer. Mama didn't like the idea of being linked to a racehorse, and I didn't have the courage to back The Gaffer, which miraculously won the race.

I wouldn't be where I am now but for the two Gaffers in my life, and my odds on favourite will always be the one who gave me life in the first place, and sustained me until at long last she went to join my Dad.

May they Rest in Peace.