Literary editor's zest for life recalled

A CONGREGATION richly representative of the arts, media, academic, legal and political worlds inhabited by Caroline Walsh, along with virtually every living past and present employee of The Irish Times– and row upon row of young people who had been inspired, loved and mentored by her – all crowded into Newman University Church on Christmas Eve for her funeral Mass.

On a bone-chilling morning in the neo-Byzantine church on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green which she attended as a child with her sisters and mother, the numbers thronging the pews, gallery, walls and long vestibule bore witness to her “extraordinary gift for friendship” and “exceptional generosity of spirit”, referred to by her husband, James Ryan.

The literary editor of The Irish Times, wife of James and mother of Matt and Alice, was 59 when she died unexpectedly last Thursday in St Vincent's Hospital.

In his homily, Fr John Feighery, the funeral celebrant, talked about “the various forms” of death, including “death from dreadful, insistent illness . . .”, touching on “the nature of Caroline’s physical illness, which had an atrocious effect on her psyche, her spirit . . .” Death could be gentle, appropriate, well-prepared, he said, “but only too often, death is cruel and absurd, untimely and hugely painful. And that tragically was the death that Caroline experienced.”

A service interwoven with poignant songs and sacred music, wistful reminiscences and not a little laughter, was marked above all by her family’s determination to move forward from what James described as “the great, great tragedy of Caroline’s death”, into a future armed with her most enduring legacy, “the great enterprise that was her life, the stardust she scattered every single day”.

Among the pieces sung by soloists Reachbha FitzGerald (granddaughter of the late Garret, a friend of Caroline's), Sallay Garnett and Louise Holden, were haunting renditions of Caroline's party piece Hear the Wind Blow, Forever Youngand Make You Feel My Love.

Friends and relatives Tom O’Byrne, Nell Ryan, Emma Hewson, Tadhg Peavoy, Patsey Murphy and Des McMahon offered the prayers of the faithful – for family, for the emergency services, coast guards, the Garda, and volunteers and hospital staff; for the suffering and the lonely; for Caroline’s “talented tribe of nieces and nephews”, and all the young people whom she inspired and encouraged in every possible way; and for her friends and those in the literary and creative world.

When the family’s turn came to speak, it was mainly of a life wholly, exuberantly lived, loved, trenchantly observed and experienced. “Despite today and the last few days,” said her son Matt, “Caroline Walsh lived a very happy life – and she knew that herself, and so did I. There was no day of which we don’t have kind, happy and wonderful memories.”

Alice talked about her mother’s limitless interest in people, her theatrical stories, irrepressible energy and enormous sense of fun. How she “told everybody all the good things about each other”. How an average school morning could be enlivened by mother and daughter jumping up to jive to an Abba song on the radio. How “no detail was left unearthed” from a story, so that a mundane trip to Spar to buy a tangerine would be interrogated with the perennial question known to every journalist fortunate to be mentored by Caroline: “So. You woke up. What happened next?”

“Mum,” Matt said, “more than anything, was a mother. There wasn’t a day of our lives when we didn’t know how much our mum loved us, deeply, energetically and with Caroline Walsh energy”.

With perfect comic timing, Alice added: “In all honesty, her pride in us was well founded,” to a great burst of laughter from the congregation. “We blossomed and will do so for the rest of our lives because of her.”

James also spoke of her skills as a raconteur, how her daily trips from Ranelagh into work led to exuberant evening reports that sounded like “a series of great adventures, an odyssey . . . Hers was a wholly imaginative response to the world . . . She always had an eye out for the great truth of the situation.” Her literary interest was all-consuming, he said, recalling memorable holidays spent visiting the homes of writers such as Balzac, Victor Hugo, Proust – which were anything but dusty affairs by all accounts.

“Caroline was everything that is the opposite of passive,” he said to a laugh of recognition. “She would ask the guide a thousand questions often to the enormous frustration of other people.

She was never bothered with signs like ‘Interdit’, would leap over cordons, disregard ‘do not touch’ signs, and occasionally correct the guide. On one occasion, the group began to address their questions to her . . .”

The Irish Timeswas the beneficiary of this consuming interest, and consequently the nation, he said, but consuming and all as this was, it was Matt and Alice who never left her thoughts, who remained in her heart at all times – "and not just in some silent, mawkish, sentimental way, but in a frequently expressed palpable way. This was something they carried into their lives every day, a nugget that could not be prised from them – not then, not now, not ever.

“It has enabled them to follow their destinies, to be as happy as the world allows, and all-importantly, to have the capacity for friendship. I cannot think of a better bequest – or to use the corporate term, I cannot think of a better skillset,” he said mockingly, “to bequeath in a world increasingly regulated by tyrannical corporate values . . .”

He took particular care to thank and reassure all those friends who had sought in recent weeks to contact her. “She wished, as she always did, to put the best foot forward . . . But I’d still like to thank those who sought to pave the way forward to a life, which to our immeasurable grief, is not to be. So. No more stardust.”