Family Fortunes: ‘My strong grandmother lost two sons that December. What a Christmas’

When an elderly person dies, we hear the phrases, “ That generation had great stamina”, They lived through tough times”, “ . . . was such a strong woman/ man”.

And they were great. They took the knocks and got on with their lives.

My grandmother Brigid Gaffney was a strong woman. She was born in Roscommon and went to work in Dublin, aged 17. She met and married a lovely Kilkenny man and they lived on John Street, where they opened a grocery store. There were no supermarkets then – people bought milk and bread every day and on Thursdays, customers would hand in their weekly shopping lists and a box of groceries would be delivered to them on Saturday morning. Friday was their busy day.

My grandparents worked together and reared six children. Their eldest son emigrated to Newcastle and came home once a year to see his parents. Their youngest son went to Australia, he married and settled there and it was 16 years before he came back. Every Friday, my grandmother posted the Kilkenny People to him, enclosing a long letter. He wrote to her once a month.

When my grandfather died, she was heartbroken, but she got on with her life and kept the business going. A few years later, one of her sons ( aged 41) became ill and died in December. Three days later, on December 6th, a second son ( my dad) died suddenly. He was 47. Naturally, she was completely devastated – two sons in one week. What a Christmas ! There was no grief counselling for her and no self-help books available, but she soldiered on and I often look back in amazement at her courage, her faith and her stamina.

Whenever we have a family gathering, we talk about her a lot. She was one strong lady. This photo was taken in 1930, on the occasion of my dad’s first communion. He is seated beside my grandmother.