RadioScope:A mother kneels in front of the matron of a hospital in the west of Ireland in the 1960s and pleads with her not to make her take her seven-year-old son home.
Documentary On One: Heaven's Special Children, TRE Radio One, Wednesday, 8.02pm.
Her son is profoundly handicapped and for seven years this woman has not had a night's sleep, a day's peace or any support from her husband or anyone else.
Her only relief came when her son was admitted to Portiuncula Hospital weeks earlier.
If she is made to take the child home, she will commit suicide.
The matron finds a place for the child, Jimmy, in St Bridget's psychiatric hospital.
Two years later Jimmy is dead. A year after that his mother is dead. We are not told how she died.
Another child, Parry, was born at around the same time as Jimmy. Parry was also profoundly handicapped.
Today he is in his 40s with, his mother estimates, the mental capacity of a two-year-old.
His mother, who is in her late 70s, dreads the day she will no longer be able to care for him.
She even dislikes seeing him going to the respite centre but, because of her age, she needs the break.
The stories are told in RTÉ Radio One's marvellous Documentary On One series.
Pearl Finnegan was a nurse present when the mother pleaded with the matron in Galway not to make her take Jimmy home. A few years ago, she wrote a newspaper article about the experience.
This article led to last week's documentary which you can download from www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/ and the website contains what can only be called a treasure trove of previous documentaries.
In the early 1960s in Ireland, it was not rare for children like Jimmy to be hidden away.
Jimmy was kept in a drawer in a darkened room for seven years and his existence was concealed from everybody except the doctor and the public health nurse.
Other disabled children were kept in sheds at the time or otherwise out of the public gaze, though this was also the era when parents' groups emerged demanding a better deal for their disabled children.
We listen to the heroic story of Parry's mother sitting up for hours every night to care for him when he was a child. And we hear about her building every ounce of her life around him still. We hear too about how she is still using all her energy to care for him.
We cannot but wonder which parent we would be?
Would we be Parry's mother or Jimmy's mother?
I am grateful I have never had to make that choice but I fear I would be the latter.
Review by Padraig O'Morain, a journalist and counsellor.