Portions of Brigid Redmond’s life are so poignant it’s hard to see how she musters the relentless positivity.
Each distressing story is quickly suffixed with a proverb (“my grandma used to say there’s no use crying over spilt milk”) or reflection (“I have lots of angels”).
Now 75, she has looked after her special needs son Dermot for 50 years (and her husband Brendan who has Alzheimer’s, for the last 10).
On Wednesday, Brigid was among 20 family carers honoured by President Michael D Higgins. Speaking at the Long Service Awards hosted by the Carers Association, Mr Higgins paid tribute to the "quiet, sustained work of the many unsung heroes who provide critical care for family members and others who, without that care, would be unable to remain in their own homes."
Their lives must at times feel “overwhelmed, hugely burdensome to carry, or even unfair . . . where many days are reduced to a struggle against tiredness, stress and loneliness,” the President said.
As Brigid is quick to point out, there are thousands of such lives, all equally important.
The 20 who were honoured have given almost 800 years of collective care to loved ones. In Ireland, 4.1 per cent of people do this unpaid, for an estimated 6.3 million hours a week. Brigid is a paradigm.
Wedding
Together with her future husband, she moved to Manchester in the 1950s as part of a generation of emigrants. Recounting that part of her life, she recalls her father becoming ill with cancer and dying two days before her wedding. As things transpired, his remains were in the church on the day she married. After the ceremony she placed her bouquet on his coffin.
“My dad used to have me laughing. He was full of life. He used to tell me the day I was born [in 1939] the war started,” she says.
Brigid and Brendan soon began their family back in Manchester. First came their eldest, Kevin, then Grace, Dermot, Deirdre and Janette. She had twins who died shortly after birth.
With Grace too came tragedy. “She was perfect, perfect,” remembers Brigid. “I carried her so well and I never had any morning sickness. When she came they said her breathing was a bit funny. She died that day, Christmas Day.”
The complications with Dermot came not long after he was born in 1964. One night, after hearing him scream from his cot, Brendan ran upstairs and noticed something jumping from the bed and scurrying under a cupboard. It turned out to be a rodent, likely from a nearby building site.
Probably bitten or scraped, he became gravely ill and was treated in hospital where Brigid recalls being given the “dying pass” for family visitors.
“They didn’t know what had caused it. He had a big mop of blond hair and they had to shave it all off. And there were tubes in his mouth.
Dribbling
“They said they didn’t know why he was dribbling from the mouth, and his eyes were rolling. I used to sleep in there with him. It was about three months and after that we had him home. It was a hectic time but when I look back I used to say to Our Lady, if he is not going to get well, take him.”
While they never found out what caused the illness which caused him to be hospitalised, Dermot had an intellectual disability and was also diagnosed with epilepsy.
Today, years after the family resettled in Walkinstown, Dublin, his ability to look after himself is greatly improved but Brigid remembers the struggle when her young child put his hands in his food, fearful someone might take it.
These days he goes to college and comes home to do the shopping and walk their adopted rescue dog Rambo, who, explains Brigid, “had his throat cut and he was kicked [about] and he didn’t have much of a bark but we adopted him.”
Dermot learned to communicate far better over the years, often expressed through frequent arguments surrounding a Liverpool vs Manchester Utd rivalry (Brigid is the Liverpool supporter).
Ten years ago her husband Brendan became ill with Alzheimer’s and today Brigid cares for both of them.
“It can be hard. Because God love him being such a happy man, he can’t understand why he forgets so quick. And his balance – you would think it was vertigo he had because he loses his balance.”
But then Brigid will tell you about all of this before a chance mention of her two personal battles with cancer. And even that is quickly flapped away in a scurry of determined optimism.
“I’m grand now. My hair is back,” she says.
“If you can get up in the morning and put your feet on the ground it’s good. My grandma used to say there is no use crying over spilt milk.”
