Alicia Gilmore RIP

Writing in his latest blog, Eddie Gilmore, CEO of the London Irish Chaplaincy, pays tribute to his mother who died recently.

Alicia was born in Newry, Co Down, the second of ten surviving children, six girls and four boys, of Elizabeth and Joseph McStay. She was clearly very bright and if anyone needed any info about anything they would say, "Ask Leeshy"! Likewise if any arithmetic needed doing: "Ask Leeshy"! Indeed her favourite subject at school was maths but, despite the pleading of the nuns with her ma, she had to leave at fourteen to work in Bessbrook Mill.

She shared a bed with Mary-Rose, the oldest, and with Annie and it seems that when the two elder sisters started going out at night they would climb in through the window if they were late back and would bribe Annie not to tell ma. Another of the outings of the two sisters was to deliver, on their way to school, a quart can of tea and sandwiches to their da who worked on the Newry docks. And there was a further important task that mum had to perform in relation to her da. On Friday, pay day, Joe McStay would go to the pub with the other men while Lizzie would be waiting anxiously at home to see if any of the wages would be left. Mum was sent to locate her da and to spin a yarn that someone had come to the house and needed to see him urgently!

Mum was a great story-teller, and was famous for her tales, her sayings, her nicknames for people, and her invocation of characters from the Newry of old. If anyone was wearing a winter coat in mild weather she would nod and say, "Top-coat McAteer". If someone was being contrary it was, "That's Mary-Ann Markey all over." And if a person was starting to take charge: "Foreman Kearney"!

When we were clearing mum's house five years ago we came across a gem of a letter. It was from the British Railways Board, dated September 1957 and offering her a job in the café of Coventry railway station and free rail passage from Belfast. She duly arrived in the city and found lodgings in Hill Street, where her first task was to locate the nearest Catholic church, which was St Osburgs. Three months later she went to an Irish dance at the Bamba and was asked to dance by a good-looking Galwayman called Ned Gilmore. Their first date was at the Swanswell, where dad used to play darts with his mates, and she happily sat and watched as she sipped her lemonade. She never touched a drop of alcohol until she was pregnant with her first child when, as an antidote to morning sickness, she was prescribed brandy (those were the days!). In later year when Eileen and Chris invited her round for Sunday lunch they would ask what she wanted to drink and she would say, "Ah, a small glass of brandy," and merely being handed the glass was enough to start her giggling.

Mum and dad were married at St Osburgs in November 1960, and my sister was born in December 1961 and named Eileen Bernadette after mum's youngest sister. I completed the family in February 1965. They had managed to buy a house in Batsford Road, near the Holyhead, and in 1968 moved to Kendon Avenue, near Christ the King.

Mum was utterly devoted to family. She stayed at home for several years when we were young, later getting a job at Tesco in town. She then moved to the Co-op, where she was very popular with the customers. She liked a bargain, and one of those stories which will live forever in family folklore is when we were organising dad's funeral in 1998. We'd been through all the formalities with the undertaker (the Co-op naturally) when mum opened her purse, pulled something out with a great flourish and said, "Can I use my Co-op discount card?" She could indeed, and she would be delighted to know that said card has been flourished one final time and that she's getting 10% off her own funeral!

She was also not averse to haggling, which was a kind of sport for her. I was never that keen on haggling myself but inspired by mum I tried it once when buying a guitar that cost £270. I forced myself to say those famous words I'd heard uttered so many times by mum and her sisters, "Can you do any better on the price?" The guy went off and came back and said he could do it for £220 which I happily agreed to. Back at home I proudly told mum about my brilliant bargain only for her to look at me and say, "Sure, I'd have given him £200"!

There were many nice messages to us from people who had known mum. One of my old friends said he remembered her as "a lovely, kind and welcoming mum." She truly was so hospitable. Nobody, whoever they were, came to the house without being given a cup of tea, at the very least. And it was pointless to say no to seconds because she would put it on your plate anyway. Dan recalls how when he called at the house, the first words of his grandmother were usually, "are you starving?" Whether he was or not he would be given tea and Madeira cake, and maybe sandwiches too. Much to his relief, he was never offered any of the boiled cabbage that was always on the hob. Mum got a lot of pleasure from fairly simple foods: jelly & ice cream, tinned peaches, choc ices, Madeira cake, plain biscuits. She always had plenty in stock and loved offering them out. Steve remembers his nana trying to force-feed his partner Suzie with Madeira, in spite of her gluten intolerance. When I asked my eldest son Kieran about his memories they were also food-related. He said he remembered "the nana salad (a summer staple), and the cup of tea and…the Madeira cake"!

Mum had a particular obsession with sell-by dates; and, for a time, only M & S chicken would do (as long as it had a good date on it!). Eileen dutifully got it on her Wednesday lunchtime shopping trip ready for delivering the next day, her day off. The work crew used to remark, "Eileen's on the chicken run again!" M & S could do no wrong in mum's eyes, and she would often solemnly announce, "Jeez, you can't beat Marks!"

Many of her sayings were priceless. She never liked to see a man in shorts and would say, "I've seen better legs hanging out of a nest!" Some of them, like 'there'll be wigs on the green', we have no idea to this day of what they actually mean, but no doubt they're imbued with centuries-old wisdom, just like this wonderful woman herself. And on the subject of wisdom, Steve recalls how she had an uncanny knack when they were watching back-to-back whodunnits during his Saturday-night sleepovers of spotting the culprit early on. She would swear on the Sacred Heart that she knew who the murderer was and justify her claim by such observations as, "I don't trust her eyes" or "You can tell by the way he's walking."

She had her demons, like we all do. She could be highly anxious, and this often manifested itself in the endless search for missing objects. How many times I was asked to seek out disappeared glasses or handbags, and how many prayers were said to St Anthony, her all-time favourite saint. One dramatic occasion of blind panic was when we were going over to Ireland via rail and ferry, with the train from Coventry jam-packed with people and luggage. As we were coming into Crewe, where we had to change for the Holyhead train, we came to a halt for a couple of minutes and then began to move again. Mum thought the train had already stopped in Crewe and was now on its way to Scotland and she called out, "JESUS! Stop the train." I kind of knew what had happened but who was I to question and she had the four of us clambering over bodies and bags to reach the door, just as the train rolled onto the platform at Crewe.

Mum also had a bit of a tendency towards extremes. If you were male you could be either a 'fine big fella' or a 'typical small man'! And she would commonly report that so-and-so had drunk 'five big pints' (as opposed to five small ones). Women might be judged on their powers of observation, and she was fond of saying of one of the neighbours (who like her was often strategically placed behind the curtain), "That one misses nothing!"

Mum was a woman of deep faith, who believed in the power of prayer, and it would have been a great comfort to her in her final years to be brought communion by Gerry O'Reilly of Christ the King and Sr Teresa of St Osburgs. I was pleased to finally get to meet Teresa a few days before mum died. She mentioned that she used to tell mum about articles I had written and had related to her recently that I had been playing guitar in a prison again. Mum apparently shook her head and said, "I wish he'd get a proper job."

Mum spent the last five years of her life at Lammas House and the level of care and kindness given to her was exceptional. She clung on tenaciously at the end and received the last rites no fewer than three times! It's great that she was able to see all five of her grandchildren. I'm glad as well that I could spend a bit of time with her in those final days and, in particular, that I could sing to her some of her favourite songs. The very last one I sang, I realised later, was 'The Star of the County Down'. Mum had a beautiful singing voice and used to sing to me at the start of my life. It was a privilege to be able to sing to her at the end of hers.

Thank you mum for everything. May you rest in peace.

LINK

Irish Chaplaincy: www.irishchaplaincy.org.uk