By Mike Lennon
With the recent passing of Brigid Kavanagh, yet another Roscommon stalwart has departed the Dublin scene. Brigid left Roscommon in 1944, but Roscommon never left her; ‘My Roscommon’ was her motto. A nurse, wife, mother, storyteller and writer, her ninety-eight years spanned decades of profound economic and societal changes. While Brigid cast a cold eye on many of them, she got on with life, focused on her family’s well-being and in later life poured out all those memories of her youth in her writings.
Brigid died on May 31st in her own bed, in her own home in Dundrum on the same day as her final story was published in Ireland’s Own. Her wish was to remain at home, and this was made possible by her family, and in particular by her son Seán who was her main carer up to the end. Ninety-eight years earlier, she was born to John and Mai (née Gilleran) Shiel in Bunnamuca – the centre of her universe. In school, she would write her address as Bunnamuca, Strokestown, Co Roscommon, Ireland, Europe, Northern Hemisphere, Tropic of Cancer, The World. She trained as a nurse in the Royal Hospital, Donnybrook and St Alban’s London where she met her future husband, Michael Kavanagh, a native of Turloughmore, County Galway. They married in 1947 and returned to Dublin a year later where they reared six children.
Blessed with independent thought, Brigid’s first published piece appeared in the Evening Press in 1978, titled ‘My husband is a saint’ in a response to the women’s liberation movement, which was vocal at the time. It included this sentence: “In the thirty years of our married life I have never had to go to work, yet I am co-owner of our house, have a joint bank account and we share his income equally”. Later, when Michael was unable to work due to shingles, Brigid returned to the workplace until she retired. They were described as a great team. Michael died in 2003. She was also predeceased by her grandson Shane Kavanagh in 2022.
It was no surprise that Brigid became active in the Roscommon Association in the 1980s and a close friend of its founding members, Michael Fitzmaurice and Rita Dorr. She contributed twenty-one articles to the Roscommon Association Yearbook and its successor, Roscommon Life. As a mark of its esteem for her long service, she was elected a Life President of the Association in 2021. The Association’s flag was draped over her coffin on its way to Dundrum Church and afterwards to Mount Venus Cemetery, Rathfarnham. Dundrum Church was an important part of Brigid’s life; she served as a Eucharistic minister there for many years.
With the family reared and making their own way in life, Brigid turned to committing all those childhood memories to paper. She attended writers’ classes to sharpen her skills and went on to join the Dundrum-based Fountain Writers Group, where she would recount stories from her rural childhood to an enraptured urban audience. She credited her father, carpenter and matchmaker John Shiel, with some of her far-fetched stories. Her articles evoke nostalgia for country life of long ago, with every word carefully chosen to help the reader visualise the incident or occasion she describes.
Brigid was one of the most published Roscommon writers over the past three decades. She was a regular contributor to Ireland’s Own and Ireland’s Eye, and through her writers’ group to various publications including The Fountain, The Slow Lane and In the House of Long Life. Several of her short stories and poems appeared in Writing from Roscommon and one of her stories was included in New Roscommon Writings in 2018. She was the proud winner of the Roscommon Herald-sponsored ‘My Roscommon’ writing competition in 2013.
Brigid maintained her connection to her home place with frequent visits to her son Declan and his family at Bunnamuca. However, as the years went by, there were less people of her generation alive to meet and reminisce with. For relaxation, she enjoyed doing crosswords and pitting herself against quiz show contestants on TV.
During the Covid pandemic, Brigid’s sons, Seán and Declan, decided to publish a book with a collection of her published and unpublished work. Ninety-five stories and poems, one for every year of her life, were selected and the book, In My Mind’s Eye – Walking Amongst Ghosts, was launched on her 95th birthday in February 2021. With her usual modesty, Brigid was surprised by the reaction to its publication and the TV, radio and newspaper interviews that followed. This book and her other published work will ensure her vivid recollections of times past will live on for posterity.
She is sadly missed by her children – daughter Mary and sons Pádraic, Kevin, Declan, Seán and Aidan – her daughters-in-law and son-in-law, her brother Pete (Carnaska, Strokestown), nine grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren and the wider family circle.
