My Mam Betty Kirwan was born on the 6th of February 1923 and orphaned at a very young age. Records show that her Mother died in the Hospice in Harolds Cross when she was two. Her father died a couple of years later. She was brought up by her brothers and sisters. There were eight of them, of which she was the youngest.

Being the youngest she left school at an early age to help keep house for her older siblings. For this reason she never had, in her own words 'a real job'. We don't know a lot about Christy's life before he met Betty. We know that he lived in various houses in the inner city, first record being 6 Rutland Street. His last address before their marriage was in Middle Gardiner Street. He had came from a family of 5, though one of his brothers died when he was a child aged just 6. Daddy would have been two at the time.

He wasn't much of a talker about his childhood and unfortunately we don't have any childhood photos. He was born on the 8th of January 1919.

Mam regaled us with stories over the years of her childhood. Good and bad times. Stories of being be-littled as the orphans in school, being ridiculed by the nuns, or 'The oulh bitches' as she called them. Getting her own back by robbing turnips and cabbage from the convent fields. I am bemused by the fact that Mother Teresa was in the convent in Rathfarnham for a spell around that time.

Betty was a champion Irish dancer and won medals for dancing and also for singing in the Feis Ceoil. We have a bracelet she got made from the silver medals. Her older brothers and sisters obviously made great efforts to allow her to do this.

I remember her telling me a story that depicts the innocence of her childhood. My Uncle John got married and himself and his new wife were living in the cottages. My Aunt was pregnant and when Mam noticed the growing belly she asked why. She was told that when you got married your stomach got bigger so that you could balance the breadboard on it to cut a loaf of bread! And she believed it for years.

Christy and Betty met at a dance in the Bamba Hall when she was just 16 and they married a few years later on the 10th of July 1944 when she was 22 and he was 25.in Rathfarnham Church and later cycled to Arklow for their honeymoon.

She told me that some family members weren’t too happy that she was marrying ‘a messenger boy’ and worse again - ‘a townie’. On the night that they met, Christy offered to bring her home on the crossbar of his bike. She told him she lived in Terenure - Rathfarnham was the countryside then and she didn’t want to put him off.

He cycled to Rathfarnham on a regular basis after that. Most of their earlier dates comprised of eating ‘a quarter of yum yums', sitting on what they called the stone sofa (a grassy patch on a wall on the boundary of Marlay Park) and Mam having to be home before the convent bells rang nearby at 6pm.

During their courtship Christy wrote to her on what seems to have been an almost daily basis. She showed us what she had left of the letters on the night he died. Up to then we hadn't known they existed. They were resurrected among the insurance policies, will etc., as happens at times like that.

There are a couple of sample letters in the slide show below along with some photos.

Christy adored her. A very strong memory of my childhood is of him always saying ‘Don’t upset your mother’

They started off their married life in a tenement near the Gloucester Diamond. They weren't there for long. Mam always said she hated it. It must have been such a culture shock for her to go from St Patrick's cottages in Rathfarnham surrounded by open fields, to sharing with God knows how many other families.

Then they moved to a room in Mount Street . Their first daughter Vera, was born in Holles Street and according to their stories, she spent a while sleeping in a drawer.

There were lots of stories of how they dealt with the hardships of that time. Like the night they were so cold that Daddy opened the shutters on the Georgian windows and took the wood from behind and burnt it, then nailed up the shutters again. The house in Mount Street is long gone now anyway.

How he used to go to the shop across the road and buy empty wooden egg boxes for a couple of pence so they could burn them. The night he came back with an egg box and there were two eggs hidden at the bottom. Daddy using pieces of the old 'Kodak' rubber advertising signs to mend punctures on his bike.

Mammy walking with Vera in the pram. Following the men doing the tarmacadem on the road to get the heat from the machines. And the day she was walking back home and found money on the side of the road.

After a couple of years they moved to a modest house in Highfield Grove in Rathgar. They went on to have two more daughters Jennifer and Geraldine. Mam stayed at home to look after us as was the norm in those days.

I remember her always cleaning, polishing her bits and pieces of brass and silver, cooking, baking or knitting. The time she knit some clothes for a Sindy doll (pound shop version!) that I got for Christmas and told me that Mrs. Santy had knit them.

Going to Rathmines for 'the messages'. The clip clop of her high heel shoes coming up the path, always the height of style. She had a huge love for plants and flowers and did her best with the little bit of space she had, as the house just had a small backyard.

She was a sun worshipper and if the sun shone she was out in the yard on a chair, with whatever came to hand covering her head. That could have been anything from a dishcloth taken from the clothes line to a pair of knickers - literally. She had black hair and dark skin that took the sun easily. Neither of these features were passed to her daughters!

Christy came home for his lunch (or dinner as it was in those days!) every day. He enjoyed a pint after work in the later years and backed a horse on a Saturday. Every Friday evening he brought us each home a bar of Cadburys chocolate (the skinny one) and on some weekend nights, crisps from the pub.

They went for drinks at the weekends to Murphys Pub in Rathgar where they had a large circle of friends. Drives on a Sunday which always comprised of a visit to a pub in various locations, Lacken, Blessington, Brittas or the favourite - Mortons in Firhouse where they raffled cooked chickens on a Sunday afternoon. Mortons was always referred to as The Chicken House. The amount of lines they bought they would have bought the chicken two times over but it was their entertainment. Nothing tasted as good as a 'free' chicken for tea.

Mam's best friend was one of her neighbours, Kay Kelly and they used to go to the pictures weekly in the early years. Mam had a few stints in hospital when I was a child and I used to be looked after by Mrs. Kelly. I remember her teaching me how to lay a table so I must have been quite young..

I remember going to visit Mam in St. Vincents hospital in Stephen's Green around that time. I was sitting in reception with Daddy waiting to go to see her. There was a statue of Sister Mary Aikenhead in the room. When I asked Daddy who she was he told me that she was the person who had invented Asprin. Always the witt! It went over my head at the time and the penny only dropped a few years later.

There were lots of sing songs round the fire with family and friends, (party pieces, Daddy singing Ramona or My Mary of the Curling Hair, (always made me cry) Mammy – take your pick of many – probably Captain Kelly's Kitchen, or Chickens in the Garden. Their friend and my Godmother, Nancy Reid did a recitation (as they were called then, always on her knees, with a doll in hand - Little Flo, and for Joe Reid (with a mock Scottish accent) Let the Wind Blow High, for Aunt Lil - The Whitewasher and for Uncle John - in his strong Donegal accent, a recitation called The Little Pig) But there were dozens of songs.

Life was good for many years thankfully. All the girls’ had married. They all had children and they spent many happy times with them all. They got great joy from their seven grandchildren.

In 1992 our world fell apart when Daddy was diagnosed with cancer. He battled on for a few brave years and he continued to work up to the end despite being in his 70’s.He had worked for Lennox Chemicals for over 50 years. In 1994 they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They had a party for family and friends in Coman's in Rathgar and were the Guests of Honour at a street party in Highfield Grove

.They had a holiday after that in Malta but Daddy wasn't really up to it. He had gone for her sake. He died very suddenly in the end on the 3rd of October 1995 in St Vincents hospital. He had only been in hospital for one night. Unfortunately I didn't make it on time to see him.

Betty continued to live in the house in Rathgar. We looked after her as best we could and spent a lot of time with her. Visiting regularly and going on weekends away. She even managed to get over to visit Vera on her own a few times. For the first few years after Christy died she was quite active and was involved in meals on wheels, trips away with the ladies club etc. And though she still had us and some good neighbours, her 'pal' was gone.

After a few years it became apparent to us that all was not well. Ultimately she had to go into long term care and remained there for several very difficult years. In January of 2009 Betty developed pneumonia and lingered for another couple of months. She died in St. Vincents hospital on March 9th with family around her. After her funeral in Rathfarnham Church, we brought her back to Christy in Mount Venus cemetery.

My Father, to the best of my knowledge was never in the sea any higher than his ankles. He was born in 1919 and reared in the inner city. He seldom spoke of his childhood and I know very little of his life before he met my Mam in the 1940's. He went to Rutland Street School, which back in those days was nicknamed 'The Redbrick Slaughterhouse

I can only presume that his childhood trips to the seaside were few and far between - if indeed there were any at all. Himself and my Mam cycled to Arklow for their honeymoon so a trip to a seaside resort was obviously quite exotic to them then.

One of my memories of him and the sea is of him barefoot, but fully suited, tackling the rocks in Skerries to collect periwinkles when I was a child. He always kept a straight pin in the lapel of his jacket. This had many uses including bursting every balloon he ever encountered. But in Skerries the straight pin was used to pick the winkles from their shells.

We spent a lot of summers in a rented house there. In later years he spent many summers in Greece visiting my sister who, having married a Greek had moved there in the early seventies. Himself and my Mam went to visit them and in later years, their three grandchildren.

Because of the heat, my sister and her family moved out of Athens during the summer months and rented a house by the sea in a coastal town called Porto Rafti. They headed off to the beach every day along with a picnic and a car boot full of buckets and spades and a large array of plastic seating. Despite the soaring heat, it was difficult to get Daddy into the water, even to paddle. Instead he usually sat sheltering beneath a tree out of the sun.

They went to the same spot on the beach most days. Near the kiosk that sold drinks and ice creams. Just beside it there was a large granite rock that he sat on. We nicknamed it Daddy's rock.

Regardless of the fact that it could be anything up to thirty or even forty degress the shirt and long trousers were never swopped for shorts and a tee shirt. He did don a straw hat to keep the sun from the back of his neck. Being a fair skinned red haired Irish man he was very wary of the heat.

We managed to persuade him to buy a pair of sandals for his trips to Greece, but of course the socks always stayed on. His favourite view of the sprawling bay at Porto Rafti was from one of the many kerbside bars, where he would happily sit sipping a pint of beer for hours watching the world go by. If only he could have had a copy of the Irish Press, all would have been perfect.

1919 man

A vest, a shirt, at least no tie!

Despite the sun high in the sky

A gentleman in every way

If he was here what would he say?

Of current fashions, current trends

The many styles and many blends

Of not just clothes but life complete

The sights we see on every street

He wouldn't like the current world

He'd find so much of it absurd

Another life, such different times

Corruption, fraud so many crimes

But surely it was always there

Just not in the constant glare

Of TV, papers, internet

Images that cause upset

A complex man, in simpler times

Intolerant of many crimes

He loved his girls, his pint, a bet

Long live the man we won't forget