It was in a long-ago early March – too long ago for my memory to reach much past the walk into town from the B&B out by the Charleville Castle gates, the cold, cold night before, waking to the sound of cattle jostling their way out of the yard at some early hour, omigod I’m really here after all – when I turned in at the door of the Tullamore Tribune office, & asked herself there behind the desk are you Mary Bracken? For I’d been told if I was seeking a flat in town, she’d know where to send me.

[snips]

I couldn’t begin to do justice to all the ways in which she became a given in my life, so it still seems to me that she must, in fact, even now, be holding court at 19 Marian Place, ordering her guests to make themselves tea if they want it & having a grand ol’ chat.

Nor could I possibly do justice to one of her monologues in writing: lacking her narrative skills & deft conversational timing [not to mention that twinkle in her eye], I’d just make a hash of it & be haunted ever after by the image of herself wryly skewering me w/ her trademark sarcasm.

So I’ll have to content myself w/ sharing this poem, which one of our mutual friends has pointed out closely reflects Mary's own very fervent faith in a thoroughly approachable - & joyful – God… the sort who would be as delighted w/ each new bloom in her garden as she was herself, & wouldn’t be too proud to make himself a cuppa at her command.
 

                                          In memoriam, Mary Theresa Bracken  (ní Dalton)
                                          5 Dec 1927 – 6 March 2007
 

And yet not insignificant.
This was my God who made the grass
And the sun
And stones in streams of April:
This was the God I met in Dublin as I wandered the unconscious streets.