Dear Aidan,

IT’S nearly two years since you left us all too abruptly. I had no apprehension of the void that it would leave but how could I? We were only a couple of years apart and things like that just didn’t happen at our age. I look in the mirror and I have just turned 60, a bedrock on shifting sands. The realisation of what lies ahead is beginning to resonate in my thinking, especially in the waking hours and when I think of the friendship and closeness we have lost.

Losing a father very young and a doting mother was, I suppose, an accepted part of life’s great inevitability — understood but its finality still a crushing blow. But to lose you as a friend opened the gates wide to an unwanted intruder, life’s mortality.

It wasn’t as if we met or talked every week or every month for that matter. I could be travelling down from Dublin and when passing the sign for the Horse and Jockey, I instinctively rang your phone and you were always at the other end. How many times did we end up arranging golf at short notice, for God’s sake, and supping a pint or having “one for the road” discussing matters of little consequence.

It is still effortless to break into a smile at the madness of it all. I still remember the dull pain and ache in my stomach when you rang three years ago and told me the news. For 30 minutes, I was reduced to silence and forgive me Aidan but I didn’t know what to say. As you know, I am not the greatest listener in the world but, my God, I listened that Sunday evening and sadly I recall it all as if it was cast in stone.

It was great meeting up in the Burren soon after and to see you looking so well and fighting the good fight. I have never met anyone so strong and positive about the future, you casting aside the medical prognosis as if swatting a fly. We talked more often after that and it helped that Tipperary hurling was in the ascendency. It never stopped you going to the matches, did it, Aidan? Even when the final sunset was dipping below the horizon, you managed to see one more match of the ages.

My single biggest regret is that I didn’t meet you for one last time but the memories are many from the annual Christmas parties to the trips abroad.

We had some laughs and shed some tears over a time span of a 30-year friendship. Memories carefully treasured in the vaults of time.

Did you know, Aidan, I rang your mobile number by mistake the other day and your voice mail was still working. I was travelling to Dublin at the time and you were obviously in my thoughts — funny, but you are often there when crossing the Tipperary bounds. The memories came flooding back and we were there again enjoying the craic, joking about times past and laughing about life and death, things like the state of Cork hurling. I hope that you are watching Cork hurling exploits from your vantage position in the sky, I know you are seriously impressed.

Anyway, Aidan, the reason for this letter is a simple message left untold in a memory bank full of regrets — I will always miss you as a friend, mentor and above all as a wonderful human being. It was a privilege to be your friend. Joe Joe A, Cork