‘He died fighting for his life against our common enemy’

PATRICK MOONEY DIED IN RECENT DAYS AFTER BATTLING AGAINST COVID-19. HIS BROTHER, LISTOWEL POET MATT, PAYS TRIBUTE TO A GREAT COMMUNITY MAN

WELL-KNOWN Listowel poet Matt Mooney has spoken of his family’s grief at the death of his much-loved older brother in Dublin from COVID-19.

Mr Mooney, a retired teacher who has lived and worked in Listowel all his adult life, said that his brother Patrick J Mooney ‘died in Dublin fighting for his life against our common enemy, COVID-19’. In further heartbreak, the Funeral of 84-year-old Patrick had to be held privately on Tuesday due to the virus.

His wife and some of his Dublin-based family are now in quarantine as a result of the disease, which was contracted in the community.

Mr Mooney lived in Lucan with his beloved, wife Kathy. Matt – who is cocooning with his wife, Mary, at home in Listowel – had to mourn his brother’s passing from afar.

“We are grief-stricken, of course, but we are also now trying to celebrate his life and focus on the hope of eternal rest at this time,” Matt told The Kerryman.

“Pat loomed large in my life because he was the big brother always as we were growing up, outside Kilchreest near Loughrea in County Galway,” he added.

“But his philosophy rubbed off on me, and that was that you should take things as they are dealt to you and do the best you can.

“I will remember now all the good memories I shared with him down through the years,” Matt added.

Patrick made a great success of his work as a carpenter in England.

While he was in Manchester he changed careers, going to college at night to study marketing. It was a field in which he was to prove hugely successful.

“He put his lively personality fully into the marketing business. He always prided himself on self-education and knowing yourself. One of his famous sayings was ‘there’s no such thing as good luck, you have to make your own luck,’” Matt recalled.

“He was a great guide for me always when I was finding my feet in the adult world, and was totally supportive of my writing which I took up following my own retirement,” Matt said.

Patrick met his beloved Kathy, a Monaghan native, in Manchester, with Matt best man at the wedding.

“He was a great supporter of the Galway hurling team too, and a great man for Croke Park and for the GAA in Lucan.

“He played himself in his young days with Kilchreest, which is part of the St Thomas’s hurling club, which has won All-Ireland glory in recent years,” Matt explained. He added that his brother loved travelling, visiting such far-flung places in his retirement with Kathy as even Borneo and Cambodia. Pat took ill at his home in Lucan just over a week ago.

“It all happened in little over a week. I spoke to him by phone last Friday week,” Matt said. “We had a good, clear conversation but it was obvious that he was suffering from a bad cough which had persisted for a number of days prior to that.”

Mr Mooney was hospitalised in Blanchardstown on Sunday, as the cough became worse and his breathing deteriorated. He tested positive for COVID-19 in

Blanchardstown Hospital, where he died on Saturday.

“We don’t know how he contracted it. The source of it is still unknown,” Matt said.

“He always had a mighty great fighting spirit which we admired. He had battled health conditions resulting from accidents he had in the past with an incredibly positive outlook always, but this one really took the wind out of his sails.”

Patrick J Mooney was a brilliant community man all his life – as true in Lucan as it was in Galway and in England. In a mark of his standing in the locality, his neighbours came to their doors as the Funeral cortege wound its way through the home estate on Tuesday, all paying their respects to a much-loved neighbour and offering their sympathy to his wife Kathy, children Damien, Deirdre, Patrick and Michael; grandchildren Grace, Emily, Una, Aoife, Aidan, Sadhbh, Dearbhla and Eimear, brothers Tom and Matt, sisters Maureen, Sally and Patricia, daughtersin-law Alex, Blane and Eibhlín, extended family, relatives and friends.