You have to find the light in it all
Acclaimed soprano Celine Byrne has lost both her father and mother-in-law in the past few weeks – but insists that staying positive is getting her through the grief
IT WAS one of those gripping, totally out of the blue moments of live radio that root you to the spot until it’s over. In one of Sean O’Rourke’s last shows of his RTÉ Radio 1 tenure, soprano Celine Byrne was on to share with listeners her favourite, most uplifting song.
A new daily, light-hearted slot called ‘Lockdown Anthems’, it was intended to offer a few minutes of relief from the Covid-19 crisis. Naturally, O’Rourke began by asking how Byrne and her family were getting on stuck at home.
To his shock, she revealed that just the day before her beloved mother-in-law, who had been living with her family, had died in hospital, while the previous week they had learned that her father’s cancer was now terminal.
But although the news was undoubtedly grim and heart-breaking, Byrne’s disposition was extraordinarily positive. With incredible grace she explained that she was doing her best to find the blessings in everything around her and was determined to celebrate her motherin-law’s life.
She insisted on sticking with her chosen anthem, Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey.
It’s less than a month later by the time we talk over the phone, and Byrne is at her home in the village of Caragh in Co Kildare. Since her interview on the Sean O’Rourke Show, her father John-Joe has also died. He had just turned 71.
While there are moments when there is a slight wobble in her voice, or when she stops briefly to collect her thoughts, for the most part she’s remarkably poised, determined to do her best to find the light in these darkest of times.
‘I’ve always said, there’s never a right time to have a baby and there’s never a right time to die either,’ says the mother-of-three.
‘You just have to cope with it. My faith is important, it helps me a lot. But it’s mostly about your mentality.
SO IT’S my trust in the Lord, that my father and mother-inlaw were taken because they had done all they could on earth and God wanted them back. But it’s about being positive as well, because there is no real option for me.
‘Even in these times everything is relative to everybody. I have a daughter here, Ciana, and her Leaving Cert was cancelled, it’s a huge thing for her.
‘We tried to make the most of her gradwith uation night, there was a bottle of prosecco, a few pizzas and she graduated online.
‘We tried to make it a special event for her because even though we have our sorrows, we’re trying to be strong for our daughter, who is going through this huge thing as well. And she has lost her grandparents, two people she was very close to.
‘So everything is relative and it’s about trying to focus on the bits of light.’
Since her début as Mimi, in Scottish Opera’s 2010 production of La Bohéme, Celine Byrne has become one of Ireland’s foremost opera stars. She has toured America, Russia, China and Mexico, performing major roles in productions of, among others, Turandot, Madame Butterfly and Carmen.
She sang Danny Boy for former US president Barack Obama when he visited here in 2011, and when Pope Francis said Mass at Croke Park a couple of years ago, she sang Ave Maria alongside Andrea Bocelli. Although much in demand, contracts in place until 2023, she took time out last year after her father was first diagnosed with stomach cancer in August.
The middle of five children, Celine and her husband, Thomas Deans, built their own family home in a field behind her parents’ house in Caragh several years ago.
‘When dad was younger he worked as a mechanic on the land behind the family home,’ she explains. ‘But then he got arthritis and had to give it up, so I built a house there and so did my sister.
‘We’ve lived in the field behind him for years, and we were very close, which has helped me to deal with his death. I was away a lot singing but any time that I had with him was quality time.
‘After he was diagnosed we went to Lourdes and then when we came back he started his chemo treatment. I took time off work to be at home to help get him through that, I was financially able to do that at the time.
‘He had an operation in January, they had to take a little bit of his colon as well and it was hard on him to recover, I don’t think he ever really did, mentally or physically.
‘He was having problems with pain management so we brought him back to hospital in April, and he was diagnosed with terminal cancer on April 15, his birthday.
‘He stayed in hospital for a week, they were trying to find the best pain management for his palliative care.
WE BROUGHT him home the following Wednesday, and two weeks after that he died. They told us he’d get either a few weeks or at most a couple of months. In the end he got exactly three weeks. But it’s one of the things about this virus, I wasn’t away and I wasn’t stuck somewhere, I was at home.’
It’s what she calls one of the ‘lights’ about her situation, the positive things that she has looked for while coping with her grief. She was back in Ireland working with the Irish National Opera and their production of Carmen, in which she was playing the role of Michaela at the Bord Gáis Theatre.
‘We were one week from going on stage,’ she says. ‘And then mass congregations were cancelled, so in a way I was very lucky. It meant I could be at home with my family, and visit my mother-in-law in hospital.’
Phyllis Deans, a mum of seven, was diagnosed with cancer of the womb several years ago, but was treated successfully for a while. She moved in with Celine’s family about seven years ago, and her son Thomas was her carer.
But the cancer came back, and this time it had spread.
‘We were worried about her symptoms and brought her into A&E, that’s when they realised it had spread as much as it had, it was on her lungs, her spine, on her hips, so they kept her in there, they were going to operate on her spine.’
While in hospital, Phyllis developed a temperature and was tested for Covid-19.
‘There are two tests,’ says Celine. ‘The first one was positive but the second one was negative, so it was inconclusive. So although she died with Covid-19 complications, it was due to the cancer.’
Only immediate family were allowed in to to see Phyllis and this is another of Byrne’s ‘light’ moments.
‘Only her children could see her and they had to wear all the PPE gear,’ she says. ‘It was terrible, you couldn’t touch her or give her a kiss or a hug.
‘But the light is that there was such beautiful weather, and only two people were allowed in at a time.
‘So I went up and parked the car outside St James’s, everyone sat
down on the grass and it was such a lovely time to bond, over chips and burgers from a local takeaway. It was a special time they all had together.
‘Her burial was really beautiful, there was no funeral Mass, just prayers at the graveside and I sang, Going Home, Pie Jesu and Amazing Grace.
‘Again the weather was really beautiful and when you live in the country it’s another bonus, people were able to come back and social distance outside.’
They had barely any time to recover from losing such an integral member of their family before it became clear that John-Joe was also seriously failing. He died on Wednesday, May 6, three days after Celine turned 40.
‘I won’t lie, it was s**t,’ she says of her birthday. ‘But in the afternoon I went over to see my dad and my brother had arranged a birthday cake. About half of the family were out in the garden, outside my dad’s bedroom window, singing happy birthday.
‘I was lying beside him and he helped me blow out the candles, he told me that day that he was very weak. One of the last things he did was write a birthday card for me, so I have that.’
THREE days later she woke with a strong feeling that something significant was going to happen.
‘I knew he was going to pass that day, something in my soul just told me,’ she explains. ‘I knew what time as well, I told my mother and husband he would pass at 4pm and he did at 3.58pm. It was just profound.
We told all the family to be around, everyone was in and out of the room. We all got to talk to him and I was singing all the songs we sang together, sitting on his bed, holding his hand. And when he passed there was a stillness in the room that I felt needed to be filled, so I sang Amazing Grace.
‘I stayed with him the night before he died and then when he was laid out in the bed, I slept on a mattress on the floor. Then I stayed with my mam for a week after that just to make sure she was ok.’
There was a funeral Mass for John-Joe in their local church.
‘We had put on RIP.ie that it was just family only,’ she says. ‘We’re now fourth generation in Caragh, and when we walked from our house to the church, for about a kilometre through the village everyone had lined the road, while socially distancing.
‘And when the Mass was over, they were lined up from the church to the graveyard, applauding my dad. It was amazing and so very emotional.’
Byrne also sang at her father’s funeral Mass, one of her toughest performances. ‘A couple of times I left the gallery to dissociate myself from what was going on, to collect myself,’ she says. ‘I wanted to do my dad proud. I sang Queen of the Mai, Song of Ruth, Pie Jesu, Ave Maria, which he liked a lot, and the one that really got me was a Charlie Landsborough song that my dad loved, What Colour is the Wind. Daddy is mentioned a million times in the lyrics, that really got to me, I nearly didn’t get though that one.’
THE Covid crisis does seem to have hit Byrne and her family particularly hard. ‘I not only can sympathise with people, I can empathise,’ she says. ‘I really am feeling what they’re feeling, I’ve gone through my father’s passing, where they were restrictions on the funeral, that was tough.
‘The passing of mother-in-law, because of the Covid-19, there were restrictions there. I never got to say goodbye to her, and I was so mad about her, she was great fun, the most beautiful woman. When she passed, the amount of stories people were telling us about her paying things like ESB bills for people, things we never knew.
‘And I have a daughter who was going to sit the Leaving Cert and that was cancelled, so I understand that. I’m also living with the fact that I’ll be one of the last to get back to work because of the rules about assembly of large numbers of people in a space.
‘I’ve got contracts until 2023, I’m not chock-a-block, but I had a really full diary from January this year until July. I don’t know what’s next, I don’t know when we’ll be able to perform again.
‘But I do have faith in the world, I know I’ll get back to work, I just don’t know when.’
Like hundreds of thousands of people out there, the uncertainty of what lies ahead is very disconcerting.
‘First there are the rules about mass gatherings and then there’s that fear factor — traditionally opera appeals to a more mature audience, who will probably be a little bit more wary about going back into an auditorium.
‘Lots of artists like me rely on gigs and I’m supporting a family of six...’ Byrne suddenly breaks off. ‘Oh my
God, that’s the first time I’ve said that,’ she says. ‘But now Phyllis is gone...’
She hopes that her annual Christmas gala at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre will go ahead next December.
‘I was supposed to be in Paris at the end of November but there’s talk of it not happening,’ she says. ‘And then in January I’m due to sing in Covent Garden in London, I have the Liu role in Puccini’s Turandot. And that’s followed by performances in America and in Ireland.
‘I’m praying to God they’re not cancelled, but I don’t know when rules will allow people to come back together. I guess you have to look at life in a different way now, live streaming could be a way around it all.
‘But I’d miss the audience. The amazing thing about performing is that you get to engage with the audience and feel their energy, you know the levels, whether to turn it up or down.’
All of these stresses and events would be enough to floor anyone, but Byrne has a slight advantage that she developed coping mechanisms after suffering anxiety and panic attacks for a time when she was a younger woman.
‘Each to their own, but everyone has to find their coping mechanism and everything is relative to everybody,’ she says. ‘I had problems in the past, I’ve learned to deal and cope with them and move forward in a positive way, I believe in mindfulness. And I’m turning to something that works for me: praying and focusing on the positive.
‘I’m very self-aware, of who I am, how I feel and the needs of the people around me, and it’s the thing that gets me through things.
‘I need to be strong for my family. I have children here, I know I lost my dad and my husband lost his mum, but my children lost their grandparents, who they were very close to.
INEED to be strong and focus on the positive and celebrate their lives, so that my children can know they can talk about it. And I have to fill my time, I’m working on a new opera and I started off this Covid time trying to learn a new language, but all this happened so it’s been abandoned.
‘I’m a little bit apprehensive about the future, it’s very uncertain, I don’t know if I should be looking for a job elsewhere or trying out teaching online. I don’t know how far out I have to prepare myself for.’
She stops before it begins to sound as though she’s feeling sorry for herself. Because she most certainly doesn’t.
‘You have to take every day as it comes,’ she says. ‘And one of the lovely things to happen over this last while was all the lovely messages I got.
‘At a time in such grief, to be surrounded by such positivity and support is wonderful, feeling it from all these people you don’t even know, it’s very special.’