‘I was a walking shell after Dad’s death but it forced me to grow up’
‘I inherited my passion for football from my father and his passing had a huge impact . . . People were constantly reaching out and I kept pushing them away’
THEY say at home that I’m very closed as a person and I suppose my father’s death proved it.
I give little enough away at the best of times but, when I lost him, I pretty much went into a shell. I shut people out. I moped. I sulked. I bristled. I internalised everything I suppose, communicating to everyone around me an impression of preciousness that I now regret. It was as if I was taking exclusive ownership of the family’s grief.
No question, I inherited my passion for football from Mike Cooper. When I was a child, if there was a game he wanted to see, he assumed that I wanted to see it too. It wouldn’t require an actual conversation. Just a throwaway, ‘We might head over to Glenf lesk tonight...’ would be enough. Soon as he’d have the dinner down, away with us in the car. The conversation wouldn’t ever really feel like father and son. He’d toss things out to me as if I was one of his buddies hunched over a pint down in Jimmy O’Brien’s.
BRUTAL
I’m not saying we were exactly full of chat every time we sat in the car, but I could almost pretend I was an adult when it came to dissecting what we’d see. Now he mightn’t have been paying a blind bit of notice to anything I had to say, but I suppose the beauty was it never felt that way.
The suddenness of his death had a brutal impact on us all. I can see that clearly now. But at the time, I behaved as if I was the only one dealing with a terrible loss. As if I was his only child. I WAS WORKING the counter that morning in the bank when an ashen-looking Patrick O’Sullivan came through the door.
I could see immediately that something was seriously wrong. ‘Gooch, come away with me, something’s after happening your father up the road...’ The ‘up the road’ Patrick was referring to was a building site just at the back of Ardshanavooly where Deerpark Shopping Centre was under construction. Patrick didn’t let on, but he already knew my father was gone.
My father took his last breath no more than 200 yards from our front-door. Just walking across the yard when cut down by a massive heart attack. My poor mother was coming out the front door as we pulled up, but the reality hadn’t really dawned on me. I remember thinking that Dad might have had a fall or maybe been hit by some kind of machinery. In my head, he was still with us, injured but alive.
But they were just putting him into the back of the ambulance as we arrived, their efforts to resuscitate over. And that’s when my heart sank. ‘Very sorry,’ the medics mumbled, their heads shaking. They let us climb into the back of the ambulance, closing the door behind us so that we could say a private goodbye. Just two or three last minutes with my father, poor Mam near hysterical. Then they took him away to Tralee, leaving us to stumble back to a house that would never feel the same.
The days that followed are a blur. My sisters took charge of organising the funeral, the rest of us really just sitting around in a daze as the house became f looded with friends and neighbours. The body was brought home and we laid him out in the front room. I remember shaking a lot of hands but, largely, just sitting there in silence. It was as if a bomb had gone off inside my head.
Dad had no history of heart trouble, but he’d been quite sick with pneumonia through Christmas of ’05 and, in hindsight, I’m not really sure he ever managed to shake that. He’d been in hospital for a few days but couldn’t bear it there. Like Mam – and most of their generation – he was a smoker too and we could tell he wasn’t really himself for a long time after he came home. He just looked and sounded washed out, but yearned for the comforts of routine.
In the end, I’d say he was nearly lying to himself just to get back working. All I do know is his death felt cruel and unfair.
When someone is taken from you so suddenly, I think you lose the motivation to do anything for a while. There’s a feeling that life should almost stop right there and then, that it’s inappropriate to be happy. I didn’t verbalise any of this because that’s just not what an Irish male does.
But I became full of self-pity in the months after my father died. As if the whole world was against me. People were constantly reaching out and I kept pushing them away. Not in an aggressive way. Just by being that ‘closed book’ my sisters often refer to. By being constantly cranky.
‘What are you trying to help me for?’
‘I don’t need your help!’
I had the barriers up, shutting everybody out. Acting tough I suppose. I was too immature to understand what I was doing, too young maybe to see the bigger picture. And I kind of resented the publicity my father’s funeral drew, with photographs in the papers. That didn’t sit well with me at all. Because of my profile, the event was considered a news story. A national news story even.
And all I’m hearing is: ‘How is Colm?’
This would go on right through the summer of ’06 and, f**k, it wrecked my head. I felt as if I was living in a goldfish bowl. Being famous in a small town, people presume so many things about you. It’s like they consider you some kind of local ambassador nearly. Everybody means well, but it can start to feel suffocating. Total strangers addressing you as ‘Gooch’. Not Colm. ‘Gooch’.
One thing I do understand is that I have a huge connection with Killarney and Kerry people in general. Killarney people have had access to me all the time. I’m one of their own. I’d say some maybe can’t believe how successful I became, that I got to be a national star. But I’ve always been THEIR star.
But I wanted to hide in the summer of ’06. I wanted to be invisible. But how could I do that, sitting at a counter in AIB on Main Street? Walking down the street with an instantly recognisable face? Training above in the park? I was visible everywhere and it felt, at times, as if I was trying to handle my grief in full public view.
Then there was the pressure of expectation. The football talk. The worry about my form and how it might impact on Kerry’s hopes of winning the All-Ireland. Even grieving, that remained. Deep down, all I wanted to do was get to f**k out of Dodge, but people still wanted things from me. They wanted me to be Gooch.
I had zero interest in playing against the Dubs that Sunday. Zero. I knew there was going to be a minute’s silence for my father beforehand. But even the thought of that was draining to me now. I wanted to be a million miles away from it. To be left alone. Jack O’Connor called to the house that Friday and said he wouldn’t push me either way. That they’d love to have me tog out, but the decision would be mine.
When he left, I turned to my mother and said, ‘I’m not playing, I’ve no energy for that. The week has worn me out...’ And that’s when she said that my father would probably like me to tog out. And I was ‘F**k sake...’ What could I do? To be fair to Mam, she didn’t give a s**t about Kerry in this situation. She was concerned only about her family. She was always thinking about what would be ‘the right thing’ to do and, just as importantly, to be seen to do. Initially, I was even angry about that. I had barely slept all week and felt emotionally and physically drained.
MENTAL
But I did what she said, came on as a sub, scored a point with my first touch and the place went absolutely mental. And that moment gave me a little surge of energy. But it was artificial energy. I was Kerry’s key man and people needed to know where they stood with me. We were coming into pre-Championship training and I had no energy, no zest, no enthusiasm for the game at all. I was a walking shell.
Jack, to be fair, was trying to give me space. We won the League almost without trying, but I was a million miles off where I needed to be. He knew I was too stubborn to talk things through with anyone. My family knew. I got a few b*****kings off the brothers in that time, just having a little go at me over ‘the way you’re acting...’
I look back on that summer and they spent the entire time walking on eggshells when they were around me. I was completely selfish, carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Communicating this message ‘Give me f**king space’ when they’re trying to get over their own grief while raising kids.
My only defence is that I was really just a kid myself. I thought I had all the answers. But the truth is, none of us had.
The shock that runs through you almost pulverises your whole system. You can’t just take a tablet and be cured. I suppose my father dying forced me, eventually, to grow up in a way that took some time for me to understand.