Molly Treacy

1918-1998

My mother’s maiden name was Treacy. She came from a small farm outside Templemore, County Tipperary. She was one of five children.

Mum didn’t go past primary school. The only one of her family to go to secondary school was Anne, the youngest. Mum’s mother and father kept her at home to look after them in their old age. She worked on the farm and also cared for her parents until they died.

At this point, mum decided to leave home and set up a dressmaking business. She was a gifted dressmaker. She asked my aunt Anne to help her and she set up business in Templemore.

Mum met my father in the fifties. Jackie Keane was a dapper little man and my mother fell for him hook, line and sinker. He drank a lot and my mother consulted the parish priest as to whether she should marry him. The priest said no, but my mother went ahead and married him anyway! He was from Mitchelstown and brough her to James Street to meet his mother.

My granny kept lodgers – men of the road. She had several one roomed houses, built in the back garden, within nine months my mother and father were married. In 1958 my mother had me and two years later my brother Tom was born.

Mum decided that with two young children in the house the lodgers would have to go. She threatened to leave herself if they were not got rid of so they were dispatched.

When I was six and Tom was four, my father had a brain haemorrhage and mum couldn’t keep him at home as he was uninhibited and aggressive, so he ended up in St Stephen’s Hospital.

Mum worked twelve hours a day at her dressmaking business. Money was tight and times were hard, but mam worked like a Trojan to keep us at school, she was a great housekeeper, though our house was shabby it was spotless.

Mum was very religious she said her Rosary every night in bed. Her faith kept her going through hard times and trouble. My father died suddenly in 1975.

Mum’s last ten years were good ones. By this time her children were married and she had four grandchildren whom she loved and saw very often.

My mother and myself were like chalk and cheese. Mum was very practical whereas I was a dreamer, but we loved each other, there can be no doubt about that. I’m delighted to say that I see a lot of my mother’s traits in Sarah her granddaughter – I see her energy, her strength, her courage and her honesty living on in my daughter. If there is a heaven, mum is there watching over us and keeping us safe from all harm.