In memory of my strong and powerful mother

MY MOTHER died peacefully at 3.10 last Wednesday morning in Belfast, 51 days before her 100th birthday. The barrage of names on the death certificate – Vera May Montgomery Smyth (née McKnight) – is at odds with her tiny body but a measure of her indomitable spirit.

She lived though the Russian revolution, two world wars, Ireland’s independence, the Great Depression and men landing on the moon in 1969, the year the Troubles in Northern Ireland began.

And she carried on regardless for another 48 years.

German bombers destroyed her home in a leafy suburb of Belfast in 1941 but did not deter her from having three children; I am the youngest and have an older brother and sister.

And as I grow older, I realise that she was the making of me.

In the Northern Ireland of the Forties, Fifties and even the Sixties, when unemployment was rampant, my father spent long periods on the dole but my mother worked every weekday, from early morning to 6pm.

We never noticed any hardship: her wages paid the bills for our neat, semi-detached house and educated her children. Good manners were non-negotiable.

She was in demand for her skills as a Hoffman presser in bespoke tailors, often Jewish, whom she had known as neighbours from childhood. Later, my mother was a regular in the Jewish social club.

She told me jokes her Jewish friends told her and sometimes wept when talking about the Holocaust. At work, many of her closest friends were Catholic and frequent visitors to our home. Tolerance and respect came naturally to her; she was a shining example to us all. Vera Smyth, pictured below, was also selfless, modest and a Methodist – virtues I have yet to achieve. Yet as a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, she was like a lioness protecting and providing for her family. The longer I sit writing, the more I admire and respect her courage and perseverance; it is a comfort knowing that those attributes live on. My daughters Fionna and Faela were discussing the status of women recently (I was not present but have a reliable report of their conversation). They wondered how I had managed to father such strong (my adjective would be ‘wilful’) women. Both concluded that they had inherited my mother’s genes, and I know that they have – sterling qualities that are much easier to live with as a son than as a father.

Had she lived another 51 days, she would have been entitled to a cheque for £100 and a personal message from Queen Elizabeth – and another €2,540 from President Higgins.

Neither would have impressed her: like many of her generation, my mother was sceptical about the state giving out taxpayers’ money to people who do not need it.

That is my mother – that was her life…

Vera Smyth, born June 9, 1917; died April 19, 2017. IT WAS prescient for Health Minister Simon Harris not to negotiate with the Sisters of Charity over the new National Maternity Hospital. The last time a government minister went head to head with nuns in 2002 over compensation for child abuse, the two nuns negotiating for religious congregations found Dr Michael Woods a pushover.

Compensation was capped at €128m for the €1.5bn compensation package and then the religious congregations only paid 13% of that sweetheart deal.

And Simon Harris is now asking us to trust him to deliver a deal for the land at St Vincent’s Hospital.

Michael O’Leary wouldn’t send PRESIDENT Trump’s press secretary, Seán Spicer, is portrayed as a latter-day Comical Ali, the clowning media handler for Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

But friends in the US who despair at Trump are oddly protective of Spicer, who one friend described as a volatile cocktail: ‘One part press secretary and five measures of full-on Irish.’

Yes, Spicer could pick up a job as a greeter at Tayto Park, and no one would pick him out as the American if he were on a crowded terrace at Croke Park.

Yet his first 100 days in the White House have not made Spicer’s presentation slicker or given him job security. his youngest pilot to buy Boeing jets – and Simon Harris should not be given carte blanche to sign off on any deal with the nuns.

Old hands will recall Michael Woods being outmanoeuvred by nuns and remember the old maxim: ‘Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.’

TRIED to lift my mood last Sunday evening, tuned in to The Zoo programme on RTÉ television and was rewarded with an uplifting example of the goodness of people.

A charming young woman called Yvonne was talking about her life.

‘If someone had told me 15 years ago that I would be working in the zoo, I wouldn’t have believed it,’ she said. ‘But now I’m running the only hedgehog rescue service in Dublin; I really am living the dream.’

Working in the reptile house by day, then seeking out sick and wounded hedgehogs by night has put purpose in Yvonne’s life – and she helped restore my faith in humankind.