When we endure, so does love

THE news story about 81-yearold Eileen Macken being reunited with her 103-year-old mother (after a 60-year search) moved me deeply.

Mrs Macken was born in a mother-and-baby home and raised in an orphanage in Dublin. Those were tough times but Eileen hoped one day she would be reunited with her mother — and at last it happened, thanks to DNA testing.

This heart-warming story could be fiction.

My parents’ generation was stalwart. When disappointment or even disaster struck they would say: ‘Y’just have to get on with it’ — and do just that.

I bet this is how Eileen and her mother carried on through the years, always wondering and yearning, but being brave. Because there’s no choice really. If you succumb to despair, you go under.

All this is in my mind because I recently finished what is for me the best, most moving novel of the year so far. We Must Be Brave by Frances Liardet is a quiet masterpiece of love and loss, ‘abandoned’ children and rescue and courage sweeping from World War II to 2010.

Just as Eileen Macken was ‘lost’ and ultimately found, so too Ellen Parr, the heroine of We Must Be Brave, is lost to the strange, seemingly orphaned child she adored.

I will not spoil the clever, powerful plot. Except to say that magnificent, decent, generous Ellen goes on being brave, even when her heart is broken.

The beautifully written novel had me sobbing, yet addicted — and the real life story of Mrs Macken brought it all back. It reminded me that people endure — and so does love.

Human beings cluster within many different sorts of family unit, find solace through helping each other and discover that affection can be stronger than blood ties.

Quiet resilience, matter-offact bravery (under-rated these days) and dogged ‘getting on with it’ helps keep hope alive — as Eileen Macken discovered in the end.