MY NAME IS Brendan O’Mahony. I met my wife, Margaret, over 40 years ago when I was working in Aer Lingus. We married in 1969 and moved back to my hometown of Clonmel, bought a travel agency, and had four sons, Fintan, Conor, Kevin and Brian – all Liverpool fans!
Fintan is a teacher, Kevin in Managing Director of Clonmel Travel and Brian works at the IMI in Sandyford. Conor studied languages at UCD and spoke fluent French and Spanish. He got a masters degree in Portuguese from Salford University.
When Conor was small his favourite question was ‘what if ? It wasn’t until after college in UCD, that ‘what if’ changed to ‘why not?’ and this new perspective on life allowed him to travel the world. But he was happiest when he was sitting in the family Nissan Sunny (with six on board) ‘navigating’ on driving holidays through France and Spain. Singing along to ‘Is it Raining In Paris Tonight’ by Bagatelle.
In 1995 he spent the summer on a scholarship at the the University of Lisbon and he left home to work at Whirlpool in Dublin. He spent five years in their Spanish and Portuguese financial sections. He left in 2002 to take a year off and travel round the world, chronicling his travels weekly in the Clonmel Nationalist. He was chuffed when he was headhunted by Pfizer when they opened their new European Financial Shared Services Centre in Dublin.
The world changed forever for our family on 25 July 2006. Conor had gone to play football. Shortly after he returned to his apartment in Bettyglen, he died from sudden cardiac death. He was 32.
Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS) is a term used to describe the likely cause of sudden death in someone when a post-mortem examination has not shown any other potential cause of a sudden death. Several conditions, usually electrical problems within the heart, have been shown to cause SADS.
One of his colleagues, who was bereaved, wrote on his Mass card: ‘On my darkest day, Conor’s smile lit up my life’. (Just when it looked like canonisation was on the cards, his manager at Pfizer told how they had a swear box in the office and they had put it on Conor’s desk for his convenience!)
When he took off around the world, his father and mother made him promise that he would not bungee jump as they considered it too dangerous. He kept that promise but he had a ironic, perhaps even a fatalistic, view of life. In his last article from abroad he informed all and sundry, including his unsuspecting parents, that he had signed 14 waiver forms during his trip round the world, absolving the organisers of liability in case he was injured or killed. He referred to the forms as ‘send the bits to Clonmel forms’.
Conor is back home now, Clonmel was always home. He accomplished a lot in his short life. People will tell you that time will heal our loss but it doesn’t. We are still learning to live with it.
Conor’s fourth anniversary co-incided with Holy Year 2010 in Santiago de Compostela. I walked the Camino Ingles in Conor’s memory and raised funds for CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young). In 2012, the book Forever Young commemorated the Camino walk and Conor’s Round the World journey and the proceeds went to CRY.
My first contact with CRY was with Lucia Ebbs in 2010 and she has been a constant support to our family since – thank you Lucia.
The importance of the work done by CRY is inestimable. It’s life-saving. Our three boys and our six grandchildren have benefited from screening at CRY. And it’s my hope that many other will continue to benefit from their service.
For more information on SADS, or to see how you can help, visit CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young).
Brendan O’Mahony lives in Clonmel. Has has written a book, Forever Young, for his late son Conor.
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