Octogenarian Peter Riordan has been nominated for next week's Carer of the Year award, for looking after his sons, writes ROSITA BOLAND

‘I MADE MY WIFE a promise when we got married to look after her until death did us part,” Peter Riordan declares cheerfully. “And I kept my word. But I never volunteered to take on the boys. That’s not something you sign up for.”

The “boys” the 81-year-old refers to are his sons Bernard, who is 51, and Ronan, who is 36. Riordan, who lives in Naas, Co Kildare, has been caring full time for his sons for decades. Until 2004, he shared the care with his wife, Eithne. She died in 2006, after an operation, having herself been cared for by Riordan at home for the previous two years.

On September 9th, 1978, Bernard, then 17, and his brother Stephen, who was 15, set out to walk with a friend to a house where a school friend was having a birthday party. When they were almost at the gate, a drunk driver ran the trio over. Stephen and their friend were killed instantly. Bernard, who was brain-damaged, spent six weeks in a coma and then most of a year in hospital, undergoing rehabilitation. He came home in a wheelchair.

We’re in the kitchen of the Riordan home, drinking tea, and Bernard listens as his father recounts the story of the night, 34 years ago, his life changed forever. “I don’t remember anything about it,” Bernard says, looking at the table.

“That was a bad night,” Riordan says quietly.

Bernard can speak, although sometimes it’s hard to make out all the words, and I have to ask him to repeat some sentences. The brain damage left him with poor co-ordination and balance, double vision and sporadic memory loss.

“I can’t stand unless I’m holding onto something, and I have a problem remembering things,” he says. “If I don’t keep practising something, say on the computer, I forget how to do it.”

Before the crash, Bernard had been a champion swimmer, with ambitions to be a pilot.

On the night Bernard walked out of their home with Stephen for the last time, their youngest brother, Ronan, was just two. Ronan, who has Down syndrome, doted on the two elder brothers who suddenly vanished from his life. He never developed speech.

Riordan believes that Ronan was too traumatised after the tragedy to speak. “It’s only in recent years we realised the impact on the family,” he says. “We all – the whole family – needed counselling, but nobody told us about it, and we didn’t know what it was then.”

A typical day in the household begins when Riordan calls Ronan, at 6.30am, and turns on the radio. “I listen to local radio every morning, and if I’m not in the obituaries I know I’m not dead yet,” he jokes.

Ronan is collected at 9am by the centre where he spends weekdays until 4pm. “Ronan is full of mischief, and he has a great sense of fun. I think he’s the nicest man I’ve ever met,” says his father.

Twice a week, Bernard goes to morning art classes at the centre he attends. Mondays are washing days. And on the mornings both his sons are out of the house, Riordan does the grocery shopping. “Doing the shopping is my break,” he says. “I’m fit and healthy, but I do feel tired sometimes. I don’t fool around with my health. If I go down, we all go down. But I intend to be around for a few years yet – I want the President’s money, and I’ll want another year to spend it!”

Riordan took early retirement, at 56, from his job as a field engineer in the Army to help Eithne care for Bernard and Ronan, and the remainder of their family still at home; they had 10 children in all. They did this together until 2004, when his wife became ill. With the support of external services for Eithne, Riordan cared for all three members of his family for two years. Part of the sitting room that adjoins the kitchen was converted into a bedroom for her.

“We had the door open to the kitchen, so she could see everything. She was able to talk all the time. During the last stages, she could be calling me three times a night. Sometimes she would just need a cuddle.”

Despite the fact that Riordan was caring for three people for two years, he says now, “It was better in a way when she was still here. We always talked to each other about everything. Ronan has no speech, and Bernard and myself don’t talk that much normally, so it can be very quiet here. When Eithne went, it became lonelier for me.”

Bernard’s main interest is his art. He brings out a bulging portfolio from his room and spreads it on the kitchen table. There are landscapes in watercolours – “my favourite” – acrylics, oils and pastels. Most of the images are outdoors, rural scenes from France and Italy, copied from books and magazines. The drawings, sketches and paintings have character and a spindly, tentative, jerky elegance. Bernard’s co-ordination is poor, so it’s difficult for him to hold a brush or pencil still.

Among the sheaf of work is concealed an unexpected and outstanding pencil drawing of a spaniel’s head, which is completely unlike anything else in the portfolio. “He did that before the accident,” says Riordan.

We all regard it silently. In that one drawing, done 34 years ago and carefully kept ever since, is contained the unrealised potential of a life.

Before her illness, Eithne did all the cooking, so in his 70s Riordan was faced with taking over as household cook for the first time. He admits cooking isn’t his strength, and Bernard good-naturedly agrees. There are also special dietary needs in the household to consider: Ronan is lactose intolerant and a coeliac, and Riordan himself is diabetic. “I do enough to keep us alive. Nice cooking takes a couple of hours, and I don’t have the time for that.”

Riordan is utterly organised, and runs the housekeeping on a strict timetable. Even the kitchen cupboards are meticulously ordered: one contains mugs, all their handles pointed in a certain direction; another contains only boxes of Cup-a-Soups, neatly arranged by flavour. “That’s me, anyway, but I suppose the Army training did help.”

A cleaner comes for two hours a week, and since December, Riordan has received three hours of respite care a week. It was his respite worker, Terry Healy, who nominated him for the Carer of the Year award. He has since been named Leinster Carer of the Year, making him one of eight people in the country who will go forward for two national awards.

“It’s a great honour,” he says. “Especially as there are many other carers more deserving of it than me. I feel a bit of a fraud. I’m not caring for people who are sick. My life isn’t hard. It’s Bernard has had the hard life.”

Riordan now has three free respite hours a week, but he admits he isn’t sure what to do with them. “I’ve been tied for so long now, it’s hard to know where to go,” he says. “You get so used to being tied. I don’t ever want Ronan coming home to an empty house, so I’m always here at 4pm for him . . .

“I’ve lost interest in going out. I’ve been in the pub once in the last 18 months. I’ve written all those things off. You have to. But I don’t have self-pity or ask, ‘Why me?’ There’s no way I’m going down that road. I don’t sit down here fretting and pitying myself. I’m a realist. I face things as they are.”

Riordan also has a terrific sense of humour. He mentions Daniel O’Donnell’s new museum of his memorabilia with amusement. “Isn’t that a brilliant way of getting rid of all your own junk? Maybe I’ll do the same. I could call it the Carers’ Memorial Museum!” And he smacks his hand off his leg and roars laughing.

The winners of the Emergency Response Carers of the Year awards will be announced on Wednesday at a ceremony on Dublin