Aife McOscair – a much-loved and fearless woman

If we are all made up of stardust, as physicists would have us believe, Aife McOscair embodied some of the brightest particles. From the time that she was a small baby with a bandana on her head, “everybody loved to have her”, one of her aunts recalled.

And everybody did seem to feel so much better about the world when in the company of the tall young woman with long dark hair who never seemed to have a furrowed brow. Giggling, jiggling junior infants would run around her, vying for attention as she collected her son Cúan from school. Amid all the frantic “takemyschoolbagwhere’syourlunchboxfastenyourseatbelt” activity, she would exude a sense of calm. A parent caught for a pick-up knew they could rely on her. My first contact with her was one early afternoon, when a group of parents took shelter from torrential rain inside the school building, several minutes before the bell rang. Our whispers became louder chatter . Older children were still in class. We were rightly reprimanded, and asked to go outside. “But why?” Aife said, standing her ground as the rest of us moved to leave. We faltered, stopped, looked at each other a little sheepishly . . . and had a quiet chuckle at our innate need to obey. “I went to Newpark Comprehensive,” she laughed afterwards, explaining why, for her, authority held no fear.

And fearlessness seemed to be her second name, for no project seemed too big if it demanded to be done. Within months of starting her son into primary education, she was among a group that initiated an afterschool. On moving house, and school, she did the same again. She threw her energies into community activities out on Galway’s northeastern perimeter. She was, in the words of Nelson Mandela, a natural leader – “letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind”. There were many such memories, many stories exchanged inside and out and around the Friends Meeting House in Dublin’s Monkstown several months ago, when the sun streamed in the large windows, and friends and relatives took their place around a timber casket. Aife’s mum Áine, Cúan and wider family were bidding her farewell. Her father Tony recited a poem, her half-sister Nysha described how her life had been enriched by her sibling, and her aunts spoke of her “subtle layers . . . of wit, wisdom and radiance”. Cúan recalled asking his mum for a Manchester United football outfit on his seventh birthday. And so, when the day came, there was the Manchester United socks and shorts he had longer for alright, but the shirt was . . . well . . . Liverpool.

“That was Aife . . . she had her own twist on things,” he said,to a ripple of laughter which changed to silent tears as he described how much he would love and miss his mum.

Journalist Frances Shanahan, a close family friend, remembered how Aife as a small girl was never afraid of anything on a farm — be it horses or cattle or any large machine. One day Frances heard a shriek, feared the worst, and rushed to assist. There was Aife, trembling with fear inside a shed, having caught sight of a teeny tiny mouse. “And perhaps Aife was right after all to be afraid of the small things,” Frances said.

Anne Buckley had travelled from the west to make her contribution. Aife was receiving initial treatment for a tumour when she heard about the network which Anne — herself a survivor twice over — founded almost eight years ago. The Irish Brain Tumour Support Group (Western Region) meets once a month in Cancer Care West’s centre in Galway city, and aims to give information on, provide practical support for, and share experiences about an illness that can affect up to 400 people here a year.

Anne described how Aife was known as “the girl with the wonderful smile”. If anyone matched writer Richard Bach’s oft-quoted remark about life’s passing, it was her, she said — “what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly”.

And even as the speckles of sunlight flickered across the Quaker meeting room walls, there was a sense of stardust, and butterfly wings, as she read a passage from Kahlil Gibran in tribute to Aife McOscair – adding two words of her own: Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when have you reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance — and fly . . .

The Irish Brain Tumour Support Group (Western Region) can be contacted at (087)7834826.