"One of the greatest sights I have of
her is her wearing a summer dress and she was holding my hand and we were walking
down the town," Ronan Tynan recalls, calling up a vivid memory of his mother when
she was in the whole of her health. "I think she was more proud of the fact that
I was walking with her, Ma was delighted in everything I did."
Ronan was
four at the time, getting going on the new legs, as he says himself, adapting
as cheerfully as he could to prosthetic limbs. On May 13, I960, the singer had
been born in a Dublin hospital with focamelia, a bilateral congenital deformity
below the knee. His legs were about a quarter shorter than they should have been,
both his feet splayed outward and he only had three toes on each foot. He says
of his parents': "You look back after four years, and you think, Jesus, that was
a blessing. Anyone else could have made a very different decision about my life
than they did."
Ronan's father, Edmond, died in 1998, and his mother,
Therêse, is still alive but suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. I have never
known anyone to sing the praises of their parents as much as Ronan, and, moreover,
to mean every single word of it. The liner notes to his latest album, Ronan, continue
the heartfelt expressions of love. As liner notes go, they certainly have a lot
going for them, as Bono also contributes.
The U2 man recalls his father
Bob Hewson's funeral in August, 2001, at which Ronan sang. "When Ronan sings the
clouds cry but the sun turns up sooner than it would have. He sang for my father,
Bob, as we put him in the ground and it felt like shelter. The wind died down,
the rain stopped for the loudest, softest voice we have ... a great Irish tenor."
Therêse used to tell her son: "Put courage in your dreams, Ronan,
and leave the rest to the Man Above, and then you will carve your footprints in
the sand."
Ronan tells me on the phone, in transit in New York: "Therêse
was a very strong, focused, direct woman, she definitely was the pillar of strength
for me. The biggest performance of my life was to,be born to those two people."
On the new album there is a song called Passing Through, whose
lyrics were co-written by Ronan with Navan woman, Margaret Byrne. The poignant
lyrics perfectly encapsulate the tenor's feelings about his mother. "Then I sit
and ponder life for just a while / Where the ivy' grows in silence at my beloved
home / Now that house that rang with laughter stands alone / And our vacant conversations
like the pictures on the wall / Sadly hold but little meaning anymore.'
The
singer sent Nancy Reagan a copy of the new album and he says that she "adores"
the song. He sang at her husband Ronald's funeral last June and Nancy wrote him
a deeply touching letter afterwards which, viewers may recall, Pat Kenny read
out on The Late Late Show. In May, Nancy wants him to accompany her on
her first visit back to the White House since Ronnie was US President.
Patti
Reagan, Ronald's daughter, has written movingly about her father's illness (he
also suffered from Alzheimer's Disease) in her book The Long Goodbye. "The
tendency when you're around someone with Alzheimer's is to try to reel them back
in, include them in the conversation, pique their interest in whatever you happen
to be discussing," she wrote. "But I stopped doing that because it seemed to me
that I was intruding. Wherever he was, he was content. Wherever he was he shouldn't
be disturbed."
Ronan readily recognises this feature of the disease, but
he believes that we should keep trying to break down that wall. "You never know
when there's an opening in this tunnel; I'm an eternal optimist. No one can understand
the devastation of Alzheimer's unless you-are party to it. It deprives people
of their intellect and their ability, it's very sad, but I think Mam is content
and I think she knows people love her."
Therêse was diagnosed with
Alzheimer's Disease around eight years ago, but Ronan first talked to his mother
about it as far back as 1993. "It was at the back of the house and we were walking
across the road. "Mam, how are things?" and she said, "Ronan, I think I'm losing
my mind." I knew there was something, all of us knew there was a problem, and
Mam had some kind of realisation that something was going on with her short-term
memory. She was constantly forgetting things and constantly feeling that somebody
was taking things from her and stuff like that." At that time, his mother was
still driving a car and would sometimes get lost for no apparent reason. His anxious
father would tell Ronan that Therese had been up all night, wandering about.
Eventually,
a geriatrician diagnosed the early stages of dementia, but after his father's
death in 1998, the disease seemed to escalate significantly. "The day of the funeral,
at five o'clock in the morning, we were up and she had no idea why I was sorting
out music, she was totally unaware. Fiona (Ronan's sister) was phenomenal, she
spent at least two hours with her that morning explaining to her that my father
had passed on. It was frightening. She just seemed to be completely removed from
everything. Even at the time of his illness, she wasn't accepting it that well,
she couldn't understand why he was in hospital in Kilkenny. She'd go and visit
him and she wanted to take out the peg tube which had been inserted into his stomach,
and she was trying to remove drips. It was a tough time because poor old Mam didn't
know what was going on."
Ronan practised for many years as a GP at home
in Johnstown, Co Kilkenny, before he became a full-time singer. Therêse
was his receptionist for a spell. He told her to write the name, address and phone
number of each patient, but not to ask what the ailment was. "When I knew Mam
had the disease, I wanted to make sure that she would be well stimulated every
single day. So I decided to set her up in the waiting room, make her wear her
Sunday best, so it always looked as if she had a purpose for the day. I got her
food brought into her from the local supermarket. We had great fun together, she
was amazing dealing with patients and people loved her - they were fully aware
there was a problem. She got into talks about politics and religion, she was great,
she used to come out with terrific stuff."
Therese is now being cared
for in Drakeland's nursing home and she also attends a community care out-patients
centre. "These people have a phenomenal gift to care for people 24/7. The nurses,
the care-givers, the kitchen staff involved in Alzheimer care, are saints."
Now
resident in New York, Ronan obviously cannot get to see his mother as much as
he would like. His brother, Tom, sees her every Friday and Fiona visits her three
times a week and takes her out. Occasionally, Therese will react to something
funny and her children still do have some fun with her as do her six grandchildren.
Drugs are commonly prescribed, which may delay, but do not arrest the disease,
and from his research, Ronan has learned that the patient must be kept stimulated.
His singing career has enjoyed remarkable success since he moved to the
States, and one assumes this is the biggest shadow on his life at present. "It
is a shadow, but no one knows what's around the corner for any of us," he says.
Does he get down himself? "I think I've come to a point where I realise that whatever
the end may be, Mam is going to be looked after. She is going to be with my father,
and that's fine by me."
Therêse Tynan was a devout woman. "I'm sure
all those people she prayed to when she was fully of her own mind are looking
after her now." What about the future for his mother, I ask Ronan. "When God decides
it's Mam's time that's fine by me. Maybe God decided in his infinite wisdom that
if he brought her up to Heaven in that state she might cause bedlam. Maybe he
thought I'll return her to her child-like state and she'll have a first-class
ticket to Heaven."
