Serenity

Today is my grandfather Domhnall's 18th anniversary so he has been on my mind all day. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since he died very suddenly, leaving the whole family in shock. I was only 12 then, and it hit me very hard.

Grandad, who was also my godfather, was 80 years old and had always been full of life and vitality. Among many other things, he was an inventor, mechanic, engineer, photographer, musician, and storyteller. We all worshipped him, and we still miss him so much.

When I and some of my family were down in Kerry two weeks ago, we went for a drink one night in the Anchor Bar in Cahirciveen, where my mother grew up. Two of her childhood neighbours came in, now white-haired men in their 70s, one of them accompanied by his wife.

Mum introduced herself. One of the men turned to his wife and said, "That's the daughter of the man who I was telling you about the other day, who gave us our first radio. He drilled a hole through the wall, hooked up a speaker, and away we went!"

"Yes," said my Mum, "When you turned it on, it halved the volume so we'd to turn ours up double!"

Today is also my grandmother Máire's real birthday, though it is not the day she was registered as being born on. When she was a baby, the state tried to encourage people to register births more punctually by introducing a penalty for late registrations.

Families often missed the three-month cut-off for one reason or another, perhaps because they were too busy with their farm and couldn't make the trip to the registration office, so they would lie about the date of birth.

As a result, we have always celebrated Granny's birthday on 27 July. In fact, technically though not officially, she turned 93 today! Her health has failed dramatically in recent months, and she is terribly frail.

She still has her wicked sense of humour, however. I went to see her yesterday and asked if she had any gossip for me. "Oh, I have lots of gossip," she said, "But you're far too young to hear most of it!"