A Mayo perspective: Unable are the loved to die for love is immortality

by Dr. Richard Martin

I WAS in the Rutland Centre some years back.

Once you walk through those gates it’s not about alcohol anymore. Or drugs. Or gambling.

It’s about life and death. Addiction kills. The joke wasn’t funny anymore. It was too close to home and too near the bone.

My life was on the line. I just knew deep down I wasn’t able for what I was dishing out to myself anymore. I’d run out of self-will.

At the start I was in a trance. Group therapy in the morning and afternoon.

Walking over and back and around the garden doing my best trying to figure out the next best move or even if there was one. Lots of questions. Not many answers.

There is no such thing as a rock bottom. Not in my experience. Just an endless pit of misery.

I had found myself at a fork in the road. Continue as I was. Active addiction. The road of shame.

Or recovery. The road of pain. I didn’t bother much with any of the other residents bar one. I cut pretty much a solitary figure.

The gardener took pity on me. He must’ve watched me pace the garden path over and over. Day after day. Head down. Perplexed. Lost. I forget his name. John. Peter. Paul. It doesn’t matter.

He introduced himself and over the next few weeks we got to know each other.

He came to Knocklyon House when he left school in the 1960s.

Back then it was a mansion with sprawling gardens and a par 3 golf course which had to be maintained daily.

Today the glorious driveway and par 3 course are long gone. Housing estates encroach on the small garden that remains.

He told me that a director of Irish Hospitals Sweepstake was the owner of Knocklyon House when he first started working in the garden.

I smiled when he told me that the biggest centre for addiction in Ireland was once owned by a man who raised funds from the proceeds of gambling. It’s hard not to smile at that.

He had watched many people enter the gates over the years. Everyone that comes through those gates is close to death. Lucky to get this far. Hanging on by the fingernails.

This was a man at complete peace with himself. Pottering away in the garden. Watching. Observing.

He spoke quiet words of experience and wisdom when the occasion arose.

You have to be still and content with the way life is and happiness will come to you. Surrender. Acceptance.

He told me about his family and engaged me in normal conversation and made me feel human again.

Gradually hope was kindled. There might be a way out of the abyss.

One day I asked him about a small plaque in the garden at the foot of a tree that I’d walked by over a thousand times. It was dedicated to Mary Bolton RIP.

On it was inscribed ‘Unable are the loved to die for love is immortality’.

He told me she was a former counsellor in the centre. She did great work establishing the Rutland in the 1980s and helped hundreds recover from addiction.

All these years later I’m still haunted by those words.

Ever since I left the Rutland I’ve been at a lot of funerals.

I never kept in contact with any of the residents afterwards.

I had built up a good bond with a guy from Crumlin when I was there. He was addicted to heroin and alcohol.

As far as I know, today he’s doing well. He is still alive. Married. Kids. Happy. At peace. The game is life and death; many I knew then have since passed.

Alcohol. Cocaine. Crack. Heroin. Gambling. A slow suicide. Physically alive. Spiritually dead.

Until the day comes when the body succumbs.

I was at a funeral in Castlebar some weeks back. A beautiful sunny warm glorious Saturday.

Anne-Marie Cunningham. Wife of Jarlath. Mother to three lads. Mark. James. Shane. All three are wonderful footballers. All three are wonderful young men. All three are a credit to their parents.

She was their North, South, East and West. Their working week and Sunday rest.

She fought to the bitter end and raged against the dying of the light.

But then the time finally came to let go and surrender peacefully with glad grace and go gently into that good night.

There was a guard of honour at the Mall. Mitchels. Celtic. St. Gerald's College.

People lined up on both sides of the road. I was struck by the huge crowd from the Mitchels at the Mall. But not surprised.

The Mitchels are tribal and the roots go deep. Mick Bryne was the master of ceremonies. Rocky led the funeral procession.

When the procession reached the council buildings it stopped and Mick Byrne respectfully bellowed: "Guard of Honour, left turn, march."

We walked en masse with the hearse to the church. The clocks stopped for a few hours.

Castlebar stopped, paused, took a deep breath, and came together united in grief.

I thought of my old friend Val McHale. When his son Connor passed in February 2022, he spoke very simply, eloquently and powerfully from the pulpit.

He said that when a parent or a grandparent dies it is sorrowful but it is the natural passage of life. When a child dies it is a tragedy. When someone passes before their time the grief is immeasurable.

I thought too of the young man, Joe Deasy, found in a ditch near Anne-Marie’s native Bohola parish some years ago. He died in intensive care in Beaumont shortly afterwards

The injuries sustained were brutal, deadly and ultimately fatal. The search for truth and justice is still ongoing but the love of his family and friends isn’t in doubt - and that perhaps is the most important of the three.

I thought too of my good and old friend Gerry Tolan who was taken from us in 2013. I was the first person he rang when he was diagnosed with cancer out of the blue which ultimately proved fatal.

I’ve always taken that as a massive compliment. A picture of him still hangs on the wall in DayBreak on Main Street, Castlebar.

A remarkably spiritual man.

Many, many others have been taken from us too soon.

But they can never die.

For love is immortality.

(Dr. Richard Martin is a regular columnist with The Connaught Telegraph).