Joe Duffy has paid an emotional tribute to his mother Mabel as she was laid to rest in Dublin.
The RTE broadcaster’s mother passed away on Sunday in Kiltipper Woods Care Centre, surrounded by her loving family at the age of 92.
The devastated Liveline host opened up at her funeral mass on Wednesday morning with an emotional tribute to his mother, on behalf of his mourning family.
Holding back tears, the host said: “Thank you for coming and thinking of Mabel. We have come a long way because of her lifetime.
“Mabel, we were blessed in your often hard life, blessed in your easy passing, and after 94 years on this earth, blessed beyond belief that you were our mother.
“So in this church, your favourite, we say goodbye today. And like so many in your generation, Mabel, you sank the well and we drank the water.”
Speaking to the packed funeral mass at 11.30am in St Matthew’s Church in her native Ballyfermot, Joe remembered his mother’s life and hardships she has faced in the past.
“On the day Mabel was born in 1929 the new Dail was debating the closure of workhouses, which had existed in Ireland since before the famine.
“And it is fair to say that Mabel and her siblings with their parents did not have an easy life,” he said.
“Mabel unfortunately could not recall if she made her communion or confirmation as she lived in 19 different places in Dublin city before she was 19.
“But the six girls were a strong and lively sisterhood working together in the same factories from an early age.
“My God she worked hard, long before she was married. Like so many then, rearing six children, she was very disciplined with us and herself.
“Remember this was a woman who hardly ever drank or smoke, yet insisted on buying low-fat Flora for herself until the day she left Claddagh Green in November 2020.
“That being said, when we were growing up she never asked for or accepted help.
“I seldom saw my mother sitting down.”
The Dubliner also spoke of her difficulties with her health in recent years, after a battle with Covid, and suffering a fall in her home and a stroke whilst living alone during the pandemic.
The 66-year-old added: “She enjoyed good health. Even when she bet off nighttime intruders with her curtain rail while living alone a few years ago.
“The brilliant Gardai in Ballyfermot wanted her to go to hospital.
“But when the paramedics arrived they discovered she had a healthier blood pressure than the assembled younger uniformed men around her,” he added laughing.
“But her vision began to fail dramatically,” he went on and told how she went through a long regime of painful injections.
Joe sobbed as he said: “She refused any painkillers, any. But gradually her health began to fail and frail which she found hard to accept.”
Recalling how this left her "almost clinically blind", he added: “But falls at home and a stroke brought the inevitable.
“And in the middle of the Covid pandemic in 2020 when St James hospital insisted she needed 24 hour help, she contracted Covid before vaccines arrived.
“And she reluctantly went into Kiltipper Care Centre where she lived and was cared for brilliantly since December 2020.”
Paying tribute to his siblings, Joe thanked them for their love and support for their mother throughout her life in sickness and health.
Especially his sister, Pauline, Mabel’s only daughter.
“Us boys got the wooden spoon on the back of the leg when we mitched school, but to see Mabel branching a frying pan, with the eggs still in it, running towards Pauline was a lasting laugh I know you’ll never forget,” he joked.
The dad-of-triplets also remembered his late brother Aidan, who tragically died in a car crash in 1991, and his father Jimmy, who passed away seven years before the accident.
Joe sobbed as he told the congregation of family and friends: “Her beloved youngest Aidan was tragically killed in a car crash in 1991, aged 25. This was seven years after our father died, aged 58.
“When she died last Sunday, Mabel was six years longer a widow than she was a wife.”
He later added: “Aidan’s early death when he was on the cusp of a great life was a wound which has never healed for any of us.”
But the doting son also remembered the good times with his beloved mother, including her pride and love of her home in Claddagh Green.
“She was 24 when her first son James was born. She was living in Mountjoy place. But things changed dramatically in 1958, when Mabel and Jimmy's name was picked out of a lottery at city hall and they got a house in six Claddagh green.
“She moved there with James and myself, four more were to arrive later. And Jimmy headed off sporadically for work in England.
“She lived in Claddagh Green for over 60 years, refusing any other better offers. And when she eventually bought the house off the corporation, with her own money, she carried the deeds around in her handbag.”
“She loved living in Ballyfermot, her life began to improve. Which I mean, our lives.”
He went on to fondly recall her love of her garden.
“She loved growing rhubarb for her gorgeous tarts out the back and flowers on the front.
“She insisted on cutting her grass with her shears and a push lawnmower up to the time she was 90.
“This was after she finished polishing the steps outside the hall door on her knees.
“She loved dancing, and she could move. The picture in front of the Missalette was taken at her 90th birthday with a high-speed camera as we couldn’t get her to slow down.
Joe was joined by fellow family members as well as RTE stars and colleagues including Marty Whelan and Miriam O’Callaghan and President Michael D Higgins’s representative.
Fr Joe McDonald, who Joe described as his later mother's favourite priest, echoed the broadcaster's fond words, describing Mabel as “a family woman" who showed "heroic virtue every day".
“Hearts are broken, we will miss her terribly. And she will be missed in this faith community,” he added.
Mabel's burial will be in Palmerstown Cemetery today.
