RTE star Joe Duffy has returned to work - a week after the death of his mother.
The Liveline host was left heartbroken last week after his mother Mabel passed away las Sunday at Kiltipper Woods Care Centre at the age of 94.
But on Monday, Joe returned back to work and got straight down to business as usual as he took calls from listeners on the Ukraine war.
He made no mention of the passing of his mother.
Last Tuesday, the 66-year-old told mourners at St Matthews Church in Ballyfermot in Dublin about his strong-willed mother, revealing stories of how she had fought off thugs with a curtain rail as they tried to rob her several years ago.
He said: “She enjoyed great health, even when she warned off night-time intruders when a curtain rail while living alone a few years ago. The 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 and women around her.”
But the 66-year-old told how her health had deteriorated rapidly over the years and she contracted Covid-19 before the vaccination rollout had begun.
“But her vision began to fail dramatically. But again, after going through a long regime of very painful eye injections, she refused any painkillers but gradually her health began to fail and frail, which she found hard to accept.
“Almost clinically blind, I rang her favourite priest Father Joe asking if he could give her communion in the body of the church as he did with others during mass.
“The following Sunday he went down to where Mabel sat, offered her communion, she refused it, denying she had an eyesight problem and she bet him back up to the altar. Sorry Joe.
“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 intensive 24 hour help, she contracted Covid before vaccines arrived and she reluctantly went into Kiltipper Woods Care Centre where she lived and was cared for brilliantly since December 2020.”
Holding back tears Joe spoke about the youngest child Aiden who 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.”
