Inishbofin loses the mother of them all

There was barely a dry eye in St Colman’s Church on Inishbofin on Sunday as local and visiting musicians played the Irish tune, A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing at the funeral of 99-year-old Margaret Day.

Because, in addition to her own five children, 20 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren, Margaret had been a mother figure to most people on the island throughout her long and extraordinary life.

As Bofin’s nurse and midwife from the late 1950s, she helped to bring many of its residents into the world. And because she pioneered tourism on Inishbofin, most of those born and reared there had worked for her at some point in Day’s Hotel.

All of them remembered her fondly and there was sustained applause after her oldest son, Brendan, delivered the eulogy – much of it in her own words from a memoir that she began when she was 75 but never completed.

The symbols brought to the altar by her beloved grandchildren and great-grandchildren included a stethoscope from her nursing days, a plant to symbolise her love of gardening, a cookbook in homage to her extraordinary culinary talent, an Irish Times and Scrabble set to depict her love of crosswords and company, an atlas indicating her love of travel and the red lipstick which she always wore.

See full obituary for Margaret Day in this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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