Marie Seeley

Marie Seeley

We are struggling to come to terms with the loss of our esteemed colleague and precious friend, Marie Seeley. Her funeral was a testimony to her popularity and uplifting presence in every aspect of her life – among family, friends and in work. We cannot replicate her raucous laughter resonating throughout our office and can only soften our sadness by remembering it when the going gets tough. She was indeed a good and faithful friend, an ambassador for our practice and a person upon whom you could always rely and did, through difficult and stressful periods. She is so sadly missed here that we can only empathise with her children, Gary, Martina and Barry, partner Paul and wider family circle whose grief is inevitably greater. For them and for us all I attach a poem by the late John O’Donohue reflecting on the nature of grief and the opportunity it eventually affords to become reconciled with bereavement. On behalf of all our staff, past and present, I would like to extend our sincere condolences to all her family.

When you lose someone you love,
your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice own
Where words have no confidence.

Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what it has taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself
All that you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.

More than you, it knows the way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

Ar Dheis Dé go raibh a h-anam