Catherine passed away today
Posted on June 14, 2006
Filed Under Dungarvan, family, history, nature | Comments Off
I never met Catherine but she died today. Catherine was my third cousin and she was named after her grandmother, Kitty. A year ago, when she was 15, Catherine was diagnosed with leukaemia. It must have been really advanced because she only survived for twelve months. She was treated in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children (Crumlin Hospital). They have some of the technology I mentioned in an earlier post but no-one told me about Catherine. A bone marrow transplant was unsuccessful and despite a brief recovery early this week, she passed away today.
I’m not sad, to be truthful, since I didn’t know her. I’m sad that anyone dies at 16 years of age. Sixteen is too young. What I mean is, if a child dies at, say, 3 years of age, she’s not fully formed. One can comfort oneself by thinking she was well fed, kept warm and had loving parents. She didn’t have the capacity to psychologically suffer & she would have been very happy since all her current needs would have been met. If an adult dies at, say, 50 years of age, one can also comfort oneself by thinking they had a good innings: maybe they had a family, maybe they had a successful career: maybe they won the lotto: maybe they grew the best daffodils on their street: who knows?
But when someone dies at 16, they’re 90% fully formed. They have ‘history’: they had a past and a potential future. Her parents, and those who knew her, watched and witnessed her blossom from a speechless, helpless child, through her terrible twos, through puberty (& all that means for a woman), through her early teenage years, into a proto-adult. Maybe she was going to be a hairdresser, an actress, a solicitor, a homemaker, an accountant, whatever. Her parents and friends probably know the answer and that’s the worst reality. ‘She coulda being a contender‘.
They probably have a present as well – boyfriend, Boyband infatuations/posters, sports medals, debating certificates, part-time work in the corner shop and so on. Her family knew some of the life that lay ahead for her but it was not to be.
A child I don’t know called Christopher will be 15 in August.
So maybe, after all, I’m a little bit sad.
I would like to express my deepest sympathies to Catherine’s parents.
