Subject: A message from Nicola
Anna O'Shea's daughter Nicola asked Musa to share this with the List
Dear Everyone,
First of all I want to say thank you all for all your notes of condolences
for myself and my family over the past four days, they were all so so so
lovely. Myself and my Dad have checked the computer twice a day. Your
thoughts made us smile and cry, your comments all rang so true: "a gusty
woman", "sharp wit"...really Anna in a nutshell.
These past few days have been a blur. On Friday evening people came around and drank and shared their sympathies. I don't think anyone got a wink sleep that night.My Dad decided to hold off the funeral until my Mom's cousin whom she was very close to: Johnny, got in from New York so the funeral was Tuesday morning.
On Saturday and Sunday,we laid my mom out in an open coffin in our living room.It was really beautiful, there was white roses and lilies everywhere and we lit incense sticks and burned aromatherapy oils and lit millions of candles. The room was transformed. We moved all the furniture out of there. My mom was brought home on Saturday and so we had people calling all day Saturday and Sunday. My friends and my brothers friends were amazing. My girls came around early Saturday morning and when I say they cleaned the place...Oh my God , you can't imagine a more gleaming clean house !They laid out sandwiches and food and sorted out drinks, and so many people turned up to pay their respects and say their last goodbyes to my mom, it was lovely.
On Tuesday morning, we had a beautiful choir from my sister Fiona's school singing and my friend Rebecca who has the most fabulous singing voice sang this Billy Joel song "Always a women" which my Dad used to sing to my mom the whole time.The turn out to the funeral was jaw-dropping.It really was a tribute to my mom., there had to be more than 300 people there in all. My Dad , myself , Rory and Fiona all got up and read during the mass. My brother read a speech about how glad he was to have known mom and funny things she had done that he remembers in particular , his voice was cracking all the way through.Fiona read an American Indian Love poem which we found in my mom's diary. I read a letter that I wrote to my mom on Sunday night , two days after she had died. I cracked in the middle, I started crying and really wanted to run but my Dad was there nodding at me to go on, so I finished saying how proud I was that she was my mom and my best friend and how I'll always love her and read these lines from a poem by WH Auden
"The stars are not wanted now,put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood
For nothing now can ever come to any good".
Because I was crying and everything else, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, when I had finished , my Dad turned and said "ET"to me. It was because the first movie I ever saw in a theatre was ET and at the sad bit at the end, the place was really quiet and then with me being about 5 years old , let out a massive sob and with that, the whole cinema burst into tears. My Dad says I did it again on Tuesday morning. Many of my friends were sitting in the middle of the Church and more at the back and some standing in the sides and they all said grown men and everyone there were all shaking with tears.
My Dad gave a speech, a really good one too..thanking people who have helped us out these days and saying things about my mom , had the place crying and laughing, he was brilliant.He has to thank Carolyn Morrow who sent us this email that my mom had written to her in October about dying and it was so funny and touching , he read that out as well, it was so typical of my mom and it was brilliant to have something that my mom had wrote herself.Thank you Carolyn so much.
We had a lunch in a hotel afterwards and 80-odd people turned up.We had a string quartet and all..my mom would have been so chuffed! It was a very emotional day to say the least but it went well, all in all.
Thought you would want to know all of this,
Lots of Love, Nicola