The first story- Sarah’s story

Work

I work in a nursing home, for two days a week. I set the tables for them and I go up then I talk to them, and if they’re sick I get help for them and I play bingo with them. Well I like working with the old people. Old people, I like talking to them, I think they’re very interesting, you know? And some of them are very lonely and they like you to talk to them. Some of them does be very lonely.

School

I was there just for a while, that’s all I’ll commit ta. And I didn’t work till I was twelve years old. I wasn’t able to go, when I was only maybe a week or fortnight I go to the national, then I get bad, you know? And they said I’m not able, I was just able to write me name. I got no learning or nothing, I couldn’t. Never got taught, never got taught. They just, they learned me name and that you know. You do a bit of learning, not much really. Just sums and that, you know?

Living

I was at home with me Dad. And he was in bad health, me Dad as well. I stayed with me Dad, and then when me Dad died they said… the authority said it was no place for me to live. You know, I wouldn’t be able to cope on me own. I got sick from everything.

The health, the western health board said that. You know the people for looking after you? The social worker, yeah, the social worker. They took me out of there anyhow, and I stayed with friends. Very good friends of mine. They looked after me till I got a place ta live. And then I went home to me step sister. For a while.

She took me for a while. So then their social worker got me a place where I’m living now with a family. A man, a wife and their daughter. And she has grandchildren, so I’m living there now this twenty years. Twenty years. She’s like a mother to me. She’s very good to me now.

I have me own room and me own radio and all, I have. And she washes and all for me. She washes and if I'm sick she looks after me, bring me to the doctor and you know, that sort of thing.

It’s in the family…

I was telling you I was brought up on a farm, my father was a farmer. And you see with everything, working and all, he got in bad health as well. He got sick as well. All the Rogers family, I’m Rogers, all his family was bad with asthma. ‘Twas in the family.

The doctor used to have to come out to me. Used to have to come out in the night time to me. My Mum was worried for me, and me father. It was very sad. Now I just have slight attacks of asthma, nothing to when I was a child. I used to be very bad when I was a child, it’s only a slight attack now I get, slightly.

Able to walk

Then my father had a priest. Anyhow, my father and mother brought me to the doctor in Galway and he said they could do nothing for me, I was going to be a cripple, you know? That they couldn’t, you know… they couldn’t do nothing for me. So my father and mother got very upset. They had to know that I was going to be a cripple always. So my father says ‘you don’t give up hope yet, I know what to do, I have a parish priest. He’s a friary’.

So me father he took me to him and he asked him could he do anything for him, could he see me. And he’d bring me up in the morning, so me father had to get a taxi to bring me up in the morning. He carried out me out of the car into the priest’s house. He put me sitting on me own, on one of these little stools. And he told him, you stay behind, don’t touch her.

So he read the mass over me and he gave me his blessing and he said- when I was leaving- he said, ‘just take her by the hand, don’t carry her’. He said, ‘I’ll walk beside her’. So me father don’t do that, and he brought me by the hand to the car. And me mother, when she seen me, she broke down.

You know how a child learns how to walk, and you just creep, walking and falling? That’s the way I was now, and she got very upset. And I was walking up to the table, and putting on the table cloth and whatever way something fell I got a fright and I fell. I remember it well, I cut me forehead. I may thank me father and mother, god bless them all, and me Father Divine - that’s the parish priest- I’m walking from that day to this. That’s a true story.

The farm

We used to have our own potatoes and cabbage. We had our own garden. My mother used to make our own butter. It was lovely to see all that happen. You would get the clappers- you have a little dish, and you would clap it down. When you had that done, you make a round ball. It was beautiful. We used to have our own milk, our own cow and all that. We used to have our own eggs, we had everything that time. It was lovely now.

Me father and the man that’s driving the tractor, they would be away a while now, filling it with turf. When they come back they’d have to empty it, and put everything in, till the next one come. It was very hard you know? They’d have a cup of tea, they’d have one when they get back. Well I used to do nothing, but I used to see me father, bring home the turf and the hay, and he used to go out to him and save the hay.

Mother dying

Well she got a little bit of Alzheimer’s, she had to be sent to the Sacred Heart home. You know, me father wasn’t really there and he couldn’t watch her. And you know, the stairs… she couldn’t come down the stairs or anything. She got really bad. And then she got the brain haemorrhage.

My dad was 63 when he died. My mother, she was younger,

My father got a sugar diabetes, he was very bad. He got asthma then, needless to say he had a bad chest. Most of them in the family died with asthma. His father died, I didn’t remember him but he used to tell me, his father died at 42. The aunt died of her chest, and my uncle died, my two uncles died of chest problems. It was part of the family, it really was part of the family.

Now

Now I go to the gym, and we might have a cup of tea or something at the café. We go to mass, and we go to bingo at St. Catherine’s, near Castlerea. I’ve won maybe a fiver. It’s a bit of fun anyway. You get cards with all the stickers on it. I can work the card on me own. You get out a bit and yeah, and I do go on holidays a couple of times.

I’m going on day trips this time now. Day trips. Ah sure, last year I went to Sligo, Enniscrone, it was lovely, it was nice, for a week. Oh yeah, we were out every day and used to go out at night and it was really nice now. The staff would come with you.

I love up here…

Well now, I’m here 20 years. I worked in a workshop for a while before I came here now. I used to work in the kitchen for a while. Set all the tables, make the tea and that, clean everything up. And then I said I’d like a change, I like a change. So Paul, my manager, got me to write a letter.

I love up here now, I love here. Meeting them all. It’s very lively. It’s nice to see them all together talking and you know? That sort of way, the more sit down and talk, it’s nice for people. You can take it at your own pace.

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