Every trip began the same way: the long four-hour drive that felt like it lasted forever. I’d sit in the back seat, trying to ignore the slow build of car sickness, staring out the window, and willing the journey to end. But there were always the stops to break it up, Monaghan & Emyvale, where sausage rolls somehow made everything better. Those little rituals made the road feel familiar.

My dad would have music playing the whole way, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M to name a few, and to this day they are songs that now instantly take me back to those drives. There was one stretch at Quigley’s Point where the road dipped just slightly, and every time I’d ask him to speed up. Like clockwork, our ears would pop, and for a moment, everything felt lighter.

 
And then we’d arrive. Pulling up to Granny’s, the big gate waiting at the front. One of us would have to jump out and open it, always in a hurry, like getting inside mattered more than anything. That small moment,running to the gate, swinging it open, felt like the final step of the journey.  

Arriving at Granny’s house was like stepping into a different world. You’d smell the turf straight away, stacked high in the shed, that earthy, comforting smell that meant we were there. Inside, the red kitchen table sat at the heart of everything, stretching out when we had dinner, making room for whoever happened to be around that day.

Mornings were simple, pancakes if we were lucky, or Weetabix with, let’s be honest, far too much sugar… but that was just between me and Granny. She had a way of making the smallest things feel special.

There was something else too, something harder to explain when you’re young. There’s something special about playing and laughing in the same place your dad once did, where your aunties and uncles grew up. You’d see the photos around the house,everyone as kids, frozen in time, and pictures of Grandad, who I never met but somehow felt like I knew a little through those moments. It made the place feel bigger than just our visits, like we were part of something already in motion long before us.  

Sometimes we’d head “down the town” to the local SuperValue (Kelly’s). It felt like a proper outing, even though it was something so ordinary. I remember walking through the aisles, taking it all in, like it was bigger than it really was. Everything just felt different there, slower somehow.

There were mysteries too. The safe in the middle bedroom, always checked, never opened. Every visit, we’d try again, convinced this might be the time. It never was. And then there was the front room, almost sacred. Nothing out of place, a certain smell that you didn’t question, just respected. You knew instinctively to behave differently in there.

Even the small details stick with me, like Granny’s TV, with its limited channels and the loud, satisfying click of the buttons as you changed them. No remote, no endless choice, just whatever was on, and that was enough.

We’d dig out my dad’s old toys too, things that felt like they belonged to another time. His train set especially, setting it up, watching it go round and round, completely absorbed in something so simple.

Outside was where most of the living happened. Long days in the garden with John and Steven, kicking a ball around or racing bikes, always with the warning to stay away from the main road ringing in our ears. We’d “spy” on Marshbanks like it was our own little operation, completely absorbed in the imagination of it all.

Some adventures felt bigger than they should have been. Like the walk, or what we thought was a short run from Mary Rose’s house. Cutting through overgrown bushes, having a cup of tea like it was nothing, then deciding to run all the way back to Granny’s. I remember the stitch in my side more than anything, the kind that stops you in your tracks and makes you question every decision that got you there.

 
Sundays had their own rhythm. Mass, followed by a quiet visit to Grandad’s grave. I can still picture standing inside the huge chapel, feeling small in the echo of it, the stillness, the weight of the place. Everything felt bigger in there,the silence, the space, the sense that you had to behave a certain way. Afterwards, we’d visit Grandad’s grave, and I’d stand there with my dad, not fully understanding what he was feeling, but sensing the weight of it. He’d look down, lost in thought, and I’d stay quiet beside him.  .

And then there were the beaches, Five Fingers Strand, Culdaff, where the wind didn’t just blow, it roared. You’d lean into it, half laughing, half bracing yourself, feeling like you might actually be lifted off the ground.

Some memories are smaller, but just as clear. Aunty Anne’s house being built, then finished, like something new taking shape right in front of us. The unwritten rule that you never used the front door, always the back. I think I only went through Granny’s front door twice in my life.

But more than anything, it was Granny herself. The feeling of being around her. Comfort, warmth, a kind of quiet joy. She’d fuss over us endlessly, tying shoelaces, reminding us to put on a jacket, making sure we said please and thank you. At the time, it just felt normal. Looking back, it was everything.

I can still picture her chair by the fire. That was her spot, knitting in her hands or the paper spread out in front of her. When you’re young, those details fade into the background. But as you get older, you realise they were the centre of it all.

She created something special in that house. A place where we felt safe, looked after, important. And it stretched far beyond Donegal, into London with Breda and Bern handing out snacks from what seemed like an endless supply from their catering business, into Dublin with Seamus helping with football & summer antics with john and steven, into Spain with Eamonn, Maripi and the boys, long days on the beach in Zumaia & the Famous “chicken place “ where we would not only be surrounded by our own family, but a a restaurant full of families enjoying time together,

It was more than just visits. It was a childhood built around people, places, and moments that never really left.

And when I think of Donegal now, I don’t just think of where it is, I think of how it felt.

When I think of her now, the last image I have is of seeing her in the hospital before I went to China in September 2018. She was bedbound and unable to speak, and communication was through a pad of paper. I remember standing beside the bed, feeling quite awkward, not really knowing what to say or do. We weren’t especially close, and I think I felt that in that moment.

But when I think back further, my clearer memories of her are from when I was younger, visiting the house in Donegal. There was a period of up to fifteen years when I didn’t see her, but when I did, she hadn’t changed – she seemed unchanged by time.

I remember the smell of the turf burning – which is something that has always stayed with me. Most of the time was spent in that room next to the kitchen, which felt like the centre of the house. There was also a living room that was never used, which I found strange as a child. I used to sneak in there and look at the family photos, trying to make sense of who everyone was.

I remember Granny making breakfast for Steven and me, and giving us cups of tea in the mornings. Those are probably the simplest and strongest memories I have of her — her being kind and looking after us in those small, everyday ways. I also remember her sending postal orders for my birthday, which always felt unique — it’s the only time I can remember ever receiving them.

As the years went on, particularly with Mum and Dad separating and us living in Wales, we naturally grew apart. I don’t think there was ever any bad feeling — more that distance and circumstances meant we didn’t really build a close relationship. She had other grandchildren nearby who she saw more often, and I think that shaped things.

So for me, my memories of Granny are quite simple but clear — kindness, the house in Donegal, the smell of turf, and those quiet moments of being looked after as a child.

Just a few little memories of Granny — the kind of moments that might seem small, but are the ones that stay with us the most.

The smell of pancakes or French toast as we came in from school, with the milk always waiting on the table.

Sitting in her house watching the tennis — she cheering for Federer or Djokovic, while I was always on Nadal’s side (which definitely led to a few arguments!). And no matter what, she would never agree that Djokovic had a temper. Those little debates, those moments together, are the ones I’ll always smile about.

She had such a calmness about her. Whenever there was an accident or a fall, whether outside or around the house, she was always the one who stayed steady. You just felt safer when she was there.

At Christmas, Santa was asked to bring her something — and somehow, he always knew exactly what medicine or tablets she needed!

We always couldn’t wait to show her everything — what Santa brought us, or when we won a medal or a competition. And she would be so genuinely proud, so happy for us. That feeling — knowing how much she cared — is something we’ll always carry.

There was something so special about family time with her. The excitement when visitors came from Newcastle and Spain, the drives to the beach, the meals all together.

And of course, watching Deal or No Deal, with her completely convinced it was a fix if things didn’t go the way she thought it should! Even that says so much — she had her own way of seeing things, and she stuck to it.

I think I was about 9 or 10 during summer holidays when we went to Cavan for the day to go to granny’s farm and I remember it being lovely sunny day. We were in the field overlooking the lake. Granny was sat on a rock looking out to the lake and someone ( one of the kids) was screaming that there was a spider on them and shouting to get it off or kill it. Granny stood up and said ‘no you don’t hurt God’s creatures’ she had it in her hands and put it in the grass and said ‘there he’s happy now’ Also just waking up in granny’s and going to kitchen/living room. Granny was always first person you saw, sat in her chair with a nice big smile to say ‘good morning’

Memories of Granny range from small everyday things to big life events. But the small things aren’t so small now that they are such treasured memories: pancakes and her bread scone freshly made as after school snacks, standing still while strips of knitted material was measured against arms and backs and chests while she tried to gauge cousin’s sizes, getting to pick a colour for our new geansai or cardigan, vests and socks being taken off the hot-press and put on us and saying our prayers before school. Leaning against her padded shoulder in the backseat on car trips to and from the airport for a trip to London, or anywhere that warranted a more formal look. There was lots of spelling, times tables, geography and history tests with Granny but sometimes they took more interesting forms like passing a ball for each letter of a word, or a correct answer. I remember trying for hours to understand how to calculate interest for Maths and mam told me to go next door. Within a half hour Granny had explained it in a way that it clicked. And once Granny had drummed it in, it will never leave me! The poem, ‘Bean Sleibhe Ag Caoineadh A Mic’ lives rent free forever in my head because of her too.

Everyone probably has memories of playing cards – from snap and house to contract whist – as well as Dice and Yahtzee. 108 Long Lane is completely wrapped up in amazing Granny and Bern memories for me – splashing outside, dragging Granny to the park, walking to the village, shopping in Staines and she was there for Bern’s big surprise day out for me and Tara. We were taken on the Tube to London, to Madame Tussauds, St Pauls Cathedral and there was definitely a Happy Meal and lots of sugar throughout the day. Granny was there for it all, even a trip to Thorpe Park.

We all knew not to mess with her afternoon tv programmes and poor Dad would get the blame if Channel 4 changed Deal or No Deal for horse-racing. ‘Your father’s horseracing is on instead of my programmes’. She would really root for the Deal or No Deal players and was always so sad for them when they went home with a penny. She was good sport with board games over the years but got particularly frustrated with Balderdash one time and just wrote ‘I do not tell lies’ on her slip of paper so that quickly ended that game.

After my first time at a teenage disco, she asked what band was playing and she was not impressed with the sound of a DJ compared to live instruments and singing. Outfits for nights out that needed last minute stitches or alterations were ran next door and I could always predict that she would disapprove when I straightened my hair because she liked my curls best.

I remember Granny, Mam, me, Tara, (maybe Shane & Padraig) went to see The Dark Knight in the cinema. To this day I think it is the loudest film I have ever sat through, the seats were shaking, and Granny managed to sleep through it! Batman was not for her! On another cinema trip, the both of us went to see Toy Story 3. She thought I was deliberately trying to make her look silly by giving her 3-D glasses and then she thought I was very silly for crying at the plot as I was 20 years old and it is a children’s film. Her exasperation with my Disney fandom continued all the way through my wedding preparations as I proudly showed her Mickey and Minnie Mouse wedding figurines that would be displayed and that Disneyland in California was the big destination for the honeymoon. I am so lucky that I got to have Granny with me when I got married and will always cherish her engagement ring.

I have Granny to thank for sparking my feminism. She told me, ‘Never have to ask a man for money for a pair of tights.’ She steered me towards my career of social justice with many stories of saints and missionaries who tried to make the world a better place. She was a wealth of sound advice. First stop when I got home from college, if it wasn’t too late on a Friday night, was into Granny whether she was in the kitchen or in bed already and just chatting about everything from interesting lectures to the craic on nights out. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea, and bigger and better than ever was caught’ she would say about heartbreak stories.

One of the less happy events, but showing how Granny could get up to mischief, was when she fell and broke her hip. While we were in the hospital waiting to be seen, she not so quietly started suggesting that some of the doctors would make for a lovely husband for me and that I should have worn something other than my Olaf the Snowman t-shirt for the occasion. She also told me that one of the nurses was a bit abrupt and she didn’t like her, and when that woman then came into the room, Granny started making faces behind her back to make sure I knew that she was the offending nurse.

Granny has influenced every part of me and my life for the better and an encyclopaedia wouldn’t hold the memories. She is still always with me, and her memory will be kept alive in our everyday lives.

I can still feel the run in my legs coming off the school bus, straight for her door, knowing there’d be something good waiting. A dinner on the fire, or the smell of pancakes hitting me before I’d even got the latch open. It didn’t matter what kind of day I’d had, that smell had a way of sorting it out. Pancake Tuesday was always a great day in that house. We’d make up a batch far bigger than we needed, they were just too good, never a scrap of one went to waste.

She’d have the dinner made for us in our own house too, and after we’d sit together for the quiz shows or the six o’clock news, whatever was on. But there was a rule, no talking through the Angelus. The second that bell started you had to go quiet, no matter what you were in the middle of saying. It seemed like such a small thing then but I think about it a lot now.

She had a way of taking you in without missing a beat, no matter what turned up on her doorstep. I remember one day coming home to a locked door and just making my own way over to hers instead, the way I always could when it suited me. The look on her face when she saw me walk in and found Darkie already there, pure surprise. Mam had gotten him for her, and for that first while, he was an awful scoundrel, chewing furniture, newspaper laid out before bed like a puppy twice his trouble. But she never held it against him, not once, and he never forgot it either. Every time Omar brought her home from the hospital, Darkie would go straight to her like he owed her something. She was like that with every animal that ever landed in that house, even Roger Dodger, treated like it was hers to begin with. She just had that in her, room for whatever showed up, animal or otherwise.

She’d take my hand the second I walked in to say hello, and every time, without fail, she’d feel how cold mine was and say “cold hands, warm heart.” Don’t think I ever left without hearing it. I say it myself now sometimes, without even meaning to.

With school she gave me a kind of cheat code, leamh agus litreacha, drilled into me until it just stuck, and I never missed top marks in the Friday spelling test because of it. Speech and drama too, always happy to help us practice, listening to the same lines over and over like she hadn’t heard them a dozen times already. And whether I came home from the feis with a medal, a trophy, or nothing at all, she always knew what to say, always found something to be proud of in it. We always knew a candle had been lit and a prayer said, medal or not, win or no win. 

She cared for others over herself, people she knew well and people she was only ever trying to help, always giving and never expecting anything back. It never seemed to cost her anything to be that way, or if it did, she never let it show. That’s stuck with me more than most things she taught me, more than the spellings even. I miss her a lot, and there are days I still go to grab her hand out of habit. I could write so many more stories like these, good memories that I had the privilege of sharing with her, and I’m glad to have the chance to put a small bit of it down here.

Granny,
Its been almost five years since our last two way conversation, and words cant describe how much I long to hear your voice again. Eamonn has asked us all for memories to add to the celebration of everything Ann E Doherty, and while I honestly thought at first that you would hate the attention, you have always deserved to be celebrated. It’s tough to know where to start, there are so many stories, a whole lifetime of memories. Here are just a few..

From our earliest milestones in life, Granny was always a bigpart of the celebrations, in your own quietly proud way. Birthdays, Communions, Christmas’s, Confirmations, Graduations..Donegal on their winning campaigns, Always looking your best, with a warm smile.

Getting your trips back to mams on a Sunday was everyone’s favourite part of the week in the later years. I know they were hard for you, but those moments meant so much to us all and it was always so beautiful seeing your calm and feeling the love when you would see Pepper, Darkie, and later on the Gingers!

Blood is thicker than water was a phrase I remember you using a lot. Walking into your front room, the pride and love you had for your family was unbelievably evident, ton of photos of all of your grandkids, from baptism, communions, graduations, even if you couldn’t attend, you still displayed all of our achievements with love. I don’t know that we could put a number to the amount of candles that you lit for us all to get through those exams, competitions and life events, but just knowing that you had the candles lit did more than you could have imagined to help get us through those days.

All the wisdom through the years, one of the most important parts being “always wear your coat”- I told you I wouldn’t let you forget the day you went all the way to the Giants Causeway and didn’t bring one! Lucky you also taught sharing is caring, It looked better on you anyway!!

So many summer memories from the past, from weeks in London and Zumaia, Dublin and Carn, Wimbledon on the tv, sending us out to practise our (lack of) tennis game, Pear and sugar sandwiches, bouncing basket balls and even with your sore hands, you always did beat us. The determination and stubbornness that I think you’ve passed on to the whole family.

Family games have always been popular, and card and board games were common place, old maid, rummy, memory. One game though that I think you made evident that you couldn’t stand was Balderdash. My favourite memory of a game of Balderdash was when you wanted to give up and we wouldn’t let you, and you retaliated by making ‘I don’t know the answer’ and ‘is it over yet’ your answers to all of the next round of questions. I think we were still laughing when mam came home from work that day!

Our last holiday together, one of the most special trips that I will always remember, hearing the locals exclaim ¡Que Guapa! to greet you as we rambled around! I will always be grateful that you agreed to trust me to go on an adventure. And I say agreed to trust me, because while we walked every inch and corner of Zumaia to the point that you asked me to just leave you at the park you couldn’t take the rambling around any more, when I managed to fall asleep on the bed and get so badly burned on the backs of my legs that I couldn’t stand up the next morning, you carried me to the bathroom. One of the ‘I told you so moments’, that you never did rub in.

You were ‘Everyones’ granny- even into adulthood, our friends would always refer to you as granny, they knew your name, but you were always granny. People your own age would ask for granny and send their regards if you weren’t with us! Everyone got to feel the warmth, and the familial love. I remember months after meeting a friend in Dublin she asked me did I realise that ‘granny’ had been mentioned by me in every conversation we had ever had. You’re still a major talking point in our lives granny.

I am so grateful that Eoghain had the chance to spend time with you, weve had many conversations revolving around you throughout the years. I asked him today if he had any memories, he said yes, you giving the side eye as Omar would get you in and out of the taxi on you Sunday trips back home. He doesn’t remember, but we used to be terrified he would do something to break your wheelchair, always picking and poking at the wheels and feet attachments for it! Thankfully mam took hundreds of photos of the pair of ye when they’d visit when I would be at work, so that he will always have them to cherish.

Most of all granny, I will always look back on our time with you with tears in my eyes and an aching heart, and try to remember how lucky I am to have had someone so important and special that it hurts so much that you are gone.

So Happy 100th Birthday Granny, thank you for all the memories, lessons and love, and for helping to shape all of these little people into who they are today x.