A treasure lost and found

In the midst of a designer-clad group of young mothers at a parent's meeting at my children's school in Dublin, many years ago, Colleen stood out like a sore thumb. A mid-70-year-old lavender lady with compelling blue eyes, a long, black, slim cigarette holder and raucous laugh, she was the life and soul of the party.

On discovering that she lived alone and its being the festive season, we invited her to Christmas dinner to our nearby home which affectionately was known as The Gluepot and where the family found any excuse to throw a party. Thereafter she was to be found in the thick of every "hooley" which we threw for charity and where she entertained an audience to either piano recitals or sang rebel songs in all their customary heartrending desolation.

She professed to being an atheist and hadn't graced a church for years but, because of her outlandish generosity, we knew that she had already found God. One cannot love without giving and God is love. When one stops giving, one stops loving and Colleen never stopped giving. Was it St Theresa of Avila who declared: "May the good Lord deliver me from peevish and penny-pinching saints"?

Every so often she went to visit her sister in Limerick City and being afraid of her flat being burgled was wont to pack her jewellery box and her grandmother's silver tea service in an old battered suitcase which she dragged along.

One morning I was awakened at the crack of dawn by an insistent phone. Colleen, perpetually so full of fun, was in a state of hysteria at the other end. On changing trains at the Limerick Junction, she dropped her luggage and ran to embrace an old school pal. To her horror on turning around she found that the battered suitcase was missing. Consternation ensued on that platform and in tears she was forced to board the coming train empty handed and desolate. Today she was inconsolable. Would she come to O'Loughlin's Prayer Meeting I ventured? "Not within an ass's roar of it," was her curt reply.

I tried every angle in order to comfort her but in vain. "You have not, because you ask not," I reminded her quoting Jesus himself. To my astonishment she responded, "You ask for me," she replied "Now, on the phone". I was adamant in my reply, "Not unless you end the prayer with a loud Amen," I replied.

This she agreed to do, loudly and clearly. It was no surprise next day when we got the great news of the return of the missing case. A travelling mother's helpful son had been the culprit and the case was returned unopened. Colleen's life would never be the same again. She underwent a veritable metamorphosis. Her favourite prayer would be: "With you Lord I can do everything and without you nothing".

The following week found her behind the Oxfam stall in the centre of the city as a non-stop voluntary social worker. With her Irish gift of the gab she told and retold the story of her lost treasure and its rediscovery. With her dynamic and colourful personality she must have drawn many souls to God. "You will be my witnesses," He told them and what a jewel He found in Colleen.

Ni doigh go mbeidh a leithead aris ann. (I don't think her like will ever be seen again.)