I will take you home Kathleen....

Because it never gets any easier and my heart still hurts....

My best friend, confidant and role model.

16 years ago today came the news that shattered my world and broke my heart eternally. Inexplicably you were gone, as you slept.

The surreal nature of the news is something I have never been able to explain or convey outwardly. It was days, weeks, months until I let in the realisation that this was a finite situation.

I remember seeing you that Sunday evening, we went for a family meal. You were in high spirits and as always on top form. I remember choosing to sit next to you, as I always did, because you were my person.

I remember you taking me to one side that evening, talking to me about my upcoming trip to Dublin that following week. You sternly made me promise to you that I would do 2 things; that I would walk by the River Liffey and no matter what happened that nothing would stop me going to Dublin. At the time I laughed and said 'of course, I'm going this Friday'.

It was Thursday evening when the message reached me, the day before I was due to go to Dublin. And I was annoyed at you because you made me promise to go there and I was so devastated that I no longer wanted to.

But I remembered what you always said to me 'don't be doing that crying now, will only give you headache'. So I honoured my last ever promise to you, my hero. I took myself all the way to Dublin, I lit candles there in the Church by the Liffey and I walked by it just like you asked.

Yellow roses were always your favourites and each time I've been to Dublin, I have laid yellow roses into the River Liffey for you and watched them slowly float away.

Each time I ever go there I will always do this for you....

'I will take you home Kathleen'