A Mayo woman who is believed to be Ireland\u2019s second oldest person has passed away at the age of 107.<\/p>\n
Bridget (Bridie) Colleary, of Lacken, Enniscrone, Co Sligo, and formerly of Carnalough, Bonniconlon, Co Mayo, was four months shy of her 108th birthday when she died.<\/p>\n
She passed away peacefully in her residence surrounded by her loving family.<\/p>\n
A quiet and unassuming lady, Bridie was a devoted and loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would have been 108 in December,\u201d her son Val told the Western People.<\/p>\n
Born Bridget Loftus in December 1918, she grew up in Carnalough, Bonniconlon with six sisters and a brother.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She and four of her siblings emigrated to England but Bridget was to return and marry in 1952.<\/p>\n
An incredibly resilient woman, Bridie’s life was touched by heartbreaking tragedy.<\/p>\n
Her beloved husband Paddy died in a motorbike accident at Christmas time in 1961. He was just 42-years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had only been married for nine years,\u201d said Val.<\/p>\n
Bridie was left a widow with five children to rear.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe continued to keep us going and did all the usual things you have to do for your family. She was a really hard worker,\u201d said Val.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe grew her own spuds, went to the bog, and looked after her own turf. She would cycle from the house here up to the bog and turn the turf and foot the turf. When we got bigger, we were able to help her, but she was going a lot of that on her own,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 1983, Bridie lost her eldest daughter Mary and her three-year old granddaughter Sheena in a road accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cMary had been nursing in Dublin and was married in Dublin. She was coming down for a week\u2019s holiday, and she got killed in a tragic accident in Longford.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth Mary and her daughter Sheena died, Sheena was only three. That was an awful blow for my Mum to lose both her daughter and her granddaughter,\u201d said Val.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she got on with things. She was a very resilient woman. She always said, \u2018Look you have no choice to get on with life,\u2019 and she did,\u201d added Val.<\/p>\n
Bridie was in remarkably good health throughout her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first time I remember her ever going to a doctor she was 95!\u201d said Val.<\/p>\n
When she was 99 she broke her hip and that was the first time she had ever been admitted to a hospital with all her children born at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had no records of her at all,\u201d said Val.<\/p>\n
In more recent years, Bridie had still been managing to live largely independently in an apartment connected to Val\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was good really right up until a couple of weeks ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a remarkable woman who was blessed with good healthy really. We would often say to her you should go to the doctor if she had a small ailment and she always say, \u2018Not at all, I had this before. It\u2019ll go away\u2019.”<\/p>\n
Born in 1918, Bridie lived through two pandemics in the Spanish Flu and Covid-19.<\/p>\n
Despite living in Enniscrone for so many years, Bridget was a proud Mayo woman who liked to follow the fortunes of her county\u2019s GAA team.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would have been one of very few people who would have seen Mayo win four All-Irelands. If Mayo were playing she would have been interested, even though she was living in Sligo for years. She knew her roots were in Mayo,\u201d said Val.<\/p>\n
Bridie was predeceased by her husband Paddy, their daughter Mary, grandchild Sheena, parents Belinda and William Loftus, sisters May, Nora, Lizzie, Aggie, Eileen and Kitty, brother Mike and son-in-law Mike Walsh.<\/p>\n
She was the beloved mother of P. (Margaret McEvoy), Betty (Tom O\u2019Hara), Esther (Pat Boyle) and Val (Valerie Duffy), and will be greatly missed by her sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, grandchildren, great grandchildren, nephews, nieces, relatives and friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Mayo woman who is believed to be Ireland\u2019s second oldest person has passed away at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[241444,21060,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-597512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-western-people","tag-connacht","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}