A friendly face behind the counter to ease your woes

Fr Jason Murphy pays a tribute to a special lady in this week's Let the Busy World be Hushed...

‘I enjoyed the bit you wrote in the Celt a few weeks ago about that young lad who works without in Bruskey Stores. It’d do you good to read about the like of him and the way he could mix with both young and old, he seemed to be a great young fella.'

Unbeknownst to the friendly bank clerk, the young lad of whom she spoke had just entered into the bank on Cavan’s Main Street behind me to send money to Zambia that we had raised, to assist in providing palliative care to those who would suffer greatly but for the donations.

I smiled as I turned to her and said, ‘well do ya know Carmel, you can tell him yourself for he’s waiting in the queue for the ATM’ and, looking around, she couldn’t believe the serendipity in the moment. ‘You can’t be serious,' she said as she walked across the floor to the lad from Bruskey. She shook his hand in the midst of the queue, as if she were greeting a person of fierce importance, as people turned to catch a glimpse of the celebrity who was being commended aloud for being the extraordinary young man that he was, looking in on neighbours and carrying calf nuts for auld lads, as well as throwing darts with the best of them below in Buddy Kiernan’s of a Wednesday night.

He walked out of the bank ten feet tall, so proud of the acknowledgement he got from ‘yer wan in the bank’. The other day we happened to be in again to send over a few euro extra we had gathered and overheard in conversation that she was retiring, whereupon the same young lad turned to me and said, ‘de know that wan will be quare missed about here, you should write a bit about her in the Celt’.

And so it is that Carmel Brady is retiring tomorrow after 35 years working in the Bank of Ireland along Cavan’s Main Street, a familiar and a friendly face who is there to lend a hand and unburden the shoulders of those with whom she meets. The young student from Cavan Institute who sent in an application to the bank manager for a job as one the clerks remains there all these later. Instead of going on to college in the RTC in Athlone, she secured a position and there she has remained as a constant over the years for all who call by.

One of her first jobs in the bank was to transfer money to a couple of lads from Cavan who were staying on in Rome after Ireland beat Romania 5-4 on penalties and qualified for the quarter finals in the World Cup against Italy in that summer of 1990, on the strength of their good names.

There were oak counters then with brass railings behind which she sat, trying to remember the name of every customer that came through the door. Smiling and chatting and putting them at their ease as men in peak caps stood talking in the queue about prices in the mart or a match that was to take place between Arva and Cornafean. Of course it was all paper transactions then; lodgement books and savings books with scribbled figures amounting for the rainy day; paper files stacked high and parents in for college loans to help their children receive the third level education that they themselves never knew. People with ideas for small businesses and an application for a loan, which became the catalyst for the successful enterprises that they are today.

She was there in the midst of it all, at the important moments of people’s lives, as they took a chance, a leap of faith in starting out anew. She remembers well the smoke clouds that wafted in the air as customers lit up a cigarette as they waited in the queue and often lit one for the cashier behind the desk when they got as far as her. People weren’t in as much of a rush, chatting over the counter, telling of their joys and sorrows, first days in their new homes and the days when the herd went down with TB.

Carmel was there to reassure, when all seemed lost, that there was always a way through. In so doing, she lifted the weight of worry that people at times carried on entering through those heavy oak doors. A smile to greet them, a tap on the shoulder, the kindly word and that which seemed a mountain was reduced to the molehill that in hindsight it really was.

She is among the friendly faces of Cavan’s Main Street that people turn to - from the ladies at the tills in Dunnes Stores, to Eddie Coleman in the gift shop or Felim Pritchard in Patsy Boyle’s Menswear to name but a few; the girl from Ballyhaise, a farmer’s daughter, who knew well the ups and downs that life brings your way.

So in this era of mobile apps and internet banking, of ATMs and digital transfers, we all need a kindly face, a friendly greeting, to lift our spirits and carry us along as we acknowledge and give thanks for all the Carmel Bradys we meet each day of our lives as we journey through.