105 good reasons to celebrate

Last Friday members of the extended Tierney family made their way to Loughduff to mark an impressive milestone passed by Bridget Tierney, one of County Cavan’s oldest residents.

“She’s in good form and she enjoyed her birthday,” Mary Sheridan says of her mum’s big day. It was a particularly significant one. Half a decade ago, Bridget received her Centenary Bounty and the letter of congratulations from the President on hitting her hundredth year.

Now, five years later, Bridget is 105 and still full of vim and vigour. She’s unfazed by the global pandemic that’s cast a pall on every community in the world and welcomed her wider family, even if she could only see them through glass: “Compared to other years, it was very different. A lot of people just came to the back door to wave to her. All of the grandchildren visited, but not into the house. They just waved through the window.”

Bridget has a large family. Nine children, 30 grandchildren and 41 great grandchildren and three great great grandchildren all wished the centenarian a happy birthday.

“Nobody went into the house. My sister, my brother and his wife visit her every day. Everyone else just wished her happy birthday. She is very much aware of what is going on in the world. She is updated everyday on what is going in the family. She reads a lot. She enjoys her crosswords and listening to the radio and is fond of the quizzes on the TV. She is very alert,” Mary says of her mother.

A woman of deep faith and personal convictions, Bridget instilled in her children a strong sense of right and wrong: “She prays every day. I always remember her devotion to completing the First Fridays. Good manners and respect for others were very high on her list of priorities. She always says ‘manners are just as important today as they were 100 years ago’.”

Bridget is the mother of six girls and three boys, now aged between 66 and 78 years. The wife of a farmer, she worked hard all her life, but never in formal employment: “She’s a good cook. She never ate anything out of a tin. She lived off the land. There was no going to the supermarket when she was young. She baked everyday, made tarts and jam. These are the things we, her children, remember from our youth.”

Her firm convictions were also asserted in politics: “She’s very political. She is Fianna Fáil through and through. De Valera was in the kitchen for years. She told me she and a friend walked to Arva from beyond Lacken, where she was from, in 1937 to see De Valera.”

Mary said her mum had an enjoyable day despite the restrictions: “She loves people coming to visit her, even if it is just to wave through the window. She had a lovely cake.”

Pic above: Bridget Tierney pictured on her 105th birthday at her home outside Loughduff on Friday afternoon as her great grandchildren, Lara and Matteo Zanella, peek through her window. Photos: Lorraine Teevan