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For the second time in this season of Advent, the generosity of so many people towards a stranger who had died and was in need of care has shone brighter than all the glittering lights and the thousands of sparkling baubles.
Yesterday, Vanessa O’Callaghan, a Cork woman who had been homeless – and who died after being attacked while attending a soup kitchen – was buried. A Go Fund Me campaign has raised more than €9,100 to help her family with the cost of the funeral.
Over the last two days, 168 people chipped in to cover the cost, despite it being very much the most expensive month of the year. One business even donated €2,000. It’s a clear sign that kindness and goodness still exists amongst people of goodwill everywhere.
The fundraiser was set up on behalf of the O’Callaghan Family – including Vanessa’s mother Ellen and children Chelsea, Jerry and Kyle.
“On the 1st December 2024, Vanessa was brutally attacked outside the savoy in Cork City Centre, she was attending a soup kitchen and was sitting down when this attack happened. Vanessa passed away peacefully on the 4th December in the presence of her loving family,” the fundraiser said.
“Vanessa had her struggles, mainly beginning when she lost her brother Shane at the age of 18. She never came back from this.
“Anyone that knew Vanessa knew she had a heart of gold, always had a smile or wink to give to everyone. She had her own struggles but she would lighten up anyone’s day with her beautiful sense of humour and personality.”
Vanessa died while using a soup kitchen in one of the richest countries in Europe. She was only 36, and was a native of Cork city who had been a user of homeless services in the city for a number of years. The tragic story is another reminder of the tragic consequences of addiction to drink and drugs and mental illness, and if Irish politicians want to tackle the problem, they must accept that more supports are needed to address those issues.
“That shouldn’t be happening in this day and age. The city council and our Government need to see what is going on in our country. None of our homeless are ever provided with anything by our city council,” some of the volunteers who are involved in the soup kitchen Vanessa attended said. It is true that politicians need to wake up. The government-funded NGOs given millions to tackle homelessness also have questions to answer given the fact that the numbers are just shooting up after a new high of 15,000 was recorded.
But while the case highlights the problems and the tragedy which has gained a foothold in Ireland, it is also evidence of the good and the generosity still alive in our country.
It is just a few weeks after 300 people turned up to the funeral of a woman who had no next-of-kin in Carlow. Cork-born Mary Regan, 89 passed away after spending 20 years in Carlow with her last years of life spent in a nursing home.
Worried funeral director Rory Healy made a last minute social media appeal just that morning to make sure she was not “sent off alone.” Those 300 people were strangers to Mary, but they were there to bid her goodbye, to give her dignity, and to pray for her in a send-off which went from being lonely and sad to profoundly heart-warming.
For all of our flaws as a country, it’s hard to imagine such an act of community and faith happening in somewhere like England. It’s very easy to say we have become a less fun, more dangerous country, and I think that is true, but there is still a warmth and a goodness that exists and is woven into the fabric of our society which we must preserve at all costs.
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