TV Watch with Dave O’Connell - Women of courage telling it like it is
In ways it was the week of two women – one famous, one not, but both sharing the pain and struggle of dealing with cancer.
Dolores Keane is one of our finest musical talents, coming from a family steeped on the tradition and putting her own distinctive mark on the genre for 40 years.
Her battle with the drink was no state secret, but in an incredibly moving RTE documentary, she also spoke of her battle with depression and more recently with breast cancer.
Jackie Crowe is a mother of two from Tralee, who was given a year to live when she was Neuroendocrine tumours – which she describes as “a rare form of cancer that affects a few hundred people in Ireland” – last July.
On top of that trauma, she also found herself out of work and falling behind in her mortgage payments and life assurance policy.
“I was struggling with my mortgage, and to pay the mortgage I stopped paying my life assurance,” she said – and that was a mistake she was to bitterly regret because just five months later she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was informed that her life assurance policy could not be re-instated.
So began a double journey that formed the subject of ‘Jackie’s Story: My Life, My Legacy’, a story that’s a long way from over – although it seems clear now that neither problem is likely to go away.
Two brave women who turned the spotlight on themselves and spoke with disarming honestly of the emotions, the impact of serious illness, the difficulties that very different lives have thrown up at them.
At least Dolores Keane: A Storm in the Heart had something of a happy ending, because the pride of Caherlistrane is emerging from her darkest days to sing and live again.
There’s a tightly cropped cut where there were once flowing red locks, but the indomitable spirit shines through – as does that honesty and directness that’s as much a part of her as her unique voice.
For Jackie, there is no such ending, because her cancer is aggressive and terminal – but she is determined to live what’s left to her on her own terms as opposed to eking out her final days on the back of medication that’s harder to bear than the disease itself.
For more see this week’s Sentinel