Galway man home after 42-day battle with pneumonia and Covid – for his 93rd birthday

Willie Keane left St Joseph’s Ward on Tuesday – the exact day of his big birthday – to be greeted by family, seeing him for the first time since he was hospitalised just before Christmas.

And he’s now back where he’d longed to be; at home in familiar surrounds in Carrowbrowne, after winning his latest health battle – in the same week that saw the country’s record total of Covid deaths in one day.

His daughter Mary says it’s the longest he’s gone without seeing his family in their entire lives. Because all four of them – Mary, Michael, Catherine and Sally – still live within a stone’s throw of home; literally in the cases of Michael and Sally.

And up to Willie’s hospitalisation, at least one of them, and normally two, would spend each evening with him – making the pain of separation for the last few weeks all the more acute.

There’s another big milestone on the horizon next week, because Wednesday is his 70th wedding anniversary – although, for the first time, he will mark the day without his wife Mary.

Willie and Mary did celebrate their 69th anniversary last year in Maryfield Nursing Home in Athenry, where Mary, who has Alzheimer’s, has lived for the last four years.

But that’s not possible this time because of Covid – although Mary is doing well in lockdown.

Read the full story with more heart-warming photos in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now. Or you can download the digital edition by going to www.connachttribune.ie