It is hard to credit that nearly two years have passed since my last entry.  Time seems to pass more quickly  as old age creeps along.   Since my mother's death, dealing with her estate has taken a huge amount of my time and energy not least of which was clearing her home of contents and processing paperwork and photographs.  Legal and tax matters were tedious and challenging but eventually resolved.

In the summer of 2022 the family gathered from around the world in Dublin to pay our last respects to my mother as we fulfilled her last wish for her ashes to be put into the sea in Killiney Bay.

In 2023 I visited 'the house where I was born' .  The current resident was kind enough to show me around.  I was interested to hear that she inherited an oak tree planted at the bottom of her back garden from the previous occupant.  I am sure it was planted by my father during the years he lived there in Ballymun.   It had to be taken down as the branches were touching the back of the house.  It was a very small garden to put an oak tree!  In 1956 he planted another in his next house and that one is still there today.  We had gathered around to see it planted and even as a only a 4 yrs child I remember the day.

The same day I visited Glasnevin Cemetery and sorted out some incorrect records for the Daly family.  And for the first time saw a fine headstone for a mother and her children when previously I had thought they were in a public plot.  Poor Michael Daly had had to bury his wife and some of his children before he himself died but by then the plot was full and he went into a public plot some distance away.  By the time he died all his children had either died or emigrated to America.