Edel Coffey: If you don’t get in touch now, one day it really will be too late

"It had been almost a decade since I had seen Margo when last week, for some reason, she came to mind again - I googled her name on my phone and was saddened to see her death notice"

Picture: Bríd O'Donovan

I first met Margo nearly 20 years ago. I was a newly-minted journalist, and she was an etiquette expert in her seventies who, in her time, had worked as a nun in Africa, and then later as a teacher in Cathal Brugha Street college. I contacted her to get a quote for an article I was writing. By the time we had finished our phone call, we had agreed to meet for lunch. She was that kind of person. She made friends wherever she went.

From that point on, we met regularly for lunch. It might have been an unusual friendship, a woman in her twenties and a woman in her seventies, but Margo was quite simply a lot of fun. Irreverent, entertaining and always positive in her outlook. But as the years went by and life and career got busier and busier, we saw each other less and less. We sent cards from time to time, updating each other on our lives, but by the time I left Dublin in my late thirties, I had lost touch with her.