Dying journalist's ex-partner hails her frankness

Journalist Nuala O’Faolain who revealed in a frank interview she was dying from cancer was today praised for raising the issue of how we face death.

Her former partner Nell McCafferty praised the renowned Dublin novelist and journalist who told RTE radio she was diagnosed six weeks ago with two inoperable brain tumours.

Ms O’Faolain, one of Ireland’s best known writers and commentators, expressed her horror at facing death saying she felt the world had turned its back on her.

“I thought that it would be me and the world, but the world turned its back on me.

“The world said to me: ’That’s enough of you now.’ We are not going to give you any treats at the end, even adoring nature,“ she said.

Ms O’Faolain said she had been walking down a New York street just over a month ago when she lost all power in her right side.

A hospital doctor told her she had two brain tumours and there was nothing they could do.

She had been living in the US providing regular updates for Irish print and broadcast outlets on the US election race.

The illness began in her lungs before spreading to her liver and brain.

She said the cancer had prevented her from appreciating many of the finer things in life such as reading, once one of her favourite pastimes.

“Beauty means nothing to me any more. I tried to read Proust again recently, but it has gone, the magic has gone. It amazed me how quickly my life turned black,” she said.

Derry native Nell McCafferty, who was in a relationship with Ms O’Faolain for 15 years, said her “cry of absolute fear” raised the important question of how we deal with death and treat those with terminal illnesses.

“How do we who are alive and living handle those who are dying, particularly those we care about?” she asked on RTE’s Morning Ireland.

“What I heard from Nuala, what came out to me most forcefully was her cry of absolute fear about two things – the ghastly manner of her dying and the fact of dying itself.

“But I think the subtext of the ghastly manner of her dying raises the question of euthanasia.

“Those who listened to that interview or those who know people who have got ghastly illness, all of us find ourselves saying let that person die soon,” she said.

The second eldest of nine children, Ms O’Faolain’s father was a well-known journalist writing the Dubliners Diary social column under the pen name Terry O’Sullivan for the Dublin Evening Press.

Though she was engaged at least once, she never married.

In her memoir, 'Are You Somebody', O’Faolain speaks openly about her relationship with Ms McCafferty, who also published her own memoir recounting the relationship, 'Nell'.