My mum Jo

Jo has prepared me for everything in my life but this is one moment that she could never prepare me for. When I think of my mum Jo I think not only of her as my mother but rather as the many different roles she has played in my life over the years, and I will use these roles to try and paint a picture of the larger than life figure she was to me. None of these roles are exclusive from the others but rather are intertwined in the complexity of who she was and is to me.

Mother: Children are a gift which Jo treasured always and seeing her run around playing with any child she met, reading with them and most of all engaging with them has always reminded me of how rich my childhood was. Dara and I were privileged to have always treated like equals from the moment we were born. Many a night in Sudan were we submerged in the company of adults and children alike. I remember picking up Shakespeare’s complete works when I was 8 and telling Jo I was going to read the two gentlemen of Verona – rather than tell me I would not be able she guided me through it despite the fact I understood little of it at the time. She knew me better than I know myself always offering me the best advice but never dictating what I should do – always ensuring that I came to the answer or the solution myself. Jo was mother to anyone who entered her home or crossed her path and Dara and I have always shared her with so many others. Jo and I recently had a conversation about Dara and I having children and she promised she would be there to guide us on that journey of motherhood.

Travel partner: Jo has always been a wanderer, whether it be across countless countries or simply around the streets of Dublin. Dara and I have been her companions on many of these journeys and what a privileged upbringing it was. In recent years I have had the great privilege to be Jo’s travel partner to India, Sudan, Syria, Turkey and across parts of Europe. As we travelled by train, plane, bus, car and foot I wondered at the intensity of the woman who was my companion but also my mum and absorbed so much from watching her engage with every context and person she met. As we walked around the old market in Aleppo or travelled the backwaters of India we chatted about this and that philosophizing about life, people and trying to understand the complexity of the world we live in. Never was there a boring moment with Jo and never did we run out of things to say.

Teacher: Jo put us in Arabic school but everyday when we got home she would then proceed to teach us all our subjects through English. At the time I could not fathom why these hours of study were necessary but when I think of her now working a full time job then coming home to teach us I wonder at her dedication and energy. She has continued to be my teacher over the years guiding me through my degree, my masters and finally my PhD. It has been wonderful to return just a small amount of this over the past year when she asked me to read parts of her MPhil on Sufism. Together we taught Arabic in Dublin and together we wrote a paper which was published just a few months ago. We had plans for many more. At least once a week we would send each other an interesting article which we would then discuss on skype when we spoke always challenging each other.

Friend: Jo was my best friend my foundation my spiritual guide my confidant. To have had her in my life for 36 years has been the greatest privilege I will ever know and it will take me the rest of my life to recover from the void she leaves me with now. There will be many silences now where once there was banter and philosophy. But because she has been mother, travel companion, teacher and friend to me I take comfort in the fact that even though she could never prepare me for this moment she has taught me to be the best person I can possibly be. In recent months as I have faced challenges she has said to me focus on the details and then the big picture will work itself out – I heed these wise words now as I cannot comprehend a world without Jo in it.

I shall end by saying that everything about the past two weeks in an terribly ironic sense has Jo O’Brien written all over it. Jo’s biggest fear was that her body would give up before her mind and that she would be unable to do the 100s of things she wanted to do – it was her mind that in fact was in the end her greatest gift but her final weakness. Jo always found plumping challenging and once asked me to make sure I married a plumber – it seemed whatever house she lived in a leak would eventually appear. So with Jo’s ironic wit I like to think that once again there was a leak she just couldn’t fix – she would see the dark humour in this. Dara and I take great comfort in the fact that she was here in Ireland and with Marie when this terrible leak occurred. She always loved Ireland in the springtime.

I have not seen my mum since August of last year when she came to visit Pete and I in our new home in Vancouver. Dara saw her last in Beirut in February. I like to think that my mum appreciated the formidable lives she had created in Dara and I and how wise we have been in our choices of partners and careers. She said to Kitty Hogan a friend in Abu Dhabi last year that she could not have better chosen Tarek and Pete if she had selected them herself. Jo’s thirst for adventure is never failing and so I think of her now as having jumped on a train to set off on another adventure in the manner she left me in Vancouver in August of last year. The sadness I feel is not for the extraordinary life that my mum, travel companion, teacher and friend has now lost, but for the void that all left behind must bear.

Last week Geraldine a good friend of my mum said to me: “Josephine and I were going to change the world”. As I reflect on the magnificence that was/is my dearest Jo I say to Geraldine and all of you here and around the world that SHE DID.

A Mother is one who

understands the things

you say and do

Who always overlooks

your faults and sees the

best in you

A Mother is one whose

special love inspires you

day by day.

Who fills your heart with

gladnss in her warm

and thoughtful way.

A Mother is all these things

and more - the greatest

treasure known.

And the dearest Mother in

all of the world is the one I

call my own.