Slimming for the Beach

A life-long friend of mine died sud­denly early yes­ter­day morn­ing, col­laps­ing on a street in Dublin near his place of work.

Obvi­ously it is a great shock, but his many friends have gath­ered round to talk about him, cel­e­brate his life and his gift of mak­ing us laugh — among his many qual­i­ties. That, and how he was helped in his final moments, has made his sud­den depar­ture just that bit bear­able and is what I want to record here.

Because of the hour, there weren’t many on the street, but from what I can gather, a taxi dri­ver spot­ted that he was in dis­tress, turned his car around, alerted two Guards (Gardaí Siochána, ie Irish police, lit­er­ally trans­lated as Guardians of the Peace), who imme­di­ately rushed to help and call an ambu­lance, which hap­pened to be in the area and was on the scene within moments. They did their best to resus­ci­tate him, as did the doc­tors in James’ Hospital.

In alert­ing his part­ner, the Guards acted with the utmost sen­si­tiv­ity and kind­ness. First they called him at home to ascer­tain he was there, then appeared moments later in per­son to tell him his awful news in the most sen­si­tive terms, and brought him to the hos­pi­tal. More­over, they then brought him back into town to close the office, and brought him home.

He and his friends, includ­ing myself, are deeply touched and heart­ened by this kind­ness and decency, and we thank them from the bot­tom of our hearts.

If you know a Guard, taxi dri­ver, ambu­lance crew or doc­tor, please tell them this story.