Tinteán

Last month Tinteán published an article from Gerry O’Shea’s blog about the Irish language revival (see https://tintean.org.au/2025/03/10/thoughts-on-the-irish-language-revival-then-and-now/). We were unaware at the time that his death had occurred in Yonkers, New York.

Our editor and friend Frank O’Shea had told us about his brother Gerry’s blog only a few months before Frank died in August 2024, after a short illness. We are still coming to terms with the great loss Frank has been to our worldwide Tinteán readers and the Melbourne community. We can only imagine a similar sense of disbelief and loss among those who have been affected by Gerry’s passing.

Thanks to Gerry’s friend and son-in-law, Jimmy, we can now provide some more background information to our friend Frank. We are struck by the extent of the brothers’ influence on both their adopted countries. They made a difference. They added to the community and to the culture.

We knew that Frank was from Kenmare in County Kerry. Gerry’s obituary mentions Gortamullen, an outlying area of Kenmare. He was said to be

… a great friend, quick to laugh and famous for his warmth, welcome and counsel. A talented and prolific writer, he was an active blogger and regular contributor to local papers, especially the Irish Echo, and various publications on both sides of the Atlantic.

Frank, too, was a writer, mostly of book reviews for Tinteán. These reviews were energetic and passionate at times, but he also had a scientific mind that informed his philosophy. His comments on his perceived future near the end of his life included the following:

We don’t know when all of the energy we once had is finally released into the universe, perhaps at the burning or burying, but more likely much earlier. So my energy will join all those other bits of energy now out there in the universe, where they are inaccessible to others. Here, I put aside religion or heaven or those who claim they can speak to the dead.

Instead, I look briefly to physics and what the experts tell us make up that universe in which bits of the former me will wander, probably aimlessly. We are told that approximately 5% of the universe consists of the planets and stars and comets, atoms and molecules, protons and neutrons and electrons, the action of stars and black holes. There is also some 26.8% of dark matter, possibly weakly interacting matter that cannot be measured or heavier matter resulting from the Big Bang. But that leaves almost 70 per cent of the universe that is energy- scientists call it dark energy.

Now, here is my suggestion. My former self will be part of that dark energy as will the minds and personalities of the 15,000 others who died the same time I did. That almost 70 per cent of dark energy consists of the personalities – for want of a better word -who have lived and died since organisms first appeared on earth.

Both Frank and Gerry were teachers who later in life continued to impart their strong beliefs and opinions. Frank’s friends and readers miss his energy as, no doubt, do Gerry’s. These Irish emigrant brothers contributed to Gortamullen and Kenmare, Yonkers, and Melbourne, among other places. They both continue to matter, now contributing also to 70% of the universe.