Brigid Kavanagh with a copy of her new book "In My Mind's Eye, Walking Amongst Ghosts". RTÉ YouTube
An elderly Irish woman celebrated turning 95 by launching her first-ever book featuring 95 stories or poems to mark each year of her life.
Brigid Kavanagh, from County Roscommon, turned 95 in February and finally fulfilled her life-long ambition to publish a book.
With the help of her family, Brigid Kavanagh has published 500 copies of her memoir-like book - "In My Mind's Eye, Walking Amongst Ghosts" - which is available in local Roscommon stores and on Facebook.
She has been writing for decades and unsuccessfully tried to publish a book in the 1980s. Nevertheless, she continued writing undeterred and has achieved a dream that she never thought she would realize.
I just can't believe it ... I'm absolutely thrilled. After my disappointment in the 80s, I thought I was finished," she told RTÉ News.
Kavanagh achieved her life-long dream with a helping hand from the COVID-19 lockdown. Her two sons Declan and Sean were clearing out her home when they stumbled across a collection of her writings and decided to help their mother fulfil a life-long dream.
"I just came across them under a bed, lying around here, there and everywhere," Declan told RTÉ.
"So me and my brother Sean decided that we could put them together. And as it happened, it worked out with the lockdown because we had more time than we'd normally have had."
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He said that the book had given his mother a "new lease of life" and that he hoped it would be a long one.
Her collection of stories and poems draws on her experiences of living in London during the Second World War and on her experiences of raising a family in Dublin in the 1950s and 1960s but focuses most heavily on her Roscommon upbringing.