DenisHorgan.com

Nuala O’Faolain has died, quickly swamped by cancer. Appropriately, the accounts of her life and work are rich with praise and appreciation of her writing and vision. Exactly so.

She was an excellent writer and observer, of course, and there’s not much I could add to the gentle credit she receives on that front. But my own contacts with her, fleetingly personal, remind me of the greater loss. She was such a nice person.

I used to run a big writers’ conference my paper held for many years. A while back, we somehow talked Nuala into joining us where, surprising nervous, she charmed and enlightened the crowd to a one. Trying to enlist her to take part in the event we became engaged in a lovely exchange of mail and messages each of which was marked by her caring and generosity of heart with a stranger.

Notably to me alone, probably, we talked a bit about my own writing at her insistence; she asked after my work and, in the most kind way, urged me to send along selections of what would become my essay collection, “Flotsam: A Life in Debris.” It matters tremendously to me that she liked what I did but much more so was the truth that she offered the most wonderful encouragement and guidance to someone she didn’t know at all. She asked for my essays, read them all and commented so sweetly, inspiring me at a passing bleak moment with her own story and advice.

It doesn’t matter at any level except to me exactly what she said so much as the truth that she said it. Soaring in her own acclaim and celebrity, she paused to help along a guy out of her own goodness. I am certain that I am hardly alone in receiving such graceful notice from Nuala O’Faolain.

In the years since we kept up the contact, as she wrote more books, covered the political scene, moved from the United States back to Ireland, experienced a series of professional and personal ups and downs. Always, the starshine of her caring for others, the modesty in her triumphs and resolve in her setbacks shone through. She seemed generally astonished, perhaps, in her successes and warily accepting when things took a different turn.

Throughout and always she was so nice. How sad that she is gone.