Just full of life: the witness of a remarkable young man

In his brief life Donal Walsh came to the attention of the nation through an appearance on The Saturday Night Show. Donal was, as he said himself, a sports mad Kerry boy, who was struck by cancer, not once but twice, the second time mortally. He was quite a normal boy, so one is not surprised to learn that he enjoyed pranking his friends through his phone, just like his pals.

But his resolution was as extraordinary as is his faith, as his mother and his associates recount. These passages of the book are deeply moving.

Impact

But his impact on people from those 19 minutes and eleven seconds on RTÉ was beyond belief. It is one of three videos relating to him that are currently available on the internet.

But the donations he was sent to aid him have been turned into the fund of a foundation in his name that will continue to promote his life and outlook to the wider world.

Surrounded as his childhood was by the mountains of Kerry, he slipped early into seeing his brief life and early demise as another kind of physical challenge, akin to climbing yet another, even higher mountain.

The very heart of this book is two letters that he wrote himself to the world in general – these make up chapters six and seven. They are written, if this can be said, in a calm everyday manner about a process that was far from calm, but when one thinks about disease at all is indeed an everyday story for many.

On hearing that the tumours had returned in a most aggressive form he reacted to this with thoughts for others.

“James, Hugh and Cormac found it so hard to believe because I was so fit at the time. So we thought about what to do next; it wasn’t the logical thing but all we could think of was with all my best friends.” Those sentences capture much of the outlook and tone of Donal Walsh.

He held out for life in all its aspects, in all its conditions. He was himself so full of life; he thought others ought to be too”

The spirit of this young man lives on; we have not heard the last of him by any means. This though it is for the moment a book to read and to be moved by. One of the things that he emphasised most strongly in his own brief time on earth was to persuade others who saw life as hopeless that suicide was not an answer.

He held out for life in all its aspects, in all its conditions. He was himself so full of life; he thought others ought to be too. This outlook makes this a book that will affect many people deeply, and perhaps make them more resolved to face the challenges of living and dying, of fear and faith.