DR. VINCENT CAVANAGH R.I.P.

(by Fr Paddy O'Kane, PP)

Dr. Vincent Cavanagh asked me to come and see him in hospital at the beginning of June and told me he was ill, saying might have six months left . He was planning ahead and asked me to officiate at his Requiem Mass and at the graveside in Ballybrack, Moville. I was shocked. He also gave me a signed copy of his book of poems with the words: ‘to my dear friend, with affection and respect ’. I responded by saying to him ‘one of the greatest privileges of being a priest is to walk with someone to the gates of paradise - It would be an honour to do so ’. We spent an hour together talking about many topics including poetry and faith and I gave him the Sacrament of the Sick before I left. I thanked him once again for the help he gave me the first time we met when Dr. Fallon had passed me over to his care in 1992 when I had a bout of depression that did not seem to ease. I was only with him in a few weeks when the tide turned and I began to heal. I also got to know him at Mary Murphy’s inspiring creative writing classes. Little did I think that those six months would be only six weeks. I called to see him last Thursday at 7.00pm in the Foyle Hospice where, having reassured him of the joyful welcome he was about to receive in heaven, I gave him the Last Rites. He died a short time later.

When the Northland Centre was opened for recovering alcoholics in 1975 by Denis Bradley he became its founding medical doctor. There he worked for 35 years until his retirement and afterwards was always available for that phone call, that encouraging chat, that support for people in difficulty, especially addiction or depression, not just in Derry but further afield. In 1980 he was the founding chair of the Inner City Trust set up to bring life back in that inner city loved- he was born in Pump St.-5 for at the time one third of the walled city was being bombed, burnt or derelict.

Like many others Vincent worked in hazardous circumstances during the years of ‘The Troubles’ – on more than one occasion narrowly escaping injury or death such as at the bottom of Southway, lying on the ground hoping to avoid being struck in crossfire, or on the Strand Road when a rocket aimed at the police missed his car by inches as he drove past, or going down from his Lawrence Hill home in crossfire to bring his nephew Daniel to safety and so on. Those were awful years with almost 250 killings in our city alone.

As a young priest in St. Eugene’s I remember that time well, the constant helicopter’s drone at night as you tried to catch some sleep. Unfortunately that doleful drone of the helicopter returned last week.

Dr. Vincent was a compassionate and gentle man. He listened with empathy and kindness. He cared. For him, like his father Denis before him, being a doctor was not a job but a vocation which helped channel his natural goodness into a life of self-giving, bringing him in turn its own joy for, as the prayer says, ‘’it’s in giving that we receive.’’ He was a rock to so many whether as husband to Nora, father to Stephen and Joan, brother to his seven siblings, doctor to many and friend of all. When I was PP of Moville I framed his poem about his Grandmother Caroline Lucy’s funeral in Ballybrack and put it in the church porch. It is still there and he was so grateful for this small gesture. He won the Macklin prize for poetry three times. Last year Raymond Craig of Guildhall Press persuaded Vincent to publish some of his poems, launched as ‘Pay No Heed to the Helicopter’ last February by the wonderful Mary Murphy in the Central Library – a warm, celebratory and uplifting evening. ‘He brings’ said Mary ‘an unfailing human sympathy to all he witnessed in the course of his ministry.’

In his poetry you find an insight into his tender soul – how he anguished over man’s inhumanity to man. Mary Murphy adds that Vincent had ‘the pen of a poet whose sensibilities are finely tuned to the human condition’. We find mindless cruelty balanced against extraordinary courage. The human spirit’s aching awareness of this fleeting life is balanced against ‘the glinting beauty of birds in flight’ and our deep yearning for permanence. ‘Past and present fused with sympathetic imagination’. She says that a second book of Vincent’s other poems should be published.

He had more time to give to his hobbies when he retired on 2002 such as poetry or walking in his beloved Inch Island or here along the Bay Road. He had a voracious appetite for knowledge and loved reading, with a keen interest in astronomy, science and quantum physics; also politics North and South. His other hobby was gardening – taking great pride in growing his own tomatoes.

Dr Vincent was a man of faith. He came to St. Patrick’s Church Pennyburn every Sunday to be fed by the Word of God and nourished by the Bread of Life. It was also a questioning faith as faith can indeed be difficult at times. Reading his poems you will discover how he, like many of us, wrestled with doubt. ‘’God–if there is a God!’ he writes. I can understand his uncertainty as I have often been there myself. Ultimately, faith is a blind trust where we have to let go of our need for proof, like St Thomas, and simply surrender ourselves in trust to that God of mercy and compassion.

So, farewell faithful friend, thank you for walking with us. You have enriched us all in many ways. May we meet you again in that place where tears are wiped away and there is eternal joy. O, Heavenly Father we pray that you welcome Vincent home, saying ‘ Well done, good and faithful servant’!