Jim is a man of integrity, dignity and curiosity.. a man to bring a nation together

Visit to my dying Mam showcased the decency at his core

- ROY CURTIS

MY mother was desperately ill, her life ebbing towards its final full stop, when an unexpected visitor knocked on the door of her palliative care room at Our Lady's Hospice in Harold's Cross.

Jim Gavin had never met Mam. As Dublin manager, he was immersed in the busy turbulence of an impossibly high-pressure 2019 championship, the one that would conclude weeks later with the team he led claiming an historic All-Ireland five in a row.

Yet on that summer Sunday morning, having heard the lights were declining on an elderly daughter of the city, a fervent supporter of his team, he cleared an overflowing schedule to visit a sick stranger.

Nobody had asked him to come - rather, he had silently picked up on a detail mentioned in passing in a conversation.

Jim stayed for 40 minutes, presenting my mother with a coffee-table book - Dublin, A Photographic Essay by Eddie Mallin, which, more than six years on, sits in my front room, a reminder of a profound morning.

I'm reading his handwritten note on the inside cover as I write.

"Dear Mrs Curtis, we are thinking of you at this time and hope you enjoy the photographs of our great city and town. From Jim Gavin and the players of the Dublin Senior Football Team."

A longtime member of Hill 16's Sky Blue congregation, Gavin's presence somehow charged my mother's almost spent battery. They talked for an age, a frail, dying creature even urging him to restore an exiled player, Diarmuid Connolly, to the squad.

Jim promised that if there were any developments in that regard she would be first to know.

What struck me was how attentively he listened to her, how unrushed he was, not looking to hurry the conversation, never seeking an excuse to exit.

It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that morning enriched the closing weeks of that lovely woman's life.