Speaker’s Corner
Denise Horan
NEWS of yet another murder, suicide or fatal accident seemed to greet us every time we turned on a TV or radio or opened a newspaper in the past fortnight. Yet, ironically, it was one of these tragedies that also provided the most heart-warming media soundbytes in that time. The particular case was that of Willie Traynor, a 68-year-old ‘recluse’ who lived alone in poor conditions in a house on Bow Street in Dublin city. Last Sunday week, Willie was seriously assaulted in his home and, two days later, died from his injuries.
It was a sad ending to a simple life that was privately lived. A life marked by its unremarkability, yet a life that drew warm and fond tributes from neighbours in the aftermath of Willie Traynor’s death. That was the heart-warming part of the tragedy. That RTÉ afforded them the opportunity to speak about the quirks of the man – and that they did it so openly – was a nice surprise. Willie Traynor, the person and the personality, was the focus, not Willie Traynor, the murder victim.
He lived a life of reclusiveness, but still he was noticed by those around him. By the neighbours who observed with a smile his peculiar mannerisms and his penchant for harmless trickery and by the Capuchin monks who lived across the road from him, who fed him every day and who, in turn, benefitted from his assistance with work around the friary. He was affectionately known as ‘The King of Bow Street’ and last week his small kingdom remembered him.
But you can’t help wondering – though they seem to have cared about him and genuinely seem to have been sorry about his passing, did his neighbours ever try to befriend him? Did they take time to talk to him? Did they ever ask him about his story? Did they really want to hear it?
Perhaps the people of Bow Street did make an effort with Willie Traynor and maybe he rejected their advances. We’ll never know. But we all know people in our own communities who we term ‘reclusive’. But are they really reclusive or is it just a conscience-salving label we give them, which allows us to get on with our lives while happily ignoring them?
I struck up a friendship with a ‘recluse’ a few years ago, and he has since passed on. He had poor social skills and a personality that was not well-developed, which led to most people dismissing him as ‘odd’. And he was, but probably because so many people had dismissed him for so long that he didn’t know how to be what we consider ‘normal’. I gave him a little of my time and it didn’t kill me. He lived his life and I lived my mine, and neither of us questioned how the other lived. We just interacted as equals when we met and then went about the rest of our lives as we chose to.
I didn’t try to change him, nor try to draw him out of his reclusiveness. But I treated him with kindness and I think – I hope – I made his life a little brighter. Our friendship certainly didn’t diminish my life in any way; no friendship does, it only enhances it.
Nor did I catch his ‘oddness’ from him. I think that is what we fear most about reclusive people: that somehow we will become recluses ourselves if we associate with them. Or maybe we fear that we’ll be left to look after them. Mostly, though, we simply don’t want to inconvenience ourselves by making the effort. Because it requires deliberate effort to befriend someone who is, according to us ‘normal’ people, ‘odd’.
Being friends with popular people is nothing special; that’s the path we all take and it’s largely self-serving because in being friends with popular people our own popularity increases. Taking time for the less popular ones offers no such reward – but maybe it can offer a greater one.
It was hardly his life’s ambition, but in death last week, Willie Traynor struck a blow for recluses everywhere. Just by being remembered.
