In memory of Rose Douglas

1937 - 2018


A sad occasion like this today is an occasion to reminisce and to allow the mind to linger on moments from the past. Memories flood back of childhood experiences of being cared for, encouraged and loved. For her family the first school you ever attended was on your mother’s lap. This is a time when gratitude for a loving mother wells up in your hearts for a “job well done”. It is a time of awakening to an appreciation of the gifts and blessings received. It is only in hindsight that the gift becomes clear. Life is lived going forwards but understood looking backwards.


The death of our mother brings a new kind of experience into our lives. To be without a mother is to be in a strange and lonely place. And that’s understandable. For our mother is really one’s first friend. One’s longest first friend! No friend we will ever meet on life’s journey will have been so interested or committed to us. No other friend will have known our first step or our first smile or our first tear. No other friend will know us through and through in such an intimate manner as to be called by our name – a name given in Baptism. ROSE made you and shaped you. She lived for you.

She is with you in the way you walk and talk, in the things you enjoy and the things you fear, in the things you’re good at and the things you couldn’t do well in a fit; she’s with you in the way you think, in the very way you blink your eyes or move your hands, your every tick and mannerism. She is a part of you and will always remain so.

Home we all know is where the heart is and today the heart is not at home. The heart has gone to a different place. For it is true that today home is joined to heaven in a more profound way.
So we give thanks to God for her life and it is with confidence that we pray to the same God to give her eternal rest.
Rose Veronica Breen was born and reared in Brookborough, Co Fermanagh, she had three sisters and five brothers, her family were farmers. She went to work in Portadown where she met Owen Douglas.
After they got married they moved to Gilford where they lived for the next 20 years before moving to Tullylish for the next 30, then when getting about became too difficult they went back to Gilford.
Rose as well as rearing 6 children became a home help in the Gilford area for twenty years and a lot of the time going well beyond her normal hours and duties, as her children they were aware of how much she was liked and respected by the local community. Like most other people at the time they
hadn't much in the way of material things but Rose always managed to turn her family out clean tidy and well fed.
Mum was always a great church goer and would have instilled the importance of this into her family. There was one incident that her family will never forget. They as usual got the bus from Tullylish down to Gilford for the Sunday Mass and were sitting listening to that particular sermon which happened to be about late comers coming to mass.
You can imagine the family’s suprise when Rose stood up in the middle of the sermon and said,
“Father I hope you don't mean us as we are at the mercy of the buses”.
To get here, the priest turned to mum and said something along the lines of, Mrs Douglas if everyone was as conscientious as yourself”.
Instead of the family feeling embarrassed they felt a great surge of pride, that was their mum.
They were truly blessed to be a part of this lovely lady’s life and they will never forget her sacrifices and her love for them to the day they die.


We remember a lovely person, a lady who was a treasure to you all. Letting go of her today is not going to be easy for ROSE was a great lover of family, people and life itself. Today then we bid farewell to ROSE. Despite your sense of loss, you will face the future with courage and hope, knowing that that is what your mummy would want you to do. We comfort one another in the sure confidence that for ROSE life has changed, not ended. We also derive comfort from the conviction that she is at peace with God after all her infirmity.

I extend our sympathy today to her loving family, husband Owen, son Terry, daughters Jean, Sandra, Marie and Christine, daughter in law Cathy, son in law Dave, grandchildren, great grandchildren and the entire family circle.