Farewell to the Archer

Very rarely in our lives do we meet someone who, through their very existence, inspires in us the desire to become better.

No one is born with that gift. It demands sacrifice, and it often grows out of difficult—sometimes dramatic—events. Perhaps it is precisely through these experiences, through hardship, daily struggle, obstacles, and dark seasons, that such people acquire their rare quality. They shine like sea lanterns in the fiercest storm, showing a lost ship its course. Pat Banon was such a person—though the word “was” comes to mind, and I refuse to use it, because I believe this is simply another chapter in her journey, another stage in the grand architecture of time that is offered to us.

I tell myself she was needed somewhere else, where we have not yet arrived, though one day we will go there and meet her again. But in the meantime—here, and especially today—even with these thoughts and faith in our hearts, we feel a particular emptiness after her departure. Pat always had a kind word for everyone she met. She knew how to lift our spirits, even when we weren’t doing particularly well at something, whether it was archery or something entirely different.

I had the opportunity to shoot in her company many times, and we often travelled to competitions together in the same car. Those journeys were unforgettable: full of joy, humour, and the warmth she radiated. I remember once in Riverstick, during a picnic at the South Cork Field Archers’ range, our Yorkshire terrier sneaked up to Pat as she sat on the grass and stole the sandwich she had made for lunch. I felt terribly embarrassed and offered her my own sandwich, or to buy her whatever lunch she wanted, but Pat turned the whole thing into a joke. For years afterward we laughed about the “lost breakfast” and that cunning little terrier.

This is only a modest, fragmentary illustration of Pat’s character, yet it shares a common thread: she carried a generous distance from life’s small humiliations, a kind of steadiness that many of us struggle to find in our daily lives. That distance—together with her warmth, her sense of humour, and her quiet wisdom, earned through a life not always strewn with roses—plus that indefinable something else, a spark of providence that seemed to mark her from the beginning: these are what give her a special place in our hearts.

You leave behind a space that cannot be filled, and cannot be forgotten. People say that time heals all wounds, and there is truth in it—though only part of the truth. With time, the sharpness of loss may ease, but it will never disappear, because the wound is too large. When we lose people like Pat, we lose a piece of ourselves each time, and our world grows smaller.

I hope that wherever you have gone, you will have the same influence on those around you as you did here—making their days better, and life more bearable than it was when you found it.

Farewell, Pat. Archer and friend. We will see you when our time comes.