A blue Christmas made worse by Newtown massacre of the innocent -- Memories of my late nephew Rory Staunton amid sad scenes from Connecticut

Rory Staunton taking his first flying lesson in 2011. 

Last Saturday I should have been at my sister and brother-in-law’s in Sunnyside, Queens, trimming their tree with my daughter Alana and wife Debbie.

Their kids Rory and Kathleen should have been there. Rory, as always, the more serious older one, watching the two other scamps as they dressed up and performed silly sketches. Instead, he would definitely have been engaging me in some discussion about a world trouble spot.

The shooting in Connecticut would have been on his mind. He hated to see injustice or people hurt.

Rory was like that; a very savvy kid, described by his teacher as the most profound 12-year-old he had ever met.

After the trimming we would then have settled down to our dinner, all the food you could eat, usually topped with an Irish Christmas trifle.

Except all of that didn’t happen and will never happen again.

Rory passed in April after doctors at NYU Langone Hospital missed vital signs that he was contracting sepsis from a simple cut. Rory now lies in a lonely graveyard in Co. Louth with my parents.

The awareness of untimely death is everywhere this week. It is writ large on the beautiful and innocent faces of those destroyed by the madman in Connecticut, on the faces of the grieving parents and the shocked public grappling with an evil reality.

I don’t know how the parents will cope. I read they stood around for hours hoping against hope in the local firehouse until Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy told them their kids had not survived.

I know something of what they felt. We too waited desperately for good news, or any news about Rory as he lay in the ICU.

Read More: Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write

Like the Connecticut parents, no one in authority came and told us. The onset of Rory’s passing was never first communicated by the doctors.

Rather it was the sudden presence of the social workers and counselors flitting into the hospital waiting room as we waited desperately for word.

I saw them, heard their comforting murmurs and knew we were in the shadow of death. Despair opened that has remained when I think of those dreadful hours.

In James Joyce’s classic short story “The Dead”, the title character Gabriel sees that same shadow flicker on the faces of his two elderly aunts as he carves the Christmas dinner and he realizes how silly and trite so much of his life has been.

He thinks of the dead who have gone before him, he sees the snow falling softly, and he realizes even though they are gone, the dead are still with us in so many ways in our every waking thought, in our actions and our deeds.

There is not a day goes by I don’t think of or talk to my nephew Rory. I know that is true of all who knew him and loved him.

I think of those grieving parents in Connecticut and know it will be the same for them too.

The dead are indeed with us, and when we commence that final journey westward as Joyce called it, they will be waiting for us too, of that I am certain.

As Joyce wrote: “A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward.

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

Read More:A New York Times investigative article into my 12-year-old nephew’s death -- Columnist Jim Dwyer discovers the truth of what happened to Rory Staunton

"It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

Ireland needs a Minister for the Diaspora to identify next generation of Irish American leaders - Impact of men like Don Keough and Chuck Feeney greater than generations of Irish leaders

Chuck Feeney

Irish Americans such as Chuck Feeney and Donald Keough have had a more positive transformative impact in Ireland than generations of politicians there.

That was the main point I made in my speech accepting the Tip O’Neill Donegal Diaspora award in Buncrana last night before 400 people. I stated that I believed there are many other Don Keoughs and Chuck Feeneys out there in Irish America but the Irish government needs to get serious about identifying them.

It is not enough to just hold occasional Farmleigh Diaspora type meetings, make fine speeches praising the Diaspora and then let it fade until the next meeting. I believe the government should appoint a Minister for the Diaspora charged with identifying the next generation of Chuck Feeneys and Don Keoughs as well as having the minister work seriously on issues such as immigration reform in America which is very important to Irish living there as well as Irish hoping to emigrate legally.

The battle to get America involved in the peace process was very tough but a combination of far-seeing Irish government input and Irish American clout made the intervention of men like Bill Clinton and George Mitchell possible.

We need that same kind of energy and commitment now to issues like Irish American investment and immigration reform he stated. The work of Chuck Feeney and Don Keough were examples of what could be achieved.

Chuck Feeney’s $1.6 billion dollars contribution to Irish universities through Atlantic Philanthropies has meant that they can compete on the world stage and that future generations of Irish students can also compete with the best.

Before Feeney’s grant giving Irish universities lagged badly inresearch and were not equipped to cope in the modern era.

The fact that an unprecedented nine universities jointly honored Chuck Feeney this week shows just how critical his support was to them. In addition Feeney played a critical role in getting President Bill Clinton involved in the Irish peace process and funded the Sinn Fein office in Washington at a time when that organization needed every reassurance that the turn away from militant Republicanism could pay off.

Speaking about Donald Keough, I stated “He and Irish businessman Martin Naughton brought the Notre Dame Game to Ireland with its $150 million spin off for the Irish economy.”

“That game came about because of the Keough/Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at Notre Dame which Don Keough set up in 1993. Now it is the premier Irish Studies program in the United States and indeed world wide.

“But more than that, he established Coca-Cola in Ireland back when the IDA desperately needed major US clients to kick start Ireland’s economic development

“Today he remains a vital resource for Ireland in reaching out to other leading business leaders and discussing investment in Ireland with them,” I said.

I said I believed We needed to identify the next generation of Don Keoughs and Chuck Feeneys in the same way we need to identify the political successors to men like  Tip O’Neill who did so much for Ireland.

The Irish government should significantly ramp up its efforts to do so.

Irish pride and power spill over as Notre Dame triumph over Navy - What Irish and American dreams are made of in the Emerald Isle

Notre Dame

Dublin: In years to come hardcore Notre Dame fans will ask “Were you there?” when this Dublin game against Navy is discussed.

I predict it will be right up there with many of the great moments of this storied college.

What a day to be both Irish and American.  If you were not proud of your heritage in Dublin on Saturday then you lack an emotional bone in your body.

It started early at the Aviva Stadium.

I‘m a sucker for two national anthems, the Irish and U.S. ones.

Hearing them both played at the commencement of the Notre Dame/Navy football game at the astonishing Aviva Stadium in Dublin was a deeply emotional moment.

The Aviva is built acoustically to keep the sound waves in, to magnify the impact of the home crowd and as the thunderous anthems rolled across the stadium I saw many in tears.

This was the homecoming to beat the band, the day that Ireland saw what the legend of Notre Dame meant to so many millions of Irish Americans as 35,000 fans made the pilgrimage across the Atlantic.

The Fighting Irish ran out 50 –10 winners, giving a high-octane performance no doubt fueled by the emotion of the homecoming and the historic nature of the clash.

Somewhere coach Brian Kelly’s Irish antecedents were waking up the echoes, pointing to the great-grandson of Irish emigrants doing them so proud back in the old sod.

The Irish are sponsoring a year long “Homecoming” inviting the Diaspora back in 2013 but the Notre Dame 2012 event will trump anything ever again.

It will simply never be matched. For the best part of the week every location on this island has felt the power and emotional strength of that Diaspora that so many pay lip service to but never fully acknowledge.

The spangled banner stretched from Kerry in the south to Belfast in the North and points east and west. For a country so troubled economically it was manna from heaven. But there was emotional sustenance too, the sense of a tribe reuniting, if only for a brief time.

The Irish National Anthem contains the words “Buion Dar Slua, Thar Toinn De Ranaig Chughainn.” Roughly translated it is an explicit recognition of “Those who have come, of our ancestral race, from a land beyond the wave."
It was a recognition of the Irish who left and the generations they bred who still cared deeply about the land.

It was a clear reference to the Irish in America, and at the Aviva stadium on Saturday they did indeed come in their tens of thousands from the land beyond the waves.

You could not imagine a more picture perfect scenario. The leaden Irish skies of summer gave way to a brisk autumnal day, reminiscent of South Bend in the fall.

The CBS network carried the images back across the broad Atlantic, and one can only speculate how many watching will be stirred to make that homecoming journey too.

The game was the vision of two men, Irish businessman Martin Naughton and his American counterpart Don Keough, former President of the Coca Cola Company. The two should be renamed the “Sunshine Boys” for the ray of light they shone on Ireland yesterday at a time of tough economic tides.

Sunshine it was, and sunshine it hopefully will be and a weekend to remember --one of the best ever in fact.

The view from Ireland when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon - A moment of history like no other in that summer of 1969 or since

Neil Armstrong

I was sixteen years old in the summer of 1969, working my first summer job in an electrical plant about ten miles from my hometown of Drogheda on Ireland’s East Coast.

The night and morning of the moon landing is impressioned on my brain forever. Like 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination I can recall it as vividly as yesterday.

My family had gathered around our black and white television set to await the great moment.

RTE, the Irish television channel, was the only station we had and things were still pretty primitive.

A presenter called Kevin O’Kelly was the only host. He sat there literally for hours, trying to fill in the waiting as we awaited word on when Neil Armstrong, who had piloted Eagle the craft that had landed on the moon just after 9:00 pm our time, would open the hatch and step onto earth’s closest neighbor.

There was no panel of experts, no animation or simulation. All O’Kelly had was a (very) rough replica of the lunar module and he kept telling us we would get live pictures when the Eagle hatch was opened.

Several of my siblings fell asleep as I did myself. I can only remember one other occasion staying up as a family, which was the Muhammed Ali/Sonny Liston fight some years before.

We were awaken by a shout from our Dad soon after 3.a.m

Kevin O’Kelly had just pronounced that “the hatch was open” and we were about to witness history.

Except that we could see very little. There was a very blurry image of a man descending a few steps onto lunar soil and then the immortal words -- “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” etc. It was arguably America’s greatest moment.

It was history as we had never known it or never will again, Man had reached past his earthly existence and stepped on another world. I rushed outside to look at the moon and imagined all the billions of people who had looked up at earth’s closest neighbor and how tonight was different. The man in the moon, actually the two men on the moon as Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong, had become fact not a children’s fairy tale.

I went back to bed but not to sleep. My boyhood mind was fired by the images and voices I had just seen. I knew the world would never be the same again. It was a turning point in history. I hope today’s young people see the day when a man like Armstrong lands on Mars --- that only seems a matter of time too,

So farewell Neil Armstrong, a brave hero if ever there was one, and thank you for what you gave us ----a moment of history that stopped the world as we knew it and made sure it would never be the same again.

Sully Sullenberger’s latest mission is to make hospitals safe -- In wake of death of Rory Staunton, Sully seeks major changes

Sully Sullenberger

The voice on the other end of the phone was amazingly, that of Sully Sullenberger, the Hero on the Hudson, who had landed his stricken plane filled with 155 passengers in the icy waters off Manhattan in January 2009.

He is the last great American hero, an authentic one too, who grabbed responsibility for his plane and the lives of his passengers on that dreadful day when a flock of geese killed his engines and he had only seconds to react.

“Your nephew Rory was a remarkable young man,” he told me, “We should ensure that his death was not in vain and that some good can come out of it."

These days, Sullenberger, Irish on his mother’s side and with daughters named Kate and Kelly, is seeking to change medical  treatment as profoundly as he changed our perception that there were no more American heroes.

Soon after my sister and brother in law’s son Rory Staunton died in an horrific medical screw up at New York University’s Langone center, my brother in law Ciaran, told New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer that Rory’s hero was Sully and that he had been inspired by his heroism.

Rory had taken his first flying lesson at age 12 and Sully was his hero ever after, When Sully heard this he took the opportunity to reach out and console my brother in law and sister in a beautiful personal note to them.

It was the one time since their ordeal that I saw both of them crack a smile and give a thumbs up. “Rory would have been so proud,” said Orlaith, remembering how he had idolized the hero pilot.

Amazingly, Sully was also working on the issue that Ciaran and Orlaith will spend much of the rest of their lives on -- ensuring children and indeed, adults, are given proper attention and focus in emergency rooms all over the world.

Rory fell between the cracks, no one at NYU bothered to check out his blood test results even though they showed that he was a very sick but saveable child in the early stages of toxic shock syndrome.

For Sully, Rory epitomized everything that had gone wrong with the system where there was no responsibility, and no chain of command that followed Rory’s treatment from the moment he came to the hospital until he was erroneously checked out.

Sullenbrger wants to make the airline-hospital comparison stick. Due to better safety measures and repeated training, airlines have reduced fatalities ten fold. If such steps were taken in hospitals, countless lives would be saved, he points out.

Sullenberger has advised hospitals that the current mindset that “accidents are inevitable” must be changed to “accidents are unimaginable.”

As he said to Maureen Dowd in her column on Rory, "If something good comes from Rory's death, it will be that we realize we have a broken system...Patient care is so fragmented. For the most part, medical professionals aren't taught these human skills that some deride as 'soft skills.' So there's insufficient sharing of information and ineffective communication.”

Amen to that, and a seal of approval to Sully as he continues his latest mission to cut down on tragic hospital mistakes. There is yet another reason to be proud of this authentic American hero.

A New York Times investigative article into my 12-year-old nephew’s death -- Columnist Jim Dwyer discovers the truth of what happened to Rory Staunton

Rory Staunton taking his first flying lesson in 2011. 

As many of our readers are aware my beloved nephew Rory Staunton passed away in NYU hospital from Toxic Shock Syndrome on April 1st.

I have written extensively about Rory and what happened to him but neither me or his parents, Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton, had any idea of just how a devastating series of events and mistakes cost him his life.

They occurred both with his primary care physician and in the NYU emergency room and doomed Rory’s chances of survival which should have been 100 percent with proper treatment.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Dwyer, a columnist with The New York Times, a close friend who knew Rory, launched his own investigative effort to determine the facts. What he discovered is carried today in The New York Times and has been the top rated story on their site.

It is a shocking story of medical malpractice in my opinion, and I only hope it can help other parents whose kids may face emergency room situations to learn from it. If Rory’s death can help save another child then it was not totally in vain.

Copyright The New York Times
“In a Boy’s Fight for his life , signs that went unheeded”

By Jim Dwyer

“For a moment, an emergency room doctor stepped away from the scrum of people working on Rory Staunton, 12, and spoke to his parents.

“Your son is seriously ill,” the doctor said.

“How seriously?” Rory’s mother, Orlaith Staunton, asked.

The doctor paused.

“Gravely ill,” he said.

How could that be?

Two days earlier, diving for a basketball at his school gym, Rory had cut his arm. He arrived at his pediatrician’s office the next day, Thursday, March 29,vomiting, feverish and with pain in his leg. He was sent to the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center. The doctors agreed: he was suffering from an upset stomach and dehydration. He was given fluids, told to take Tylenol, and sent home.

Partially camouflaged by ordinary childhood woes, Rory’s condition was, in fact, already dire. Bacteria had gotten into his blood, probably through the cut on his arm. He was sliding into a septic crisis, an avalanche of immune responses to infection from which he would not escape. On April 1, three nights after he was sent home from the emergency room, he died in the intensive care unit. The cause was severe septic shock brought on by the infection, hospital records say.

Because sepsis, a leading cause of death in hospitals, can at first look like less serious ailments, a campaign to aggressively identify it for early treatment has been undertaken by a consortium of 55 hospitals in the New York region, including NYU Langone.

Yet nowhere along Rory’s journey, from boy with a bellyache on Thursday to gravely ill boy on Friday night, did anyone act on strong indications that he might be fighting for his life. Critical information gathered by his family doctor and during his first visit to NYU Langone either was not used, was not at hand or was not viewed as important when decisions were made about his care, records show.

Moments after an emergency room doctor ordered Rory’s discharge believing fluids had made him better, his vital signs, recorded while still at the hospital, suggested that he could be seriously ill. Even more pointed signals emerged three hours later, when the Stauntons were at home: the hospital’s laboratory reported that Rory was producing vast quantities of cells that combat bacterial infection, a warning that sepsis could be on the horizon.

The Stauntons knew nothing of his weak vital signs or abnormal lab results.

“Nobody said anything that night,” Ms. Staunton said. “None of you followed up the next day on that kid, and he’s at home, dying on the couch?”

NYU Langone declined to discuss any aspects of Rory’s care or hospital procedures.

“Our deepest sympathies go out to the family at this difficult time,” said Lisa Greiner, a hospital spokeswoman.

The Stauntons shared Rory’s medical records with a reporter for The New York Times who had met the boy last summer in a social setting. A full airing of the case, along with a commitment to reforms, his parents said, could save lives. They have hired a lawyer, Thomas A. Moore, but have not decided how they will proceed.

Rory Staunton, 5 feet 9 inches tall and 169 pounds, was big for his age and a student of the world. “The most profound 12-year-old I had ever met,” his debate coach, Kevin Burgoyne, said. For his birthday, his parents gave him flying lessons after Rory, who spent hours on a flight simulator, tracked down an aviation school that accepted students at 12. He devoured the memoir of Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot who safely brought down an airliner on the Hudson River.

“I told him, ‘Sully did some fast math landing that plane,’ and for a short while, he was paying attention to math,” said Ciaran Staunton, Rory’s father. “Then he came back with, ‘Yeah, but by the time I’m a pilot they’ll have a faster way of doing it.’ ”

Rory and his sister, Kathleen, 10, grew up in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, which their parents, Irish immigrants, regarded as a global village of sublime pleasures: shared courtyards, a rich brew of cultures and merry mobs of children rolling from house to house. Ms. Staunton, the former director of an international student exchange, said neighborhood kids formed their own country, Kidadelphia, designed a flag, and adapted the United States motto for their slogan: “In God and Fun We Trust.” Rory was president. When he was 8, he raided his piggy bank to treat his parents to a Chinese dinner for their wedding anniversary. At the private Garden School in Jackson Heights, he was elected to the student council in seventh grade and led a campaign, Spread the Word to End the Word, to curtail the casual, derogatory use of the term “retarded.”

Last summer, his uncle, a friend of mine, brought Rory, Kathleen and their mother to stay in my family’s vacation home for two nights. Rory would go from barreling down a water slide backward to sizing up President Obama’s prospects for re-election. Fascinated by North Korea, he tried to fathom how a country so afflicted by famine could afford a large army. (His parents recently found a note in his computer to the Swedish ambassador to North Korea.)

At home, said Mr. Staunton, a civic activist and bar owner, they would have nightly shouting matches over homework Rory had not done or dirty clothes he had not picked up, in between scoping out corners of global history.

During gym class on Wednesday, March 28, he dived for a ball and opened a cut on his arm. That night, Ms. Staunton said, Rory mentioned it: “How he presented it to me was, ‘I fell in the gym. Mr. D, the athletic director, put the Band-Aids on. And, I got the ball.’ ”

Then he finished his homework and went to bed.

The bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes is part of the human ecosystem, normally dwelling in the throat or on the skin, areas where the body is well defended. Also known as Group A streptococcus, the strain typically causes strep throat or impetigo.

But if it is able to penetrate soft tissue or blood, “it moves very quickly,” said Dr. Michael B. Edmond, the chairman of the division of infectious diseases at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The mortality rate is high. The clinical findings early in the infection can be relatively subtle.”

The challenge for physicians is recognizing an invasive infection, whether from Group A strep or other pathogens, before the cascading damage of sepsis has picked up too much speed. The consortium of New York hospitals has a goal of starting antibioticswithin an hour of spotting sepsis in the emergency room, according to officials with the Greater New York Hospital Association’s Stop Sepsis program.

For every hour’s delay in giving antibiotics after very low blood pressure had set in, a large study found, the survival rate decreased by 7.6 percent.

Shortly after midnight on March 29, Ms. Staunton heard Rory retching in the bathroom. “There wasn’t a huge amount of vomit, but he kept saying, ‘My leg, my leg, Mom,’ ” she recalled. Back in bed, he moaned. His mother rubbed his thigh. In the morning, he was weak, his leg still hurt, and his temperature was 104 degrees, his highest ever.

The parents began calling Dr. Susan Levitzky, who had been the family pediatrician for about five years. She saw Rory that evening.

“He was leaning on me as we were walking up to the office, because he could hardly stand from the weakness or pain in his leg,” Ms. Staunton said. In the waiting room, Rory vomited. When the doctor swabbed his throat, he vomited on her. The swab test, a rapid but not definitive detector of strep, was negative.

“We showed her the cut on his elbow, and I saw her follow up his arm from the cut,” Ms. Staunton said. “She said, ‘The cut’s not an issue.’ She focused on his stomach. We said, ‘Although you see him throwing up, that’s not what he’s really complaining about.’ Rory and I both said to her that it’s the pain in his leg that’s really bothering him.”

The doctor told them that the leg pain might be from falling in the gym. “Rory said, ‘It wasn’t a fall, it was a skid,’ ” Ms. Staunton recalled.

The parents also remarked that Rory’s skin became blotchy when they pressed a finger on it. Those concerns were well-founded, said Dr. Edmond, the infectious disease specialist, who was not involved in Rory’s care: the mottling, which Dr. Levitzky made note of, could mean that vessels in his skin were constricting from low blood pressure; the leg pain could mean an invasive infection. Rory’s temperature was 102 and his pulse was 140; he was breathing 36 times a minute.

These, too, were “worrisome” observations, Dr. Edmond said.

Nevertheless, Ms. Staunton said, she did not recall being told that any of his vital signs were off: “She said, ‘Make your way over to NYU, and get him rehydrated. He’s vomiting now. He’s going to feel better, and tomorrow, he’ll have diarrhea.’ ”

In a brief phone conversation, Dr. Levitzky said she could not discuss the case. “I sent him to a major medical center,” she said.

Rory arrived at NYU Langone, on First Avenue near 34th Street, at 7:14 that evening and was discharged about two hours later. Hospital records do not reflect any communication with Dr. Levitzky or her findings about the mottled skin.

Like Dr. Levitzky, the NYU physicians believed that Rory’s discomfort was caused by a sick stomach and dehydration. His chart states that “labs, I.V.F., Zofran” were ordered.Zofran is an anti-nausea drug; two bags of intravenous fluids, or I.V.F., were administered; three vials of blood were drawn and sent to the hospital laboratory.

“They did the various checks, up, down, back and forth,” Mr. Staunton said.

A screening tool in the Stop Sepsis program, used when a patient first arrives in the emergency room, calls special attention to a person with three symptoms of a possible eight. At the hospital, Rory showed two: he was breathing 20 times per minute and his pulse was 143.

Two hours later, though, he had three: his temperature had risen to 102, his pulse was 131 and his respiration rate was 22. But by the time those vital signs were recorded, at 9:26 p.m., they had no bearing on his treatment. In fact, the doctor had already decided that Rory was going home. Rory’s “ExitCare” instructions, signed by his father, were printed 12 minutes before those readings.

To the pediatrician who examined and discharged Rory, it seemed that the fluids had done the trick. “Pt improved,” the doctor, Camille Scribner, wrote, prescribing “home supportive care.” There is no sign in the records that Dr. Scribner, described by a senior colleague as “hyper-conscientious,” considered alternative explanations.

“They stated that it was a common flu that was going around,” Mr. Staunton said. “It would start off as high temperature and throwing up, and would end up as diarrhea.”

Dr. Scribner could not be reached for comment through the hospital.

As the Stauntons walked Rory onto First Avenue, the air temperature was in the mid-40s. “He was freezing,” Ms. Staunton said. “He took my coat leaving the hospital. It has a little frilly thing around the collar.”

“Not a thing that a boy of 12 would put on,” Mr. Staunton said.

About three hours later, Rory’s lab results were printed. He was producing neutrophilsand bands, white blood cells, at rates that were “very abnormal and would suggest a serious bacterial infection,” Dr. Edmond said.

The Stauntons said they heard nothing about it. In bed, Rory “was groaning in his sleep,” Ms. Staunton said. “I felt the heat of the fever.”

At 10 a.m. on Friday, the Stauntons began calling their pediatrician, Dr. Levitzky. “She told us to do a combination of Tylenol and Motrin,” Ms. Staunton said.

Asked last month about the lab findings, Dr. Levitzky, who is associated with NYU Langone, said, “I never knew that testing was done.”

Rory did have the predicted bout of diarrhea on Friday, which momentarily elated his family. Still, he could barely get to the bathroom. The doctor suggested fluids and crackers.

“‘I told her, ‘I’m not sure you’re getting the picture, Dr. Levitzky,’ ” Mr. Staunton said. “‘I can’t even get him to sit up. I don’t know how you expect me to get food into him.’ ”

Later, a slight touch would make him scream. “Around his nose was gone blue,” Mr. Staunton said. “Down his body side was gone blue.”

At that point, Dr. Levitzky told them to return to the emergency room. They supported him as he walked to the car. “All he said was, ‘Can I please have a wheelchair when I get there?’ ” Ms. Staunton recalled.

In the intensive care unit, his parents tried to mask their worry, Mr. Staunton chatting lightly. But Ms. Staunton noticed her son’s eyes following her. “He said, ‘Mom, my toes are really, really cold,’ ” she said.

After extending an arm for blood to be drawn, “he thanked them when they were finished,” Ms. Staunton said.

He had to be put on a ventilator. Just before he was sedated, Ms. Staunton said, “They told him, ‘We need to figure some stuff out. There are some marks on your body, and you need a little bit of help breathing, so we’re just going to intubate you and it’ll be fine.’ ” First, though, they checked his mental status.

“Do you know what date it is?”

“I know it’s March,” Rory answered.

“Who’s the president of the United States?”

He answered: “Barack Obama.”

His mother smiled.

“Ah,” she said, “but Rory, who is going to be the next one?”

“Barack Obama,” he said.

As the next two days passed, doctors tried anything that might halt the shutdown of Rory’s organs. “I can’t say enough about the I.C.U.,” Ms. Staunton said.

Relatives and a priest gathered bedside, talking of Irish football and tomfoolery and politics. Perhaps, one doctor whispered in a fleeting, hopeful aside, Rory might get away with losing his toes and nose. His skin blackened. He passed no urine. His blood would not clot. His heart had to be restarted twice. Three specialists who chronicled Rory’s decline on his intensive care chart each noted that on Thursday night, when he was sent home from the emergency room, he had a fever and significant signs of infection in his blood.

On Sunday night, Dr. Mayer Sagy, who had not seen Rory on his first visit to the hospital but spent the weekend struggling to keep Rory alive, told the Stauntons that the team had been unable to resuscitate him a third time.

“I said to him, ‘I brought him here to you the other night and you sent him home,’ ” Ms. Staunton said.

“He said, ‘You have every right to be angry.’ ”

More than anything, the Stauntons said, NYU Langone owes an honest accounting of what happened.

Racked with loss, they and others remembered Rory as an unflinching champion of schoolyard underdogs.

“Above all,” Ms. Staunton said, “we know that Rory would want no other child to go through what he went through.”

Copyright The New York Times

For more information visit www.rorystaunton.com.

On reaching the ripe young age of 59 -- Who is that guy in the mirror I wonder

I woke up yesterday morning to discover an impostor.

I gazed in the mirror on my 59th birthday and realized I had been hijacked.

The grey haired, balding guy in the mirror with too many wrinkles and a paunch had clearly been foisted on me overnight.

The sleek, handsome as hell, gazelle like guy I went to sleep as had disappeared.

This has happened before but seems to get worse every birthday.

It is high time I reported it to the time police.

“Shurely Shum Mistake," I’ll tell them in my best Irish drunk imitation.

They, no doubt, will assure me they will investigate this impostor and have him arrested at their earliest convenience.

I’ll tell them I’ve noticed him skulking around since I was about 40 and the first grey hairs appeared.

“Yes sir, you can be sure, we know who he is we’ve seen him in action before.”

“Thank you officer," I’ll say.

I hope they put him away for a long time.

The thief of time is well known around these parts.

But I never thought he’d attempt to infiltrate my home.

There must have been an open door or window in my soul that he climbed in.

He’s clever, I never see him until I look in the mirror.

Clearly, he disappears at night and my true self returns.

Not next year though I’ll be ready for him.

Maybe in a butterfly net I’ll catch him.

Now there’s a thought.

Lock him up for everyone to see officer.

The Month’s Mind -- A letter to Rory, remembering a laughing boy with us no more

Rory Staunton

The Irish religious ritual of a “month’s mind”, exactly a month after a departed has passed is a beautiful if sad occasion to remember a beloved.

So this is for my nephew 12-year-old Rory Staunton, now in the arms of the angels after tragically dying from a toxic infection in a New York hospital on April 1st.

Rory, we miss you so much.

Every morning I awake and wonder if the empty feeling will ever subside, if it all really happened that one so vibrant and beautiful should pass so unexpectedly leaving so many broken hearts.

Alas, it has.

The days have been tough for us Rory, the nights even tougher.

What your parents,Orlaith and Ciaran have endured I will never know, except they and your wonderful sister Kathleen have hearts so broken it is hard to see them ever heal.

Yet they are magnificent, trying their very best every day to keep going despite the most horrible blow possible.

The memories still cascade, so special, so sad, so unreal that we won’t see your big red head of hair come bouncing into our lives again, full of the latest breaking news from CNN or the science project you are working on, or the plane you want to fly or the car you want to drive or the dream you want to live or the cause you want us to take up.

I almost called you to say make sure you watched the last flight of the space shuttle to JFK last week when it came in perched on top of a mighty Jumbo 747.

You would have told me everything about how  the jumbo was able to carry such a massive load. You were always so comfortable in the sky.

You left an indelible mark young man. President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are among those hundreds who have written to your parents saying how deeply they feel for them.

Family and friends here in America and Ireland have been wonderful Rory, you have brought out the very best in everyone.

I know a family where sisters reconciled after reading about your death, deciding that they could not sustain the bitter word when life is so fleeting.

I saw an incredibly decent act when the immigration officer at Dublin readily stamped your passport one more time when you traveled home to Ireland with us on your final flight.

A Rory circle of virtue I thought at the time.

That’s a little part of your legacy Rory, and there will be much more to come.

You were a pathfinder. I remember last summer when we spent the weekend in rural Pennsylvania and I got you and everyone else totally lost trying to find the road home.

It was pitch black and I was afraid to admit I was scared, we had wandered so far off the beaten path.

You alone, so mature as always, found the way back to our friend’s house deep in the woods as if you had a GPS in your head.

Now we need you to lead the way again for all of us, to help us cope.

Oh and Rory, a little boy was born this week to your first cousin Danielle in Ireland. 

His name is Fionn Rory Muldoon after you.

Someday I will teach him about you and tell him what a difference you made and what a special boy you were.

You will live on in him and others always.

Until we meet again, Rory, and I know we will, I love you and miss you so much.

Your Uncle Niall

Phew! A near disaster is averted on Bettystown Beach-- car set to float away on the tide until my relatives arrive

Bettystown Beach (Credit: Paul Power)

So on Wednesday afternoon I took a walk on Bettystown beach in County Meath, a wondrous place from my childhood, just six miles from my hometown of Drogheda.

I invited one of my oldest friends, Eddie Holt along and he  said he’d meet me there.

The sun was high, the Irish Sea was clear blue and all was better with the world.

Until Eddie decided to drive along the beach to meet me halfway and walk from there.

He fearlessly drove past the “Warning soft sand do not drive any further” signs with gay abandon and was soon spinning his wheels helplessly about 20 feet from the water as high tide beckoned.

Walking back I was wondering who was the idiot with his car stuck when I realized it was Eddie.

So here we were. I am as useful as a eunuch in a brothel when it comes to cars and everything about them.
Eddie does know stuff, but after ten minutes of spinning the wheels and only digging deeper we decided we needed help.

My brother, Fergus, the member of the Irish parliament,  was summoned from nearby Drogheda.  He would surely know what and who to call. He didn’t really but he had a good laugh at us.

My other brother Michael’s father in law Dick Reilly who lived nearby was also summoned. He knew a local farmer with a tractor but he had forgotten his phone and had to go back to his house to get the number and call him.

Meanwhile the tide was now at ten feet from the car.

A local priest from Drogheda , Father Iggy, out for his daily constitutional, happened by. We asked if he could temporarily stop the waves advancing like King Canute tried but he quietly deferred. He would give us a push instead he said.

Others came by, some to gawk at the impending disaster. One man said he’d help but he’d just had an operation. Another said he was worried about a heart attack.

The tide was now at five feet from the car.

My brother helpful as always, picked the moment to  tell us the story of the fire engine from Drogheda that has literally been swallowed up near the same spot when it came to rescue a car that was floating away and had gotten too close to the water.

Dick Reilly came back and said the farmer was on his way. That cheered us up but we waited and waited.
At last someone useful showed up – a brother in law of Fergus, Gerry Cullen, a top-notch singer with the Voice Squad and a former schoolteacher.

Soon after yet another brother in law showed up. He’s a publican. It was like family reunion day on the beach

Gerry went back up the beach and asked the man with the first four-wheel drive car he met to come and save our sinking car.

The water was now at two feet away, lapping around our ankles. The car was an older Lexus, in perfect running order, bright red and lots of good honest miles on it. Would it meet a watery grave? Eddie was starting to get emotional about it.

The four-wheel drive man arrived, thanks to Gerry, backed up and took out his rope---God bless him, at last someone was in charge.

So we started to push, the parish priest, the publican, the politician, the returned yank the retired laboratory worker, the singer, and journalist (Eddie) and two strangers

We pushed and we panted and we pushed again and eventually the four-wheel drive pulled Eddie’s car clear. Not a moment too soon .

The car and our dignity were saved. The four-wheel drive man would not take a penny, the tractor and the farmer arrived too late but he would also not take a penny.

The priest blessed us all and hoofed it  and we stood on Bettystown beach as the rain began to fall and thanked the wonderful Irish and unbreakable family bonds.

God in a time of personal crisis –how does he measure up? What I learnt from a dark night of the soul amid pain and suffering

A man and woman praying

So is there an all-loving all-seeing God or is it a convenient invention to salve the soul?

I have had major reason to consider that question over the past few weeks as my 12-year-old nephew Rory Staunton cruelly lost his life to a toxic infection in a New York hospital.

In the intensive care unit I met two pastors, both doing their best to console a frightened and exhausted family desperately concerned for their little boy,

With one I ended up discussing the philosophy of Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher who believed that if there was a God he was abstract and uncaring.

When you see all the war, the killing the famine and suffering it is easy for many to agree with Spinoza.
We discussed the Sermon on the Mount, and the eight beatitudes, which are the most relevant part of the Christian theology in my experience.

Those are profound statements that truly do preach humility and compassion and revive faith in the New Testament.

Yet how has that love and mercy expressed itself?

There were two church services for Rory, one in Ireland, one in America where God’s mercy and grace were front and center.

I was assured by many that Rory had gone to a better place and that God had a plan for him.

At his funeral mass there were repeated references to a merciful God but it was hard to see the mercy in depriving my grieving sister and her husband of their beautiful son.

I acknowledge now more than ever, the importance of the ritual of the religion, especially in the wake of Rory’s death when I see the incredible comfort that the ceremonies  brought to his parents.

I saw God in the incredible caring of Father Tom from Mayo in the hospital room in New York in the way he told my little niece that her brother was gone, a truly saintly man.


______________
Read More:
An Irish wake for Rory Staunton back home in Meath --- The families and friends gather for the timeless Irish ritual

Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write
______________


But that is not the same as believing in God.

Despite the overwhelming desire to believe the answer is positive the question must remain unanswerable.
There is no evidence either way that is definitive or conclusive for me.

My awful encounter with death has if anything, increased my sense of how unknown the great questions of our existence remain.

I am comfortable with that. Great certainties held by people unnerve me anyway. All punishing, all powerful, all merciful deities of whatever religion make it too easy to avoid the really difficult question which is;

Who are we? Why are we here?

I’m afraid I have no idea.

The final farewell as my family say goodbye to Rory Staunton -- A sad leavetaking for grieving relatives amid sodden Irish skies

Rory Staunton

On a wet and grey Easter Monday amid slanting rain, my nephew Rory Staunton was finally committed to the Irish soil, buried beside his beloved grandmother in St. Peter’s graveyard in Drogheda, 30 miles from Dublin.

The dull thwack of the soil against the coffin after it was lowered signaled the final farewell for me to the 12-year-old boy who only a few weeks earlier was the joy and hope of his parents, New York based Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton, who is my sister. He was also the beloved big brother of his sister Kathleen.

Then, Rory contracted a deadly toxic bacteria after a slight cut during a basketball game and died in a New York hospital despite frantic efforts to save him.

I don't know what rough Gods insisted that it was time for Rory to be called home, but they surely were not merciful ones.

One look at my devastated sister and her husband and their daughter as the coffin was lowered for the final time would tell that instantly.

There is a finality to Irish burials that is not practiced in American burial rituals, where the coffin is usually  set aside until the bereaved depart.

In Ireland, the body is lowered as the parents and bereaved watch.
-----------------
Read more:
Powerful Association of Irish Priests warns Vatican over “heresy hunting” 

New and powerful survivor’s account of the sinking of the Titanic
-----------------
It is no easy job. Pallbearers strain to balance the heavy coffin as it is lowered.

Rory’s pallbearers were slipping and sliding on the wet earth as the rain poured down, finally succeeding, and I thought of Emily Dickinson's poem, "I felt a funeral in my brain" as the surreal scene unfolded.

"And then I heard them lift a box
and creak across my soul"

In a nice touch, the first earth poured on Rory's coffin was from his beloved Tullaghbawn Beach near Westport County Mayo where Rory loved to play with his cousins on long summer days.

Earlier, in a tiny County Meath church where he was once a ring bearer for my niece’s wedding, Rory's funeral mass was attended by among others, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, as well as Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness.

It was a fitting tribute to the remarkable young boy, all three had met him and loved him, close family and political connections to both parties ensured that.

Ciaran, Rory's father, one last time eulogized his son and talked about the pain of dressing him for his final journey and the grief of a father forced to bury his only son.

In those few moments it seemed impossible for Rory to be gone, the bright wonderful boy whose picture adorned his coffin and who Ciaran brought back to life with such vivid words and memories.
But gone he is, his race run long before its time. He has left behind an indelible mark on me and mine.

Thank you to all who wrote such wonderful supportive letters and I know from letters and responses that this brave little boy has touched hundreds of other lives also.

May he rest in peace.

An Irish wake for Rory Staunton back home in Meath --- The families and friends gather for the timeless Irish ritual

The Irish wake for my nephew Rory Staunton began in the parlor of his Aunt Derval’s house among the rolling hills and farmland of County Meath.

Rory, aged 12, died at New York University Hospital a week ago from a toxic infection suffered after an elbow cut received at a basketball game.

The parlor is the room in the Irish house that is kept spotless, has all the best furniture and finery but nobody ever visits it except for occasions of great joy or in this case grief.

Derval, a nurse, had waked my mother and her own husband Paddy Hogan, a farmer there over the past ten years. She had been a tower of strength at the side of my sister Orlaith and her husband Ciaran when their son Rory passed away in New York.

Now it was, unbelievaby, 12-year old Rory’s body with the Irish and American flag and the flag of his beloved Mayo that lay in that same room in that same house in a beautiful corner of County Meath in this blessed time of spring when new life abounds.
_____________
READ MORE:

The long journey home begins for 12-year-old Rory Staunton -- Taking his final trip back home to his beloved Emerald Isle

12-Year-Old Rory Staunton’s life is celebrated in style at New York church Over 1,000 throng to say farewell to our laughing boy in Woodside, Queens

Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write
_____________

The Staunton and O’Dowd families had flocked from all over Ireland and America and some locals had dropped in too.

The wake followed a very defined ritual, similar in Irish rural life all for generations. It is a blessed one, especially for the parents of Rory who can once again absorb the love and support.

The arrival of the little boy’s coffin from the Aer Lingus flight from New York was accompanied with dread, floods of tears, and a sadness so profound that the gloom seemed impermeable.

As the priest said the brief prayers, the sounds of tears and desperate sadness filled the room.

Then, after the priest departed and the individual visitations to the coffin were completed  the stories began and Rory’s life began to reassert itself.

From the Staunton side we heard about the little boy’s annual travels to Mayo every year and the life and the times he witnessed there.

Rory always spoke of his best friend forever, Donal, the son of Ciaran’s brother, and the two young boys are roughly the same age. I’d never met Donal but if there is an Irish version of Rory it is him, inquisitive, warm, friendly and now clealry heartbroken.

Then the memories of Rory on this very farm were brought on, the kid Yank home from America who seemed to move so naturally through the rhythms of Irish rural life. Once he was found on top of bales of hay stacked so high no one could quite figure out how he climbed up there.

His fascination with Paddy Hogan’s pet sheep who followed Paddy around like an obedient dog, after being house-raised was also recalled.

It was time for the little girls to pay their own tribute. His sister Kathleen and my daughter Alana prepared their last little play and concert for Rory, which they performed behind closed doors for their beloved Ro Ro.

I’m glad I didn’t witness it as it would have been too much.

The wake went on late into the life. Farming life was one constant topic, as two rural families united in grief for a young boy but also in celebration of an extraordinary life. In the midst was Danielle, Derval’s daughter, nine months pregnant and ready to start the cycle of life anew in the never-ending battle

The funeral mass and burial now lies ahead before Rory can rest forever in his beloved Ireland. Our hearts are broken but the extraordinary love for Rory in Ireland and America is solace indeed.

The long journey home begins for 12-year-old Rory Staunton -- Taking his final trip back home to his beloved Emerald Isle

Beloved Rory Staunton

Rory Staunton, age 12 when he passed away, was always a little Irishman. He died in a New York hospital last weekend of a freak toxic infection.

Though born in Manhattan and a resident of Queens from an early age, he brought out his brightest colors where Ireland was concerned.

One of my first images of my nephew is as a four year old proudly flying the Irish tricolor in his house shortly before his family headed off to Ireland for the summer.

When there, he had a great friend in his cousin Donal in Westport County, Mayo. The two would be out and about all day, racing on the nearby beach, planning and plotting the games little boys play.

His father remembers a night when a gaggle of cousins and Rory decided to camp out all night. The longer the night went, the more the kids began to abandon it as things went bump in the night and temperatures dropped. Rory was the last to survive, brave as usual.

The rest of the time his mother and father, Ciaran and Orlaith, stayed in my sister Triona’s holiday home in West Kerry, hard by the Brandon mountain, wild and scenic and utterly isolated and where generations of the O’Dowds hailed from.
________________
READ MORE:

12-Year-Old Rory Staunton’s life is celebrated in style at New York church

When darkness comes and illness strikes a child

Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write
___________________

Rory loved it there and I walked the roads with him several times showing where his grandfather’s farm was and where 14 kids were raised on a patch of land that would “scarcely bathe a star” as Yeats remarked.

He loved to hang out in the pubs there, listen to the fishermen tell their tall tales, race down to the piers to see the boats come in and measure up the catch.

Padraig, his relative there, marked Rory out early as an Irish lad.

“That fellow is not American at all,” he’d say, looking at the flaming red head, so clearly at home among the locals.

“Yerrah, he’s one of ours,” he’d say.

He was indeed one of theirs and now he is home among them though not the way any of us could ever have imagined.

Aer Lingus Flight 104 took off from New York last night with Rory’s little body on board. There was never a question but that he would go back to his people.

The airline could not have been more accommodating and helpful to us family members heading back on our long journey home with Rory.

We arrived in Dublin on a cold but clear spring morning into the embrace of the loving tribe. Family had come from all over to bear him home.

Over the next two days before he finally rests beside his nana in an Irish graveyard, the Irish tribes he springs from, the Stauntons from Mayo to the O’Dowds from Kerry and Louth, will embrace him back into their bosom now.

Their laughing American Irish boy is home.

12-Year-Old Rory Staunton’s life is celebrated in style at New York church Over 1,000 throng to say farewell to our laughing boy in Woodside, Queens

Beloved Rory Staunton

Periscope: Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write

My 12-year-old nephew Rory Staunton’s brief life was celebrated in St.Mary’s in Queens, New York yesterday and over 1,200 showed up forcing an outdoor viewing link to be set up.

Rory died in a New York hospital on Sunday last after a toxic bacteria entered his body through an elbow cut received at a basketball game when he fell.

The huge crowd was an extraordinary acknowledgement of the impact of Rory. I saw grown men and women weep.

Many had to turn away from Rory’s parents, my sister Orlaith and brother in law Ciaran, distraught at their sorrow.

Friends I have not seen in decades showed, all bearing witness to the immutable fact that when a child dies a community rallies to the stricken family.

And stricken we are.

Getting up yesterday morning was a painful act, I would have given lots of money to be 1,000 miles away, preferably on an island.

My beloved Rory was dead and a day of sorrow with no peace or joy beckoned.

Yet by the end of it, it was uplifting to feel the love of an Irish community so obviously ready to stand by a family in grief. The rituals of the church, too, on such occasions, have a wonderfully calming effect, providing continuity and sense of perspective.

St.Mary’s was built in 1860, generations of Irish came and prayed, married, and were buried out of that same church. Rory Staunton was just the latest.

My brother in law Ciaran Staunton took the bravest step, eulogizing his own son. He stood before the packed congregation and described the kid he called his “pal,” never his son, who went everywhere with him and was an “unindicted co conspirator” in a number of escapades, most notably when the famously balding Ciaran got Rory to demand of a confused local barber where was the wig his father had ordered weeks before.

But he also talked about the Sunnyside community Rory grew up and prospered in. It really is a slice of new New York where Irish/Jewish and all religious types mix readily.

Rory attended bar mitzvahs, and his Jewish friends helped trim the Christmas tree. The place is an anti-Semites nightmare.
Ciaran described how Rory had prospered at the local non-denominational school, had received an education that showed him windows on the world, and most recently,Ciaran had found a letter to the North Korean government in which Rory had demanded that they explain their hideous policies.

How Ciaran pulled it off I don’t know. He has been so overcome with grief that I feared that he wouldn’t even make it to the church door.

I spoke about the love Ciaran and Orlaith had for each other which sustained them even during their dark night of the soul.

I spoke about my sister and Rory and the little love notes he left her around the house and the chats they had about college and his next big move in life.

I spoke about Kathleen, already missing her big brother and her hero and how brave she has been.

Now it is on to Ireland and the long journey home for Rory who will be buried with his beloved grandmother in Drogheda on Easter Monday.

For Ciaran and Orlaith it will be the last leg of a nightmare week that will be seared in their hearts forever.

I hope Ireland and family there will work its magic, as if often does, and ease their pain.

A tribute to Rory created by his classmates:

When darkness comes and illness strikes a child; My flood of letters from families who live in great pain

Periscope: Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write

I have been overwhelmed by e mails and letters about Rory Staunton, my 12-year-old nephew who tragically passed from a toxic bacterial infection in New York on April 1st.

Many of the letters are from families who underwent such heartrending events themselves.

They are all heartfelt and profound and fill me full of admiration for the honesty and rawness they proclaim and how they offer advice on how to cope.

They describe their own struggle to cope, some describe their haunted sense that if they had done something differently it would not have ended up in the death of their child.

They are wrong to blame themselves of course, but as one person wrote, "the future was stolen from us, all our hopes and dreams."

Several close friends relayed family tragedies to me that I never knew about.

One described the death of a sister, another, a niece killed on her 16th birthday, another whose son's child died and the distraught mother later committed suicide.

I feel like I have been introduced to something hiding in plain sight, the tragic losses at the hearts of so many families who bear the burden so silently and heroically in many cases.

Since Rory died I have been enveloped in a new reality that will change me for ever.

Watching him pass away was the worst weekend and event of my life.

What was looking like  a totally humdrum New York weekend was shattered by a knock on my door at 5.a.m and an urgent call to rush to the hospital.

I had known earlier in the week that Rory was running a temperature and frankly, had not thought much about it. These things happen to kids all the time.

I literally  took a step back and felt my legs go weak when Greg, the boyfriend of my niece, informed me how sick he suddenly was.

I had to close the door on him to pull myself together, I had to stop my heart racing frantically.

My wife Debbie was equally unbelieving. This wasn't really happening was it? Our Rory at death's door?

From then on unreality took over. The visit to the hospital and the intensive care unit, the increasingly grim prognosis as the virus did its deadly work, the desperate efforts to save him.

I know now it is a scene that was repeated for so many over the years, among those who wrote to me. It is one I will never wish even on my greatest enemy.

I thank those readers  for starting a conversation and for making me understand what had never been so clear before.

When death came like a thief in the night and takes a child nothing will ever be the same again.

A tribute to Rory created by his classmates:

Rory Staunton, a beautiful boy, leaves this earth. The hardest column I will ever have to write

Beloved Rory Staunton

Periscope: When darkness comes and illness strikes a child; My flood of letters from families who live in great pain

This is the toughest column I will ever write and the one I least expected to.

On Sunday night in a New York hospital my beautiful 12-year-old nephew Rory Staunton passed from this earth.

Rory wasn’t just my nephew, he was the son I never had, the precious possession of my sister Orlaith and her husband Ciaran Staunton along with their daughter Kathleen.

Orlaith was the one that followed me to America. I introduced her and Ciaran on an Irish weekend in the Catskills back in the 1990s. Soon they were pledged to each other and they have had a wonderful marriage and family.

From earliest times, Rory was a laughing little boy, an impish toddler always ready for fun, especially when his sister Kathleen and her sidekick,my daughter Alana, were involved.

In later years, he was also strangely mature for his age, taking part in adult conversations while other kids played childhood games.

I tried to steal Rory away often; a Notre Dame game, a weekend at our house, whenever the opportunity presented itself. I revelled in this big laughing Irishman, with the "Simpsons" and "Family Guy" obsession, the absurd sense of humor and the serious political side of him who studied American politics with the intensity of a professional.

JFK was his hero he told me, because of his idealism. Rory too wanted to make a difference, to help the less well off. For one so young he already had a highly developed social conscience.

He had already been to the White House and had met President Obama and Michelle on St.Patrick’s Day in 2011. Not surprisingly, given his parents and their keen interest in all things political, Rory was fast becoming a political expert.

Rory charmed the pants off whoever met him. The girls were already showing interest, but Rory was a busy guy. He had taken flying lessons at 11, leaving his parents with their hearts in their mouths as he flew fearlessly into the wild blue yonder with his instructor.

Ireland was his spiritual home. On vacations back in his Dad’s Mayo or his Mom’s Kerry and Louth he fell in with the locals and a gaggle of cousins, discussed Mayo’s continued Gaelic Football failures with the best of them and came back to New York as attuned to Ireland and its rhythms as any local.

He was about to spread his wings, and Georgetown University and its politics degree were on his radar. Rory was opening up, emerging from a chrysalis, ready for the beckoning world, to take flight.

Then on Sunday we lost him. Four days earlier he had received an elbow scrape after falling while playing basketball, which had somehow allowed a toxic bacteria into his system. Two days later he was hospitalized, fighting for his life, a battle he ultimately lost.

There is an air of unreality even as I write this. My beautiful red-headed, five-foot nine-inch tall nephew has departed, leaving an utterly broken family and circle of friends that stretches from New York to Ireland to many other points behind.

It was the worst weekend of my life as I watched the beloved boy battle vainly against the host of toxins that were attacking him.

Despite the best efforts of outstanding doctors and nurses in the Intensive Care Unit , the darling boy did not survive.

He is gone now into the wild blue yonder where he used to travel as a pilot in the making.

Soar high Rory, and keep watch on us down below. We love you and miss you so much. Some day with a blue sky above and a fair wind behind, and our hearts full, our dreams will come true and we will meet our beautiful boy again.

Until then, slan go foill a chuisle mo chroi.

Reflections on reaching one million unique readers monthly on Irish Central

A screen grab from IrishCentral's launch day.

Dear Reader;

I've started five publications in my life, all of them survived, but none cost me as much anxiety and stress as IrishCentral.

The others were magazines and newspapers, arenas I knew well, and the fundamentals were the same with all.

IrishCentral was the opposite, a complete leap in the dark into an arena I only dimly understood, full of technology terms and new delivery methods that made my head spin.

I was in my mid fifties, stuck in my ways, barely able to turn on my laptop and the new arena looked like a battlefield against unknown and powerful forces to me.

In the early days, back in 2009, I was seriously worried I would ever get the hang of it.

We had picked wisely in one respect however, a staff that were utterly dedicated to ensuring that it would survive.

In those early days I wondered myself.

It is only three years but that is a lifetime in Internet terms.

In those times we kept plugging away convinced our vision of a multi media site for the Irish Diaspora would work out.

Some others had tried but had foundered.

What we had was our other publications, Irish Voice, Irish America Magazine, Home and Away and the collective wisdom about the Irish in America we shared .

We also knew that irrespective of the medium the fundamentals applied. Good stories, well written, well packaged is the lifeblood of any successful media operation no matter what medium.

We started with 4,000 people a day,coming to the site then it rose to 10,000, then 15, then 20, then 30 and now averaging 35,000 a day which is over one million a month now and still growing.

One million uniques is the magic number which says you have arrived the experts say, a place only 5 per cent of sites ever reach, the moment when you go from hopeful to confident.

In a business where nine out of ten start-ups fail it is a gratifying sight.

I learnt so much. I learnt to read the Google analytics chart which is the bible of this business like an old pro. Google lets you know hour by hour who is coming to your site, how many, what they are reading and how long they stay.

Then there's Chartbeat, which lets you know literally, second by second, who is coming to your site, whether they are reading or writing, where in the world they are coming in from.

It is an instant feedback world, one I could never have imagined when I purchased my first typewriter in 1979 in San Francisco and went about putting out my first newspaper with all of $938 dollars.

The world has changed so much since that I feel as if I'm on an unfamiliar ocean on a voyage to God knows where.

But it is wonderful too, to test and challenge yourself every day, to push the envelope of your knowledge and to learn new tricks, even when some days you feel like the oldest dog in the kennel.

With age truly does come wisdom of sorts, especially in a job like this. It the kind of wisdom that allows you to understand that doing your level best is the best you or anyone else can do and to hell with the begrudgers after that.

But it also gives you the gift of gratitude to so many readers for supporting this site, to the investors and advertisers who keep it alive and to a wonderful staff who give it everything every day.

So here's to the next monthly 2 million and the 3 million after that. The internet is an unbroken journey without end ,with new terrain every day and a far distant mountain always waiting to be climbed.

Thanks for being along for the ride .

Slainte.
Niall