“SAOÍRSE was the one who made me a mother,” says Roseanna Ruane, recalling the January 2012 night when her precious firstborn arrived.
“The night I had her, I remember the enormous love I felt. I remember turning to my dad, asking him, ‘How did you share out all the love you had as a parent to all of your children?’ I was so in love with her.”
Saoírse was all about love. The 12-year-old passed away following a long battle with cancer in March 2024, the Galway girl who had won the hearts of Ireland with her Late Late Toy Show appearance in 2020.
“A big part was she was so pleasant and happy-go-lucky, people loved her nature,” says Ruane.
Among the memories that sustain her, that give her a guide for how to go on, is a walk down Grafton St a few years ago. “I was looking in a shop window when Saoírse saw someone fundraising. She said to Ollie, ‘I want to give something to that man’. She put her hand in her bag and took out what she had — €30. Ollie, trying to teach her about money, said, ‘You don’t have to give it all’.
“When she was asked later why she felt she wanted to do that, she said, ‘Because I thought they needed it more than I did’. That was very much her. She was always kind and giving. We learned from her. Children look up to their parents. I look up to her. She’s my guiding light. I feel she’s minding us up there.”
Over the past year, Roseanna and BPerfect Cosmetics founder Brendan McDowell have been collaborating on a new collection in memory of Saoírse. The limited-edition, four-piece make-up capsule — named the Saoírse & Mamma Collection — launched last week in Dublin. “Saoírse loved her lip gloss and her eye shadow and anything that sparkled. It was a good fit,” says Ruane, recalling when the brand first approached her in 2023, that she asked Saoírse’s opinion on it.
“Because it was always a Saoírse and Mamma page, I’d ask Saoírse what she thought of any partnerships, out of respect for her. And when I asked how she felt about this one, she reacted so well. She always just wanted me to smile and be happy. She was a real girly girl, who loved her make-up, too.”
All proceeds from the collection go to two children’s cancer charities: Co Galway-based Hand in Hand, and Cancer Fund for Children. So far, €140,000 of the €200,000 target goal has been raised to support families navigating childhood cancer.
Recalling a vow she made “to give back” when the family was starting on their cancer journey with Saoírse, Ruane says: “A social worker told us a particular charity would give a grant to a family in this situation. I broke down crying. The amount of money —you could use it to pay your mortgage for a month or your groceries for a few weeks. I vowed I’d give back to that charity and to any others, though I didn’t know how we’d do it.”
A fundraiser was why Saoírse wanted to be at school on the last day before the 2023 Christmas holidays. It turned out to be her final day ever in Kiltullagh NS.
“She had to go for a CT scan, but was adamant she wanted to go into school, because of the fundraiser that day. She begged me to not miss school, so I had to work my magic to get her a very early scan in Galway. She was in school for 9.25 — she was thrilled.”
By then things had started to take a turn for the worse. Ruane says the hospital rang two hours later to say the findings weren’t good — they needed Saoírse back in. “I had to go into school, take her out again at 12, do what we always did: Pretend everything was OK, smile. On that return journey to UCHG, we discovered the cancer had spread to numerous other places.
“It was a very difficult day. We were finding out more bad news. But Saoírse had got to do what was important to her and that made her happy, which, in turn, made us happy.”
Roseanna doesn’t “know how” she and Ollie got through the ordeal. “It was bad news after bad news and, you know, we did what we needed to do: Got her the care, the second opinions, got her very well looked after. In the end, cancer won.”
Support from the public helped. “When they found cancer in her lung in May 2022, Saoírse was very well known at that stage. We got a lot of support. We asked for prayers, for people to light candles, and they did. The people of Ireland willed her on. They became so invested in her journey.”
How are she, Ollie, and six-year-old Farrah Rose doing? “I don’t know how we’re doing, really. It’s not something you can compare,” says Ruane, who believes people can’t grasp the grief of losing a child unless they’ve experienced it. “People are empathetic, but they don’t fully understand the magnitude of the loss, the pain. There are certain people [with similar losses] we’ve bonded with, who we meet, chat with. That’s comforting.”
No two people grieve in the same way. “Even myself and Ollie wouldn’t be grieving the same way at the very same time. If I’m having a hard day, he mightn’t be and then he’s my support, and vice versa.
“I just have to keep busy. And it’s very important to get up for Farrah Rose every day. What good would I be to her if I was to stay in bed? Life has been hard on her — she deserves to have some kind of happiness in her childhood.”
Farrah Rose was five when her sister died. “The two got on brilliantly together. They loved each other’s company. That’s the hardest part — that friendship, her best friend, taken from her. She’s very young to understand it all. Sometimes, she’ll ask, ‘Why?’, and we sit and try to explain as best we can. We say, ‘We’ll be able to tell you more when you’re older’.
“She actually prays to Saoírse, sends little wishes up to her, and talks to her at night. She refers to her a lot — ‘There’s a butterfly, that’s Saoírse coming to say hello’, or ‘Look, a robin, there’s Saoírse’.”
Ruane never shies away from speaking about Saoírse. “The way I look at it, she should be here and she’s not, and why should we stop talking about her?”
Ruane’s charity work, always in Saoírse’s honour, sustains her. And energy healing helps hugely. “Some people do counselling. I do energy healing. I find it really helps. It involves talking, part grief counselling, grounding where the healer grounds me and maybe sets me up for something big coming up and keeps my vibrations high. I’m very much in to what we put out in the universe, we get back.
“Gratitude is huge. It can be hard to be grateful. I’d been journalling, writing down what I was grateful for, but I went through a stage when Saoírse relapsed where I scrapped it and said, ‘What’s the point?’ But I’ve slowly gone back to it — I find being grateful rewards you in its own way,” she says, recalling how Saoírse “loved the archangels and her little crystals”.
When Ruane — at home in Galway — was putting together ideas, colours, and textures for the just-launched cosmetics range, she found herself pulled up short. “A rainbow appeared on the bed where I had all the stuff laid out. It was from a dream-catcher. And when I arrived up to Belfast, sat down for the day to talk about the collection, a rainbow appeared on the floor, as bright as anything, and there was no sun-catcher. I just felt: Saoírse’s here, she wants this. She’s setting up the things to do in her name.”
- The Saoírse & Mamma collection is available at www.bperfectcosmetics.com and in stores across Ireland. Every purchase supports families going through childhood cancer
