On 16 March, my friend Paul called to say that a close friend had died. He’d known her for many years and, through him, I’d met her many times.
Deborah Ballard. She was in truth something of a force of nature. Paul first met her when she was editor of the Gay Community News in Dublin. Later she moved with her partner, the musician Carole Nelson, to a house in the country in Co. Carlow. There they established a wonderful garden.
Deborah was an accomplished gardener – a real “plantswoman”. She was also a gifted writer, a poet. (In fact I have used some of her poetry in funeral services.) And together with Carole she built a place that was to become a sort of sanctuary for their many friends and contacts.
So it wasn’t surprising to me that Paul would use the phrase “a great tree has fallen…” in giving the news of her death. It’s an appropriate image. In life, a tree such as an oak is an entire ecosystem, giving food and shelter to innumerable birds and insects and spiders and fungi.
But what is also significant when we contemplate a fallen tree, is how it continues to provide food and shelter after its death. A tree doesn’t just disappear. In the lane where I live there used to be an elm. It was cut down over twenty years ago and even the stump was removed and covered with asphalt. Yet each autumn, fungi spring up through the cracks, evidence that the roots of the tree still give sustenance. I fully expect to see those traces of that great tree’s life to appear later this year. In fact, AI tells me (with suspicious precision) that a medium sized oak tree may continue to provide for between 46 and 71 years after it falls. It’d see me out!
A great tree falls but its influence and wisdom and inspiration live on.
The image I have chosen for this piece is a photograph taken by Paul himself. It is an arresting image of Deborah, the colour of her jumper merging with the leaves of a medlar tree in her garden. Deborah was already unwell when it was taken and the medlar’s leaves are ready to drop. Life and death and renewal all tangled up.
Deborah Ballard. A great tree has fallen.
for Paul Connell, March 2026.
