IN February of this year, Rosie Shelley, The Southern Star’s esteemed health and nutrition correspondent wrote of a life lived with crippling fatigue and constant pain.
The article in which she laid bare how Fibromyalgia – a condition that transmits pain messages between the brain and the body – had reduced her to ‘disability’ was so raw, so real, that her devoted readers loved her even more.
It was, however, with a deep sense of shock that the people of Schull, and her community of readers, learned of her untimely passing at Cork University Hospital on Monday, December 9th.
Rosie, the beloved wife of Richie, and the much-loved mother of their teenage son, Cian, had not yet reached her 50th birthday.
Rosie was a private person, remarkably dignified too. It was a trait she inherited from her mother, Hilary Wakeman, a retired Church of Ireland minister, and her late father, John Wakeman, a poet and the founder of the incomparable THE SHOp poetry magazine.
Con Downing, the editor of The Southern Star, said: ‘The management and staff wish to convey their sympathies to Rosie’s family at this sad time. Her columns were always interesting and informative, and a firm favourite with our readers. They were, in fact, one of the constant columns on our Life pages for more than a decade.’
