Wexford woman Bernadette Delaney with her husband the late Tom Power on their wedding day

A MURRINTOWN woman whose husband died of cardiac arrest while being brought by ambulance to hospital in Cork, as adequate care facilities were not accessible to him in the South East region over the weekend, told those gathered for his funeral mass last week that Thomas Power (40) was ‘a quiet, loyal, gentle person and never had a bad word to say about anyone.’
Bernadette Power, nee Delaney, a florist working in Wellingtonbridge, was just nine months married to Mr. Power, a farmer from Bell Lake, near Dunmore East, County Waterford.
The couple were expecting their first child.
Rather than planning for the future with her new husband, however, the Wexford woman recently found herself saying an emotional goodbye to the love of her life at his packed-to-capacity funeral mass at St. Mary’s Church, Ballygunner, County Waterford.
‘He was my best friend and my soulmate. We were like two peas in a pod,’ she told those gathered.
‘If the phone rang and someone needed a hand, he was there no questions asked.
‘He was a fine, handsome, man and my God, wasn’t I a lucky woman,’ she said fondly.
‘We packed a lot into our years together and enjoyed every single day.
‘He was and still is the shining light in my heart.
‘He is magical now and will look after us every day… he was always thinking of me, right to the end.’
A scanned photograph of the couple’s baby, due to join the family in December, was among the symbols of Mr. Power’s life carried to the altar at his funeral mass.
As the County Waterford farmer’s sister Catherine had outlined on national media less than 24 hours after Mr. Power’s death, the dad-to-be would most likely have been alive to welcome his baby into the world had adequate services been accessible to him at University Hospital Waterford (UHW) on the fateful day.
Read more in the Wexford Echo.