It's been a year since we lost my mother, Eileen Toner - and I thought it would be nice to share this slideshow of images, including all kinds of shots... my mother with me at three months old, with her brother Joe, with Dad on their 40th anniversary, and a number of others throughout her life. Going through her papers, I'm still finding remarkable images every time.

She was a remarkable woman who went through decades of health problems and still managed to smile and radiate charm. I remember sitting across the corridor from her one afternoon as she lay on a trolley at Causeway Hospital and waited for an X-Ray appointment. Two ladies that she knew came along the corridor and saw her on the trolley, and they stopped to speak to her for a moment. Then they wished her all the best and moved on. My mother couldn't hear them by the time they passed me and they didn't know who I was, but I heard one of them whisper to the other: 'That's one real lady there...'

I recall feeling incredibly proud of that - and I couldn't resist telling her about it later, and it really made her smile, at the end of yet another difficult day. A real lady.