There’s an inscription on Noreen Maher’s kitchen wall: “Make the most of life while you can”. They were her father’s parting words and the mantra he taught her to live by.
Right now, she’s doing him proud.
Having decided to take early retirement following an illness, Noreen’s life is arguably more fulfilling now than ever, giving her the freedom to turn a longstanding passion, genealogy, into a satisfying small business.
She grew up in Tipperary and left school in 1977. She joined the Civil Service at 18 and met her future husband, Tom, soon after. While it was an exciting time personally, financially it was difficult.
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“In those days we were struggling to think how we were going to afford a place to live on our wages,” she recalls.
Then, within a few months of getting married, Tom was made redundant. “This was in 1987 and he was job hunting and nothing was showing up. We were still renting so we packed up, I took a career break, and we moved to London,” she says.
They landed good jobs, with Noreen progressing to a supervisory role, but when they had their son the draw to come home grew stronger. They returned just in time for the millennium celebrations of 2000.
Within weeks both secured jobs, with Noreen taking up a position with ComReg, the communications regulator, which she loved.
“It was a great place to work with good benefits, so I stayed there for 24 years,” she explains.
Unfortunately, life had other plans.
Her health problems had begun five years earlier, with back pain. “I had x-rays and physio and nothing was improving. By Christmas 2019 I was in really bad pain, so I went back to my GP and said ‘Look, there’s something wrong here,” she recalls.
An MRI revealed she was right. She had a tumour on her spine and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
By now the entire country had been plunged into the pandemic and she embarked on a difficult series of hospitalisations under severe visitor restrictions, a lonely time.
“It was a difficult time in terms of isolation but in Covid everybody was kind of in the same boat, staying at home, so I was able to concentrate on my recovery. I was also very lucky because, my employment package included income continuance insurance,” she explains.
That took the financial pressure off. “It gave me breathing space,” she says.
As she recovered she helped care for her father too, by now a widower.
“He lived with one of my sisters but we’d bring him to my house during the day and I’d spend the day with him, before he went into a nursing home,” she says.
Her father died in February 2023, aged 91, a huge loss. “He just had a great attitude to life. He was always involved in things. If something needed to be done, or a committee formed, he’d be chairperson before you knew it. He was just a doer. I was always very proud that he was my Dad.”
Some years prior to her illness, she had enrolled on a part-time course in genealogy, going on to secure a diploma in the field, enabling her to become a professional genealogist.
“My mother-in-law had died, the last of her family, and our son was the youngest grandchild. I wished we had asked her more, which is why I ended up doing the course,” she explains.
She ended up building a genealogy website and providing services to others on a hobby basis. “I just got the bug,” she says.
“The good thing about genealogy is that you can do it from the laptop in the evenings and weekends. I got a huge buzz from it but had to put it all aside when I became ill,” she recalls.
By the time she had recovered, and her father had passed, her entire outlook had changed.
Much as she enjoyed her career, she no longer wanted to go back.
She applied for, and received, early retirement.
“My whole perspective on life had changed and I just wanted to follow my passion and do my genealogy. So I just thought, I’m going to go for it,” she says.
“I knew I had my pension. Our mortgage was paid off, our son had finished college, and my husband had already retired. I knew I would be okay,” she says.
Now she says it’s the best decision she ever made. Her business is growing and she loves being her own boss. “If I want to meet friends for coffee at 11am on a Tuesday, I can,” she laughs.
She and Tom have been enjoying life to the fullest, including stints at the Barcelona Grand Prix and to the south of France, to see St Paul de Vence, a village famed for its artists, another of her interests.
“We do all sorts of spur of the moment things too. If we go to a concert in the Three Arena, we’ll stay at the Gibson Hotel afterwards rather than jam onto the train home afterwards,” she explains.
She has continued with further education too, completing a certificate in oral history.
Her advice to anyone heading towards retirement is to have a sense of purpose. “You need something that gets you up in the morning, whether it’s walking clubs or exercise groups or your local community centre. I’m a great advocate for doing courses too,” she says.
For her it has proven a very happy phase.
“For so many of my Dad’s generation, people used to work too hard, literally until they dropped. We need to put more thought into it now because people are living longer,” she says.
“If you retire at 60, and you’re lucky, you’ve still got a quarter of your life left to live. You need to plan for that, to ensure the quality of that life.” Or as her Dad would say, to make the most of it.
From unexpected changes to new beginnings, explore what being ready for retirement could mean for you with Standard Life at standardlife.ie
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Second Lives, brought to you by Standard Life, explores the many different ways life can unfold in retirement, through the stories of people living it.
