New Kilkenny business is helping people keep special memories of their loved ones alive

ABOVE: Gill Round and Mag O’Neill, founders of the Red Robin Memory Bears, a company which fashions memory bears and cushions from a loved one’s clothes

Losing a loved one is heartbreaking, and keeping their memory alive is important. Two Kilkenny women who know only too well the impact of this loss are now channelling their talents into a craft to help remember the loved ones we have lost.

Gill Round and Mag O’Neill have been friends for ‘donkey’s years’ but the events of the last few years have brought them even closer - both women lost their husbands to cancer in the space of three weeks.

Gill was married to Peter Round, and she grew up on the same street as Mikey O’Neill, who was married to Mag.
Mikey was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare cancer. After five years of treatment he died in March 2022, in his early 50s.
In a sad coincidence, Peter was also diagnosed with cancer. He had a blastoma, brain cancer, and 13 months after diagnosis he too died - just three weeks after Mikey - in April 2022.

“The four of us were good friends,” said Gill. “We had breakfasts together between the chemotherapy and radiotherapy, we tried to live as normally as we could.”
This was also during Covid, so it was hard for them.
Gill and Mag were a support to each other during this time, as were Peter and Mikey, who were both going through the same thing. The couples had always been great friends and this was something that tied them even closer together. Their friendships were a good thing in a bad situation.

Mikey was very well known in Kilkenny. He was involved with O’Loughlin Gaels GAA club and worked as a milkman and oil delivery man. Peter was the opposite, a quiet man. But they became friends and had each other through their illnesses.

After Mikey died, Mag wanted to have memory bears made for their four grandchildren from Mikey’s clothes. It’s a craft popular in some countries, but she wasn’t able to find anywhere close to home that could create the particular idea that she had, and in time for last Christmas.

Mag had been a seamstress for more than 20 years, had trained in London and ran a successful business of her own, until she devoted her time to looking after Mikey, when he was ill. So she decided to make the bears herself. “They were gorgeous,” Gill said.

It was then Mag said to Gill that there might be something in the craft.
“It’s very difficult when you have your husband’s clothes hanging in the wardrobe,” said Gill. “You can’t keep them forever, but you don’t know what to do with them. It’s a hard part of the grieving process.”

Mag, who lives in Jenkinstown, suggested they start making the memory bears for more people.
Meanwhile, after Peter passed away Gill couldn’t go back to her old job. She and Peter had worked in the same place together for 20 years, and it was too difficult to return.
With her background in business, and Mag’s experience as a seamstress, the idea for the business formed. It took a while to happen, as the women were dealing with their own grief, and doing research into what the business could be.

But six weeks ago they decided ‘now or never’ and began with new pages on Facebook and Instagram.
Even in those weeks the pair have been very busy.
In Kilkenny a lot of their work comes from ‘word of mouth’ recommendations. Click NEXT to read more and for more photographs.