INSIDE STORY: Rachel's keeping it real

INSIDE STORY This week Cavan’s Rose RACHEL CUSACK has donned her sash and headed for the Kingdom to represent the county. Here she recalls her big moment of winning the Cavan Rose, what prompted her to enter the world famous pageant, and her chances of winning...

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If you’re rolling your eyes at a pageant queen pictured with cute animals – the corny idea wasn’t the Cavan Rose’s, it was the Celt’s suggestion to go with the old cliché – and yeah, while we’re sure she wants world peace as much as the rest of us, the topic didn’t come up. The pet farm idea was to meet Rachel Cusack in her home village of Killinkere, and what better local landmark than Killinkere Vistor Farm run by the hospitable O’Reilly clan?
Over the course of the morning we learned a few things about Rachel: she’ll give anything a go. It mightn’t work out, but any requests are met with a cheerful ‘ah sure why not’ shrug. Hence photographer requests to - leap up on that horse, scratch that goat’s head, cuddle those rabbits and let’s go into the pen to feed the deer - were all happily acceded to. Having never been this close to a deer, and the deer having never been this close to a Rose, or indeed any human being, (we later discovered no one’s allowed in the pen) it went surprisingly well. The deer - called John - liked Rachel, or more especially the carrots she fed him from her nervous hands (she was mightily relieved to get out of the pen in one piece and without getting her fingers bucked up). When it emerged the photographer wasn’t quite happy with the pix and suggested she go back in for more, a deep breath to gain the courage to once more give it her all and Rachel was back with another fistful of carrots.
It was the kind of have-a-go spirit that saw her first enter the Cavan Rose. Having returned from Australia where she had worked as an oncology nurse, she took a notion and filled out the application form.
“Something just told me, go and do something exciting now you’re home in Ireland and all your friends are in Australia. So that evening last year after the Rose of Tralee, I just entered myself and I never told anyone, because I honestly didn’t expect anything to come from it. I suppose I was wrong.”
She wasn’t the only one wrong. The half-time break at the Cavan selection night came not long after Rachel had finished her onstage interview, and her brothers Ciaran and Phelim approached wondering if she’d mind if they headed on as the younger of the two was tired.
“I was like ‘Go on’, because there’s nothing really going to happen, so I sent the two of them home.”
Rachel had picked her own winners from the line-up of Cavan hopefuls and was waiting for one of them to be called out as the Breffni Rose, but it wasn’t the names she was expecting that the MC announced.
“I didn’t believe it at all. Because there were two Rachels. They went, ‘Rahy-chel!’ and I didn’t hear the second name, so I kind of stood around looking, and then they all started looking at me. And you know the confetti bursts then and I got such a fright I jumped – I was like ‘Jesus’ and the rest of that night was a blur, it was so mental loads of people were coming up to me – it was crazy.”
The attention is something that she’s been getting used to in the months since her crowning. Even the kids at the pet farm were giddy upon being introduced to the Cavan Rose. She finds the attention and well wishing “a little bit overwhelming”.
“I feel a little bit of pressure as well – oh God, I hope I do okay, I don’t want to let these people down who are so excited for me. And even at Mass, he [the priest] mentioned it when we were at the Blessing of the Graves – I was like ‘Oh dear God I can’t even go to Mass’,” she says with a laugh recalling that she went as red as the crimson door beside us when the priest joked, ‘If I was 40 years younger’.
“When you hear Cavan Rose you don’t expect to be like, oh where is she? It’s a weird feeling, but it’s lovely, and I think the nicest part of it is how proud mam and dad are.”
There’s a limit though to how much of her parents - Kieran and Eileen - joy Rachel will indulge, as they found out on the way to Enniskillen for a Cavan match.
“Mam and dad wanted me to wear the sash, and I was like: Not. A. Hope. Am I wearing it. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be wearing it, I don’t want to be going around – ‘Oh, I’m the Cavan Rose.’ I’m just as plain as they come.”
Plainness is in the eye of the beholder as they say, but the fact that she was crowned Cavan Rose suggests that she’s not one bit plain. When it emerges that she is one of a handful of Roses to have been picked for a photo shoot with VIP magazine, she modestly dismisses the implied compliment with: “I’d say we were picked out of a hat or something.”
The Celt wonders aloud how important beauty is for the Rose judges.
“I don’t know, honestly I think it’s more on personality, on what you’ve achieved in life and how you are as a person - I sup pose they want to pick that kind of person to represent your county.”

 

 

Being ‘real’
Supping a cuppa tae in the pet farm’s cafe Rachel mulls over the question more, before settling on:
“I think you have to be genuine. I think you can go and make up 10 million things you’ve done in life, but I think it will show.”
Being genuine is a recurring feature of the chat. For instance she rejects the notion of daydreaming on answers to questions Daithí might pose insisting that if she had rehearsed answers she wouldn’t come across as “real”.
That she comes across as very genuine may in part be down to her job. She qualified in general nursing in Dundalk in 2014, and worked in Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda for nearly a year and a half. In Australia, she spent six months as general nurse and was trained up in oncology, discovering in the process her life’s calling. On her return to Ireland she got an oncology nurse job in Galway Clinic. The 26-year-old hopes to undertake a post grad in oncology in UCD this year, and then hopefully then a masters – which would enable her to become a clinical nurse specialist in oncology and work on a chemotherapy dayward.
“You learn from it - literally, that life is so precious, and just to go and enjoy life,” says Rachel. “And they are the most positive patients I have ever met in my whole life. They could be terminally ill but nothing will faze them – they are always so optimistic when you go into them... But they are more positive and have a good outlook on life and the are kind of giving you advice – go do this, go do that. And I suppose that kind of spurred me on as well to go for this: there’s young women who are only a few years older than me who are in there with terminal illnesses.”
She accepts that it can be emotional demanding.
“Some days you can go in and have a lovely day and you are looking after patients whose treatments are working and things look good for them - that’s a great side of it. But yes it can be very emotional, there is a lot of palliative care on the ward, so people are passing away and that can be very very emotional – so I’ve had probably a good few tough cases – younger women as well. You can relate to them.”
She finds herself having a quasi-counselling role in her nursing role.
“If families are upset after their loved one has passed away, you have to be there for them, even if it is just a case of holding their hand through it.”

Supporting patients and families
Sometimes patients may also be more willing to open up to a nurse than burdening loved ones.
“When their family go home then they get upset to you sometimes and tell you exactly what’s bothering them at that minute, it might be the case that their will isn’t done and they are worrying about that, and we’ll take on the role and do that for them to lessen their worries – they have enough to be worrying about.
“It’s a very very tough job but I think I’m made for it - you know when you are in the right field and you are getting such great feedback from families, so many families have commented on how well I’ve managed. Passing away isn’t easy but the families comment on how much easier I made it for them. At the end they are like – ‘I’ll never forget you and you gave him such a peaceful passing’ – some things like that stick with you and it drives you on to study more.”
Given it must be the type of job that can get on top of you, the Celt wonders how Rachel protects herself?
She is very complimentary of the support she receives from her colleagues on the ward – “everyone’s in the same boat” and avails of counselling services for staff. “I can see that. My mam sometimes worries about me. She says, ‘Why are you in such an intense job so young?’ and I’m like ‘if I didn’t feel like I was managing, I would take a step back and maybe go into something like chemotherapy where they are giving the treatment’, but at the minute I think I’m handling it fairly well.
“It’s okay to have a cry - if someone passes away - with the family. It is sad and it is emotional and you don’t have to bottle it up. Obviously you control yourself and you don’t let the family see if you are really upset, but, no I think I’m managing it well because I go out and learn from the experiences – the young women in there, they would obviously love to be doing something like this – it just gives me such a positive outlook on life, and it’s only for that I think I’m definitely more outgoing and going for things more and just enjoying life to the full.”
It seems almost incongruous to discuss something so trivial as the Rose of Tralee in the same breath as Rachel’s work. But then, everything is trivial in comparison. It probably helps to keep her grounded. What’s the hopes of becoming the Rose of Tralee?
“I’ll think about that more if,” she begins.
“If I got on the telly, it would be nearly like winning. Obviously, if I was to win, it would be the cherry on the cake altogether, but sure I’ll just give it my all.”