Deirdre Reynolds: We must never forget warrior woman Lynsey Bennett’s legacy

How news of the loss of one household name barely causes a blip, while another stops only shy of breaking your heart.

Lynsey Bennett never wanted to be a household name, yet there wasn’t a man or woman up and down the country who didn’t feel that sudden chest-twisting jolt upon hearing about her death at the age of 34 on Friday.

At first, it was the shock of a vibrant young woman given far too few decades to shine.

Then, came the wave of deep sadness for her daughters, Zoe (14) and Hailee (nine), who must now grapple with the DNA-altering experience of losing your mother, when their biggest worry in life should be what to dress up as for Halloween or what present to wish for this Christmas.

But – though it may not seem like the right time for it – there was simmering anger too over the death of the CervicalCheck campaigner who stood up to a State machine that time and time again has terminally failed women.

After all, it’s only 18 months since the young Longford mum stood on the steps of the High Court, after settling her case against the HSE over the alleged misinterpretation of her cervical smear slides, and tearfully reassured her daughters: “I hope I have done enough to secure you both a future free from financial worries, and that even with me not here to guide you that you can both pursue your dreams and remember: Mammy loves you.”

And just five years since she got the news that aggressive cervical cancer would prevent her from being there to celebrate their 18th birthdays, watch them graduate from college or wave them off at the airport as they went backpacking around the world.

Watching cancer gradually get the better of the person who brought you into the world is an especially insidious type of grief, as Lynsey knew only too well after losing her own mother to breast cancer nine years ago.

Watching them succumb to one of the more treatable and even curable forms of the disease, when caught early, knowing they did everything a woman is ‘supposed to’ by going for regular smear tests – five in seven years, in fact – and were still short changed by our ruptured health system is crueller still.

Shamefully, Lynsey is not the first or last to fight a public battle that should never have been hers.

Catherine Reck, Emma Mhic Mhathúna, Patricia Carrick, Julie Quinlan Dingivan… it’s a roll call that no woman wants to be on, but that any one of us could have been.

As a country, we owe these fallen warrior women, and those still graciously carrying the torch like Vicky Phelan and the family of Irene Teap, an unrequitable debt of gratitude.

But they must not be martyred for nothing with murals and movies either.

Using its best PR speak, our squirming government will try to console a mournful nation that these women were ‘fighters’ and not ‘victims’.

Hear this: Their unfaltering courage does not negate the fact that they were victims of a man-made scandal of the gravest kind.

So long as the words “without admission of liability” continue to be deployed, maybe the best way we can honour them, aside from going for our smear, is to continue demanding answers.

If after that, there’s enough energy left to ‘be grateful always’ as the forever positive Lynsey encouraged others on Twitter, then that’s even better.