'THERE is no substitute for courage and kindness. They are the flipsides of the coin called wisdom. And without wisdom we are truly lost." On January 2, 2011, these were some of the final words in Patricia Redlich's reflection on the contents of her mailbag in the previous year.

At the start of a new year, traditionally, she looked back at the letters received in the previous 12 months, ascertained overriding, even universal, themes and gave us pause to address ourselves as a people. And there was courage and kindness in her words, as well as, in great doses, her irreplaceable wisdom.

On July 3, 2011, "Dear Patricia" appeared in this section of the Sunday Independent for the last time. It was a loss felt immediately for those who habitually turned first to page six every week, a habit that spanned gender and generation divides. Slowly, among friends and colleagues, it became known that Patricia was unwell, then seriously unwell and then, finally, that she was dying. On August 31, Patricia died, at home in Waterford, with her husband Val, just as she had wished. In death, as in life, she was brave and decisive and full of courage and kindness.

She said goodbye to those who mattered, she located herself in the home she had lovingly created and tended, and she planned her own funeral of music and words and many laughs. Patricia -- as her readers always understood, in no uncertain terms -- believed that in order to live, or die, the way you wanted that you then had to take charge and take responsibility, and that is what she did. She lived by her own advice right up to the end, not without utterly human moments of anger or regret, but she took responsibility for those, too.

In reflecting on "Dear Patricia" in 2011, there are obvious considerations. There is the fact that there are only six months of published letters to assess. There is the fact that we do not know about the letters Patricia received and chose not to publish. And there is the fact that no one can bring Patricia's decades of wisdom and learning to the letters we saw on those six months of pages. Still, what those six months brought to her and what she brought to them remain worthy of reflection.

In January of last year, Patricia wrote, "so what's new?" when she assessed that sex was the dominant theme of 2010. And, plus ca change, as 2011 threw up more recurring themes of sexual betrayal, lack of sexual interest and what amounted to a general theme of long-term relationships in which denial of sex and distance and coldness were eating away at Irish people. The death of sex in marriages and long-term relationships was something about which Patricia felt strongly, not least because it was something her mailbag threw at her constantly.

At one time, in fact, she suggested that the Sunday Independent should run a special project and a telephone poll on the subject, focusing specifically on how women, after the age of 40, begin to withdraw sexually. Patricia believed that it was one of the biggest discoveries of her work and she felt driven to address it, and firmly believed that women should be prevailed upon to be prepared to have sex with their husbands twice a week. Not willing, that was too woolly a word for what Patricia meant, but prepared.

Last year, as in previous years, Patricia's advice stuck true to her conviction that marriage is a contract of which sex is a crucial part. She accepted that there were celibate marriages, but these were contracts in which that was openly agreed, not where people withdrew from each other and ceased communicating on the subject. The lack of ability to communicate regarding sex was a recurring theme, and Patricia called people on it.

When, last year, she answered letters where a person didn't fancy their spouse anymore, but instead felt attracted to their boss, she called that a choice on their part and encouraged them to think through that choice. When a letter-writer explained how her husband would not have sex with her after her original refusal of intercourse with him after their baby's birth, Patricia encouraged her to look at why she initiated the sexual distance in the first place. People wrote to her about affairs with horrible consequences, about looking outside their homes for succour and a sense of being wanted, and she encouraged them, time and again, to address why home was no longer their refuge. And to take responsibility for their part in the failings and the froideur.

But when it came to matters of home, the economy had an undeniable effect on the extent to which people felt trapped. There were people in fear of losing the roof over their heads if they left their marriages, the value of their homes having plummeted since they purchased, and people who felt the strain of unemployment was too much for their marriages to take. Had Patricia continued to answer letters into late 2011, one has to wonder if this would have become a greater issue. Her answer, as always, was to do what was right for themselves and for their family. She told them to stand tough on financial issues, but to do so fully confident that the driving force was the quest to find emotional satisfaction and stability.

The corrosiveness of unhappiness -- outside of worries about money or employment -- was something that gave Patricia great concern. She counselled people on how they allowed their unhappiness to play out, whether passively, through resentment, or through great outward anger, and called on them to take ownership of the effect it had. She never, not even in financially straitened times, encouraged anyone to stay in a relationship that made them irreparably unhappy but she advised them to make a decision and live with it. Conscious claiming of a position, she always said, made that position easier to bear.

Patricia was all about living the best life you could, about your duty to yourself. Readers would write in bemoaning vexing spouses, children and in-laws and Patricia would tell them to take a look at themselves, their own boundaries and reactions to this problem, because these were the only things they could change. She said it time and again; you can't change others, only yourself; you can't be made happy by others, only by yourself and you can't lament the life you have, you can only make the best of it. And you have a responsibility to make the best of it.

One of her ambitions was to write a secular canon, a moral code for people who did not believe in God. She was moral to the core, she cared deeply and wrote passionately, about her fears that society lacked a moral code and though she did not shape it as a book, "Dear Patricia" was her canon.

There was the sense in 2011 that people did not know where to turn. For a generation now all grown up, the church has never been somewhere to seek solace, and now, as the underpinning of a stable economy and the relative peace of mind of financial security were whipped away, Irish people felt exposed. Their unhappiness seemed more acute and their sense of carrying their concerns alone, with no one to talk to, was magnified. Worst of all, those who wrote to Patricia last year felt that those to whom they should feel close were the people from whom they were most disconnected. And they felt defeated by that, they felt like failures and hopeless with it.

On the ongoing taboo of denied sex, Patricia exhorted readers to reach out to each other and communicate as the only way out of the deadlock, and, equally, she believed the only way out of unhappiness was to face it and take ownership of it.

Further, the postbag saw many letters from parents worrying about their adult children and the choices they made or failed to make. Mothers worried about sons who were being controlled by their wives or wives-to-be, hoping perhaps, in the latter case, for advice on putting a stop to the wedding plans. Mothers also worried about daughters juggling too much, 21st-Century style -- job, home, children -- and winding up with no life to call their own. And then there was the financial stress of Irish adult children, those who were returning from flats or houses they could no longer afford, those who came looking for loans or bailouts, those who left marriages and came back to mammy and daddy. Patricia's fundamental position on all of these was the same; grown-up children are adults and should be treated as such and to treat them otherwise was to deny them the ability to take responsibility for themselves.

Parenthood was something Patricia took very seriously. A mother herself to a son, Alex, she had been a single parent for a lot of his childhood, having left his native Germany for her native Ireland after separating from his father. She took her role very seriously and was very focused on Alex achieving all he wanted and was capable of, and she worked hard at allowing him to be a self-determining adult. That, she believed, was a parent's job. To love, to cherish, to equip that child to find their place in the world without you. Not easy, but not something to be shirked. No more than she believed that children should exist for their parents' happiness, neither did she believe that parents' should be forever responsible for the happiness of their children. And so, when adult children asked to return home, Patricia said to their parents, take them in as a lodger, for a set period and then set them free again. She said listen to them, understand them, embrace them, but don't fight their battles or they'll never have a real life. And neither will the parents, for that matter.

In 2011, there was an underlying sense in the letters to Patricia that a lot of people felt that life was running away from them, that less and less of it was within their control. The big issues, such as the state of the Irish economy and the state of the world in general, fed a feeling that everything was falling apart, and this exaggerated any personal sense of chaos or crisis. In this climate, for six months at least, Patricia functioned to bring her readers' focus back to that which they could control, namely themselves. And then, for Patricia personally, came that one thing that none of us can fully control or fend off forever.

Patricia Redlich celebrated her 70th birthday as 2010 came to a close. She entered into 2011 having made considerable, enviable, peace with the decisions of her life and the consequences of them. She had, by the start of 2011, thrown a couple of birthday parties, with carefully chosen groups, and she intended to celebrate with more of her broad-ranging band of friends and family. She had plans and she had hopes and she had done a lot of work on finding that balance that is crucial in later life, of looking backwards and forwards with some clarity.

And then she got sick. It wasn't fair, she felt that unfairness and she dealt with it admirably. In essence, she walked the walk of the talk she had talked. She didn't pretend that it was easy, but Patricia never peddled that illusion to anyone that she advised.

On January 2 of 2011, Patricia Redlich signed off on 2010 with: "Thank you. And take care." She was grateful for what people shared with her of their lives and the opportunity to attempt to help them in some way and her wish that they would take care was not a throwaway salutation. She meant it in the deepest sense. She meant that we should take care of ourselves first, because without doing that, we can care for no one else. She meant that we should cherish those we sincerely love, instead of wasting time on resentment and anger that must be dealt with in order to actually feel and convey that love. She meant that we should be careful, too, because things slip away too easily if we don't. And life, above all else, slips away too fast.

Now, in 2012, there will be someone to answer again your correspondence and concerns and crises in the Sunday Independent. But you won't replace Patricia. You can't.

- Sarah Caden