When Maddie Kelly, who has died aged 102, was three years old, her father became excited by events in Dublin and drove from his Co Monaghan home towards the capital.
Stopped at a road block near Ashbourne, Co Meath, he held his little daughter up to show her the flames leaping on the horizon. It was Easter 1916 and the city was ablaze.
Sister Madeleine Kelly was born in 1912, the year that Britain introduced a home rule bill for Ireland. Her 102-year life spanned Irish independence, a civil war, two world wars, the moon landing, and changes to everyday life greater than those encountered by any previous generation.
Her father, Eddie Kelly, had the politics bug. For many years he was chairman of Monaghan County Council and served one Dáil term as a Fianna Fáil TD, thereafter switching to Fine Gael. From then on he was known locally as "Twister Kelly", a nickname he enjoyed so much he used it on election posters.
Father and daughter enjoyed poetry. A shared favourite was Kipling's If, with its opening lines: "If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you …"
Maddie Kelly attended St Louis Convent School, Monaghan, and became a sister of St Louis in 1932. She went on to teach music, religion and Latin in Balla (Co Mayo), Kilkeel (Co Down), Carrickmacross, Rathmines (Dublin), Monaghan, Ballymena (Co Antrim), Bundoran (Co Donegal) and Bury St Edmunds (England).
A short plumpish woman, her stubby fingers looked unlikely to make an octave on the piano, but appearances were deceptive. She played well and her music also included violin, choral work and orchestra. When she first became a nun, she was known as Sister Cordelia but changes following the second Vatican Council saw her revert to her own name.
Her pupils became friends. One such was novelist Josephine Hart, whom she taught at the St Louis school in Carrickmacross. Hart, who also directed plays for the London stage and was married to advertising tycoon Maurice Saatchi, kept in contact with her old teacher until she died aged 69 from cancer in 2011.
Maddie Kelly made full use of her pensioner's free travel pass. When Roddy Doyle's The Commitments opened in Dublin in 1991 she straightaway got on the Dublin bus to see it, unable to wait it for to come to a local cinema.
In fact she used the Dublin bus as if it were a local service, If she needed a spool of thread in a colour not available locally, she was off to Dublin to get it. She was a very skilled seamstress, and an aficionado of the Irish Times crossword. As her sight failed, she asked for the clues to be read out to her.
Love of poetry
Her love of poetry remained with her. Into her 90s, Palgrave’s
Golden Treasury
was much in demand as she checked her recollection of poems she had learned by heart against the original wording.
She loved entertaining. Guests at her 90th birthday party were told to come dressed 1920s style. The arrangements for her 100th birthday were strictly choreographed by her. After that her life began to close in.
Although she remained alert in mind at 102, her body began to feel the weight of the years. She had lived through strange and stirring times, and gave every sign of having relished the long journey.