This morning, December 7th 2021, I received an email informing me that Sister Monica Daly had died. She was 95. She had been a resident of the Mount Carmel Nursing Home, Roscrea, Tipperary, Ireland, for 8 years. Here is an extract from the email:
Sadly, Sr Monica passed away peacefully yesterday surrounded by the staff, other sisters from the order and our Chaplain. Her condition had declined significantly over the last 2 years with cardiac failure and COPD but, throughout that time, she managed to cope extremely well, continued to spend her days reading, using her IPad keeping up to date with current affairs and praying.
by her parents John and Annie, brothers Fr. Paddy (Augustinian), and Dan, sisters Sr. Mary, Sr. Alice and Una. Deeply regretted by her relatives and friends. RIP. A private funeral mass will take place in Mount Carmel Nursing Home Chapel at 3pm on Wednesday. Burial afterwards in the adjoining St. Cronans Cemetery, Roscrea.
Sister Monica was Irish. She was a nun, as far as I know, all of her adult life. For many years she was
attached to St Josephs Convent in Reading, the Roman Catholic girls secondary school at the top of our road, which my sister, Elizabeth, attended. The teachers were, I think, all nuns. Sister Monica taught German (a fact I discovered only today from a former student of hers).
The last time I spoke to Sister Monica was, fortuitously, the week before her death. I phoned the nursing home and was quickly put through. She had trouble understanding me and said she was poorly. She asked me how old I thought she was. I had forgotten and said 87. No, she replied slightly belligerently, I am 95. I told her I would write to her (I have sent her a Vietnamese postcard that she will never see), and her last words to me were: God bless.
I had lost contact with Sister Monica for almost 50 years when, out of the blue, Lilian King from Reading gave me her nursing home address and telephone number. I made contact and received an email from Sister Monica in June 2019. Here it is:
ago, you were teaching in Egypt somewhere. Please email me and tell me all about yourself and we can go from there. I am sorry this has to be short as my PC is misbehaving and I am trying to make friends with a tablet and not very successfully.
During the 1960s, Sister Monica was a frequent visitor to our house. She would pop in, on her way to and from St Josephs Convent, to talk to my mother. They had a lot both being Irish Roman Catholics. They would sit and chat, Sister Monica puffing away on one of Mums Woodbines while sipping a small glass of Mums favourite Teachers whisky. She knew me well, because I was an altar boy at St William of York and St Josephs and a member of the St Williams Youth Club that Sister Monica ran.
In those days she was known as Sister Aidan. Google informs me that ‘Aidan is an Irish girls name meaning ‘little and fiery, which is ironic because she was the opposite: strongly built, calm I have no idea why or when she changed her name.
Away from her religious duties, she ran the St William of York Youth Club and travelled with us on one, or possibly two, Youth Club holidays. I remember her driving the minibus to Keswick in the Lake District. She drove flawlessly all the way there and back until the final 100 yards: there were cars parked on both sides of Hatherley Road and, as she approached the St Josephs Convent gate, she bumped into and damaged one of them. The owner, Harry Painter, dashed out of his house and wrote down all the particulars. That was the only blemish on an otherwise excellent trip.
The other thing I remember about that Lake District holiday is canoeing without wearing a This is what we stupidly did one day and, when we returned, Sister Monica quite rightly read us the riot act, the only time I remember her raising her voice.
I am pretty sure she also escorted us on one of our Snowdon holidays. The photographs I have attached to this blog are either from Snowdonia or the Lake District.
