Lily

Elizabeth Mary O’Hanlon (Lily) was my great aunt. She was born in 1917 in New Ross, the second youngest of four, younger sister to my maternal grandmother. Her father died of a heart attack in his mid 50s while driving over the bridge in the centre of New Ross when Lily was about 21. 

Lily was very involved in my mother’s upbringing, as were all the O’Hanlons. There are photos of my mum as a baby on the beach with Lily, who is wearing a full length wool coat and headscarf. My mum lived with my granny, my great granny and Lily in Wicklow and then in Dublin until she got married. When my parents got married, my granny moved in with them and Lily cared for my great granny. After my great granny passed away, Lily worked as a priest’s house keeper for a time. She never married or had any children. Her and my mum remained very close and she was a constant feature in our family. 

We knew her affectionately as Lil. We were close to her growing up, closer in some ways than our own grandmother. I remember being confused that other kids didn’t have a Lil in their lives. She was a constant and often complicated presence, with her sturdy shoes, thick rimmed glasses, sharp tongue, big heart and multitude of cardigans. When I was small, I associated her with being on the phone, her orange Mini, and arriving at our house with sweets. Apparently I used to pick up the phone and yell ‘Hi Lil, bing beets in beepy car’. 

Lily lived for many years in a little granny flat in Ballinteer, built as part of a housing project for single older people by Cabhrú housing in 1971. I remember the hanging beads that formed the door into the tiny kitchen, the dark narrow hallway, the single bed against the wall in the sitting room, the single chair in front of the television, the Spanish dancer figurines that took pride of place on the shelf. I remember the steep concrete stairs – stairs that in time Lily could no longer manage –  that lead to the balcony. I used to go and stay with her for a few nights every summer from the age of about 9 , which was always a big excitement. I remember holding her hand walking to Superquinn and Lil buying me a massive cream bun. I remember the other old women making a fuss of me and that there would always be some sort of beef going on between them all. To me, they were about 500 years old but in hindsight were probably all in their early 70s. I remember Lily sitting me down when I was about 10 and telling me firmly never to bother with men, that they were all no good. 

We would visit regularly throughout my childhood and teens, something I both loved and dreaded because while I loved Lily, she was not always easy, and she could be harsh on an already awkward teenager. Her and my granny would fight like cats and dogs. We came home from holidays one year when Lily had come to stay with my granny to find the pair of them locked in a stubborn silence that seemed to have lasted for days. Lily was fond of vodka, and could have an acerbic tongue at times. There was more than one family event where she hit the vodka and dished out some healthy insults. As Lily got older, her arthritis got worse and eventually she had to move into supported living and eventually into full time care at Leopardstown Hospital. In 2002 she had a stroke and died shortly after. We were convinced that she made a decision to die once she realised the future that lay ahead of her after the stroke. And that would be fitting for Lily; stubborn, independent and not ever wanting to be a burden on anyone. We all saw her before she died, as did all her nieces and nephews, but in the end she died alone. She left very little to her name; a watch that my brother has and a brooch that my Mum has. The Spanish figurines had made it as far as the supported housing, but I don’t know where they ended up. 

In the way that children do, I never questioned Lily’s role in my life. She was in our home often, and would come on holidays with us. In hindsight she must have been a real support for my Mum raising the four of us. Every year she would make a huge traditional Christmas cake that none of us liked and that would still be doing the rounds at Easter time. She would make meringue, cakes and tarts.  My great granny was a baker and Lily had clearly picked up much of her talent. Like all the O’Hanlons, she was an avid and talented golfer and was ladies captain of Woodenbridge golf club. 

I did wonder why she had never married, but I didn’t think too much about it, in the way that children have of just accepting people as they are. While I was not necessarily aware of it, I think on some level I always felt sad for Lily. Even as a small child, I could sense the loneliness of her life, a life in which she was clearly not happy. It was never spoken about, in the way that was standard for that generation. As I grew up, I remember thinking more and more that, much and all as I loved her, I did not want my life to mirror hers. It’s not that she was alone, more so that she was so clearly not content. 

I have come to see Lily in a softer light over the years. I see a woman who poured so much of herself into her nieces and nephews and grand nephews and nieces, who was so involved in the lives of children who were not her own. I think about what that must have felt like for her, always being surrounded by other peoples children. I think about what it must have felt like for her leaving our house, always so full of chaos and activity, to return home to the silence and solitude of her tiny flat. I wonder about her romantic life. I always had a sense that she had experienced a big heartbreak because she was very angry and bitter about men. I said this to my brothers once and they brushed it off, but I have never been able to shake the feeling that there must be a story there, that there were tender wounds not far beneath her hard exterior. 

I was at the funeral of a friend’s mother before Christmas. During one of the speeches, someone said that in her last weeks she had said to them ‘isn’t it wonderful that everything I hoped would happen in my life happened’. I thought it was such a wonderful way to think of a life lived. It made me think of Lily and how she might have looked back at her life in her final weeks, and the sadness she might have carried for all of those things she hoped would happen that did not happen. It made me think about the things I have hoped for in my life that have not happened; children, a family, a partner, and how arbitrary it all is. When my time comes, I hope I can say that I made the best of things, that I leave some sort of legacy, that I was true to myself, that I was loved in some way. But it won’t feel like the life I envisioned for myself as a 10 year old sleeping on a fold out bed in Lily’s flat.

My life and Lily’s life are very different. I have had opportunities in education and travel that Lily never had, I own my own home and I am financially independent. But in some ways, our lives do mirror each other, in some ways the fears and anxieties that her solitude brought out in me have become interwoven into my own life. I feel the chasm of loss and grief for the things she never had that I will never have. I think about all the things I never knew about Lily, all the things she never said or did or felt because of the random hand that life dealt her. I feel an empathy and a connection to that side of her that was totally hidden to my younger self, because I didn’t yet know what hand life would deal to me. Lily is the reason why I have always shunned the idea that is is just a matter of time until you find the right person. It simply doesn’t happen for everyone, in spite of what they might wish for or what efforts they might make. It didn’t happen for Lily and as the years pass, I settle into the feeling that it might not happen for me.

I feel empathy and understanding with her for what it would have felt like watching her siblings get married and have families, something that must have been even harder in Ireland of the 1940s and 1950s where women’s only acceptable role in society was to be mothers. I can imagine what went through her head as she turned the key in the door to her little flat, knowing there was no one waiting on the other side, because I often feel it when I turn the key in my own door.  I feel something of the well of loneliness that she so often sought to bury in the bottom of a glass of vodka.

Lily used to shout at the television, even going so far as to wave her stick at Gay Byrne or whoever she was raging at at the time. Mum used to pass comment that the telly was great company for her. This flashed into my head recently when my Mum commented that the dog must be great company for me. It made me sad. I wonder will I end up shouting at the television, or the dog, because I have no one to talk to. 

Lily was complicated in many ways. I wish I had understood her more, and been more sympathetic for how difficult growing old in her circumstances must have been. The main reason I want to write about Lily is to remember her. It feels so easy to be forgotten when you don’t have your own children to carry on your memory and your legacy. I don’t want that for Lily, and I don’t want that for myself. So I suppose, I also write in the hopes that some day someone will write about me simply to remember me.