A lady laid to rest far from the Ireland she left so long ago

Late last year, on a reporting trip in Texas, I found myself in the picturesque city of San Antonio, about three hours' drive north of the Mexican border. Faced with a free afternoon, I contacted my mother in Ireland – isn't San Antonio where Aunty Trish lives?

Trish Freeman was the last surviving sibling of nine brothers and sisters from Cullohill in Co Laois. She emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, joining a convent like many women of her generation.

After a few phone calls I found myself at the University of the Incarnate Word on the outskirts of the city. This modern university campus also houses a retirement home, church and living quarters for older nuns and lay people who come to spend their final years.

Walking in the door I was transported back to the convent schools of Ireland – the spotlessness, the hushed atmosphere of quiet industriousness, the faint rays of warm sunlight fanned out on the polished floor.

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Inside the dining hall, waiting patiently, was Aunty Trish, wearing an eye-catching colourful shirt, her hair neatly-coiffed. Now 98, she hadn’t changed much since I had seen her on her last visit to Ireland 17 years ago.

Despite being one of only two of my grandfather’s siblings to join a religious order, she had always somehow managed to be the most modern. She emailed us from Texas when the internet was in its early days, somehow insinuating to us that America – even for nuns – was a hipper place than Ireland in those pre-Celtic Tiger days.

On her visits to Ireland she would swiftly do the rounds of the extended family, directly asking her nieces and nephews how their work and studies were going, displaying a unique mix of American directness and social snobbery that characterises a certain class of Irish nun.

Old spark

Now, in this quiet hall in San Antonio, we sat and talked. Though still able to move around on her zimmer frame, she had had a fall in recent months.

But she still had her old spark.

I explained to her that I was now living in Washington and writing about Donald Trump. "You'd want to watch him," she shot back with a smile.

Our talk turned to the past, to Ireland, to her life in the United States.

Born in 1919, she left Ireland for America in 1936 at the age of 17. “We had such fun on that boat trip over,” she recalled in her distinctive Irish-American drawl, “but you know, we got into trouble for running around the boat. I mean, c’mon, it was crazy, we were only having some fun!” She told me that she was separated by the convent from her sister Bride when she arrived in America. “The thinking was that it wasn’t good to have two sisters together as we’d distract each other,” she says, raising her eyebrows with a sigh.

But her life in America and in the convent was immensely fulfilling, she said.  She began her career teaching first grade in St Louis, Missouri, then went on to Illinois, before moving to Texas where she rejoined Bride. Many of her students were Mexican immigrants, and she was passionate about the power of education. “Praise a child and they’ll give you the world,” she once said to my mother, who was training to be a teacher.

I asked her had she any regrets about leaving Ireland. “Not at all,” she said definitively. “America gave me a wonderful life.”

‘Dreadful’ Trump

As we joined the other nuns for tea, the talk – like everywhere in the US – turned to Donald Trump. "He is simply dreadful," said one sister, originally from Co Galway, as she poured the tea. Another nun, Dublin-born, spoke about Barack Obama. "He was such a kind, kind man. A man of compassion," she said to sighs of agreement from her friends.

As the sun began to set, we walked outside to a small cemetery. There, under the cool shade of a huge oak tree, lay the grave of Trish's sister, Bride, my grandaunt who died in the 1960s. Stretching in neat, simple rows were the graves of dozens of Irish women, from Galway, Dublin, Kerry, Wexford.

Looking out at the quiet, peaceful scene, I thought of those women lying so far from where they started out in life, departing an Ireland that now seems unrecognisable to a woman of my generation.

Last week we got the call to say that Sr Trish had passed away, surrounded by her fellow sisters who had kept vigil through the night. She had not quite reached her 100th year, but like many Irish emigrants, she had made her own mark on America. She will be buried on Tuesday, her final resting place near the grave of her sister and friends, in the grounds of a San Antonio convent.