Siobhan O’Keeffe has answered the call of two vocations in her life, firstly to work as a nurse and now to join a religious order
IN OUR X Factorage many children are obsessed with the concept of becoming pop stars but when Siobhan O'Keeffe was a youngster she vividly remembers wanting to be an air hostess or a member of An Garda Síochána.
Then as a young teenager she spent a short spell in the North Infirmary hospital in Cork. Mature beyond her years, O’Keeffe found herself observing how nurses treated patients and she was particularly impressed by the care meted out to one very ill elderly lady with whom she shared a ward.
At 15, the Donoughmore, Co Cork native thought that nursing could be an option for her and she signed up for a first aid course with the Irish Red Cross. O’Keeffe also considered enrolling for primary teaching. Weighing up her options, the one certainty was that her job would be people oriented.
O’Keeffe decided on nursing as it is very much a “social calling” and she felt she was a “people person”. She spent six months as an assistant at a hospital in Cork before heading to Liverpool to pursue her studies there.
In 1980 aged 18, she started her course at Walton Hospital in Liverpool and immediately felt at home in what was then regarded as “Ireland’s second capital”.
“It is so much easier when you go to a city that appreciates Ireland and welcomes you. Liverpool was very challenged economically at the time, but it was a good place to be. We were a nice group and I still have friends from that time.”
O’Keeffe trained in Liverpool for three years before she took up work at St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney, London. She was completely convinced that palliative care was the correct route for her to pursue.
Such was the strength of her conviction that assisting the dying was her calling that she hopped on a train to London and asked for a job at the hospice, having read about the facility in a Sacred Heart Messengerher mother had lying around the house in Cork.
“I just felt called. What must they have thought at the hospice when I turned up out of the blue and asked for a job? I think it was about listening to a call within a call and not being afraid to take a chance. I had no idea this would work out, but I just knew I had to do it.”
The young nurse felt incredibly privileged to be able to assist the dying in their last hours. Many people would feel despair at witnessing up to a couple of people passing away every day, but O’Keeffe liked helping others through this “sacred time”, and had a bond with the bereaved and the dying.
However, even with her love of her job O’Keeffe always had a calling to religious life. In 1986, she explored the idea of a vocation with a particular congregation, but she felt her heart wasn’t totally in it.
She did an amount of soul searching at the time and became active in parish life in London, working as a volunteer with the homeless and as a catechist in her local church. As the 1990s came to an end she felt it was time to decide on what was her heart’s “deepest desire”.
“People began to wonder, ‘Why aren’t you getting married?’. Even when I went out with people I didn’t want to mess them around. I knew ultimately that I wouldn’t get married. Deep down I felt the religious life was my true vocation.”
In 2000, O’Keeffe decided to enter the convent and finally took her vows this summer in Cork. She is now based in Dagenham in Essex. Prior to taking her vows she spent time working in Limerick, Cardiff and Zambia.
In Zambia, she spent nine months working on a project for people with HIV. She found it “sobering and humbling” to spend time in a country where people routinely die at a young age from such preventable illnesses as malaria.
O’Keeffe was professed in to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary in a ceremony at the Sacred Heart Convent in Blackrock, Cork, last month. It was a long road for the Cork woman as she spent one year as a postulant, two years as a novitiate and six years on temporary vows.
Sr O’Keeffe was joined at the ceremony by her two brothers, two sisters, nieces, nephews and friends. Also at the profession was her uncle who has spent the last 55 years in Japan on mission as a Columban Father.
O’Keeffe says she was always aware of a “calling in to a deep relationship with God and service of the poor”. The profession of her vows was a joyous occasion not only for herself but for the many Sacred Heart sisters who have not witnessed such a ceremony for many years.
O’Keeffe urges anyone who is being called to religious life to reflect upon and pray about the possibility of making a vocation.
“Even at the age of 15 I was aware of a calling. I met very good sisters and the gospels also spoke to me. I feel a great sense of joy and fun. I would encourage people who have a feeling about a vocation to take the time to reflect and not to be afraid to explore it.”
