John Arnold: At my last meeting with Sr Colette she said 'God might call me'

A 14-year-old girl walks through the fields on the farm with the sheepdog. She knows that these same fields and this farm could one day be hers.

She has been living here in Farnane Upper in Waterford with her uncle and his wife since she was five. From the Looby’s home, she had gone to the local National School in Kilbrien.

Born in Barracree on Thursday, January 31, 1918, to John Hickey and his wife Bridget Looby, the newborn girl was christened Bridget Teresa, and known as Biddy. Her parents had four other children, Annie, Mary, Kattie and James.

Their mother’s brother, Michael, had married Johanna Barry, from Bishopstown, Lismore, in 1918. They shared their home with Michael’s brother Tom and sister Minnie.

They had no family so in an age-old Irish custom, young Biddy Hickey was brought to Farnane with a view to having a relation in the place.

Years later, she’d recall going, as Alice Taylor put it, ‘to school through the fields’ and recalled the farming activities that dominated life in west Waterford. The annual tasks of shearing sheep, hay-making and the autumn thrashings.

Going ‘home’ from Kilbrien School, a local man would ask her, ‘well, how many slaps did you get today?’

Biddy enjoyed school and learning. 1932 was the year of the Eucharistic Congress in Ireland - over a million people are thought to have attended Mass in the Phoenix Park on June 26. It was on a grand, fine day that summer that young Biddy Hickey made a life-changing decision.

Out under a warm sky with the dog by her side, she got what she described as ‘a kind of a calling’.

I met her for the first time when she was 100 years old but her memory of that day was crystal clear. She told me her future could have been as a farmer - maybe a ‘match’ would be made for her, and as she said ‘the rest would be history’. She told her aunt and uncle that she wanted to join a Religious Order. Initially, they could have been disappointed, but no, they supported her in her decision.

Bridget Teresa Hickey, Sr Colette, or Auntie Biddy as she was known to her family, was a truly amazing woman. They say the Lord works in mysterious ways, and that’s pure true!

How I came to know Sr Colette Hickey was in a strange and circuitous manner. In 2007, to mark my half century of existence, I went back to Lourdes in France after an absence of 36 years. I travelled with the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage, and a regular pilgrim for many years by then was Tony O’Brien, from Ballinalacken, Kilworth.

Tony was a popular, well-known person all over Cork and west Waterford. Though suffering from MS with years, he never complained, was always on the go, and was just such a positive person to meet.

He was an organiser, fundraiser, activist and entertainer. In Lourdes he became famous for his friendship, his positivity, his engaging smile, and vice-like handshake.

Tony was ‘the voice of Lourdes’ with his beautiful recording of The Village Of St Bernadette. Before I went to Lourdes, I knew him from meeting him in Fermoy and Kilworth over the years.

In 2007, 2008, and I think 2010, Tony was still able to travel to Lourdes - oh, what times we had there. Then, in his last years he was unable to travel but still had a huge interest so I visited him at home with all the news.

Amongst his legion of friends and callers, I met Bernie and Phil Hutchings, and though Tony died in January, 2013, many of his friends became my friends.

Phil often mentioned her aunt – Auntie Biddy, Sr Colette Hickey, and asked would I like to meet her. Never a ‘no’ person, I travelled one evening with the Hutchings to Baile an Aoire in Montenotte where the Good Shepherd Sisters were based.

Well, I was stunned to meet this 100 year old Waterford woman - and proud to be from the Decies - so active with such a brilliant mind and radiating with love. That was just over eight years ago and wasn’t I the lucky person to have made such a friendship with a wonderful lady?

Her memory was crystal clear on every aspect of her life - and what a life she had.

When she made up her mind to become a nun in the 1930s, there were huge numbers joining all religious vocations - priests, brothers and nuns. She had to undergo a Medical Examination and a ’murmur‘ in her heart was detected. For many a person, this might have put an end to future plans of a life of giving to others. Biddy Hickey was undaunted.

She joined the Good Shepherd Sisters in Limerick in 1935 - her sister Mary was also a Good Shepherd Sister with the name in religion of Sr Roch.

The world was at war when Sr Colette Hickey arrived in Sunday’s Well in Cork where she worked in the Convent bake-house and kitchen. She was a tireless worker for the underprivileged and the needy.

In 1972, when she was 54 years old, Sr Colette saw a huge need in Cork city for a place of refuge for women and children in emergency family situations. At 14, Dyke Parade, she founded Edel House, a haven of safety and peace that provided emergency accommodation for both women and children.

This service grew as the need demanded and relocated to different premises over the years.

Twenty-one years after Edel House began, Sr Colette became the very first Cork Person of The Year and received her award from Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

With the last few years, she lived at the Bons Retirement Home at St Joseph’s Mount Desert on the outskirts of Cork city. I consider myself so lucky to have visited her there over the years with Phil and Bernie.

When I asked her the secret to her longevity - when she was ‘only’ 103 - she replied ‘salt’! She loved salt and would sprinkle copious amounts on her meals, and in earlier years she loved nothing better than bread and butter with salt!

Surely, I said to her, someone with a murmur in the heart should cut back on salt? She smiled, and when I told her we only use lo-cal salt, she said: “Ye might as well be using dust!” She had a great sense of humour.

Another time, she said they had a new computer in heaven to record births, deaths and marriages, and reckoned her name had been put in as ‘Already Dead’ by mistake and they’d forgotten she was still alive!

She spoke at length of the simplicity of rural life in the 1920s, the Emergency years, and what followed. She beamed even brighter when talking of Baracree, Ballynamult, Kilbrien and Touraneena.

I visited her last two days before I went to Lourdes on May 29. In mighty form, she asked Bernie to cut her fingernails as oft before. As he did so she sang a few verses of The Little Beggarman - ending with: “I must be going to bed it’s getting late at night / In goes the fire and out goes the light / Now you’ve heard the story of me aul’ rig-a-doo / Goodnight and God be with you sez aul Johnny Doo.”

As we left Mount Desert that day, I said “I’ll see you soon,” and she replied, “God might call me,” and she smiled.

Truly, she was ready to go.

Just as he called Biddy Hickey in 1932 to be a nun, God called Sr Colette Hickey home last week.

In January, her niece Mary suffered a sad bereavement when her husband Ned Ryan died - Auntie Biddy loved Ned.

It was fitting then, as we bade farewell to a saint of a woman in Kilcully last Friday, that a recording of Ned singing The Village Schoolroom Of Kilbrien was played;

As I gaze across the sea many thoughts come back to me

Of the happy days that long ago were mine

God be with those good old days

Shining back through memory’s haze

And the little village schoolroom of Kilbrien.