These pen portraits have been incredibly difficult for us family members to write for many reasons. Decades of unprocessed grief, shock, and anger. The unanswered questions. And the memories; the good ones can often be as painful as the bad.
For me there was a particular challenge. My big sister Marie died 10 days before my 5th birthday. She was my Godmother and my best pal, and she went out one night and never came back. So, I have very few memories to contribute. It's difficult to write about what someone was like in life when the few memories you have are not readily accessible, too clouded by sadness, and the passing of 42 years. I’ve been unfairly cheated out of so much. But then we all have.
What I do I remember very clearly though is the feeling I got from her; warm and caring, lively and fiercely protective.
With such limited information of my own, I reached out to the family for more. Brothers and sisters, and parents. I didn’t get a huge amount back which wasn’t unexpected. For some it’s just too upsetting. Like I said, the good memories can be as painful as the bad. But their silence told me everything. I could feel the weight of it, like a noiseless deafening scream.
What I did get from them though was an image of a kind-hearted and fun-loving person, a larger-than-life personality with a smile to match and it tied exactly with the feeling I have.
The image came into sharper focus when I reached out to extended family and friends and asked them to send some of their memories. The same words came up over and over. Beautiful. Warm. Caring. Funny. And the smile - everyone mentioned her smile.
Marie was a Christmas baby. Born exactly a week before Christmas Day, the family tradition of putting up the Christmas decorations on her birthday started then and continues to this day. She was christened Mary after our Granny Kennedy, but we never called her that – that was far too serious a name for such a character.
She had an enormous love of music, singing, and dancing from a very young age. Our Granny used to mind her when she was a toddler and would always play records for her. She loved a song by Pat Boone called Speedy Gonzales. He begins one of the lines "Hey Rosita" in a very questionable Mexican accent and Marie would have fits of giggles and our Granny would have to play it again and again and again. She was dancing almost as soon as she could walk, and started going to Irish dancing lessons when she was around 4. She loved it, won lots of medals and eventually took part in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Irish dancing her way across O’Connell Bridge in the freezing cold and pouring rain. Her legs were purple from the typical Paddy’s Day weather, but she had a ball all the same. She used to sing songs to entertain the family, and when her Grandparents took her on holiday to Butlins they entered her in a singing competition. She won, of course. She was forever making up dance routines and teaching them to us younger ones and our friends. One of our cousins specifically remembers her lining us all up to teach us how to sing and dance to The Hucklebuck. Disco music was her really her thing though. She loved the Bee Gees, the Jackson 5, Leo Sayer, and Abba. Her love of music and dancing was the reason she was in
the Stardust on that night – she wanted to see the dancing competition. She was our Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only 17.
She had a love of fashion and worked at tailoring while she went to secretarial college. She used to come home from work with her cardigan covered in feathers. Like a lot of us she adored shoes and would spend her pay on them. I remember using her high-heels to sit my dolls in, pretending to drive them around in their glamorous shoe-cars. She once turned up at our grandparents’ house wearing a pair of men’s steel toe-caped shoes. Our Granny said, "Jesus Mary and Joseph Marie, what have you got on your feet". Marie laughed at Granny tutting and shaking her head and told her "This is the fashion Nana". Our Grandad looked over his newspaper and said, "leave her alone Mary, she looks great". She looked glorious in her Aran jumper and silver jewellery, with her beautiful black hair and mischievous green eyes. Of course, then we all wanted an Aran jumper, and our poor Mother was tormented knitting them for us.
She was cheeky, fun-loving, and mischievous. She would hug our Mam from behind and call her Patsy. The two of them would smile at each other and our Mam would say "what are you looking for?". When our cousin came to visit from London, she would bunk off work so they could have fun days out in town. She pierced her friend’s ears – they were crooked. She also accidentally cut her fringe off. We have a great photo of her staring down the camera with a look that would turn you to stone, only she’s wearing a pair of underpants on her head.
She was the oldest of the six of us and she always looked out for us. She was our best pal, but we knew she wasn’t to be trifled with - she was in charge, and we knew it. She was the ultimate big sister.
I was going to write a whole section about the night Marie died. About how our parents found her in Jervis Street Hospital and our Mam recognised her by her feet. How our Dad and Grandad went to officially identify her the next day and came out forever changed. How her loss destroyed our family. But in the end, I decided not to. Marie has been lost in the smoke and devastation of the Stardust for too long. The decades-long fight for answers has taken far too much from us already. So today we are taking her back and remembering her life. We are reclaiming her from the darkness and despair and bringing her back into the sunlight where she belongs. She’s our sister, daughter, sister-in-law, niece, aunt, great-aunt, cousin, and friend. She’s our Marie.
