Have you ever felt that we don’t appreciate the older generation in our lives quite as much as we should? Or if we do then we rarely seem to record them in our photographs. There’s the incidental inclusion of them in the photos at a wedding or other family occasion, but other than that, don’t the every day lives of our elders go undocumented? And when do they ever get to be centre stage? Maybe you’re better than I am at photographing these special people. I’m far too good at putting it off until tomorrow. I appreciate that a lot of them may be camera-shy, but I’m not talking about posing for the camera with cheesey grins; I just mean hanging out with them for an hour or two and recording their every day life. Don’t put it off. Get your cameras out! I’m glad I did.

She shares a birthday with The Queen. She also shares a name. Born Elizabeth Scully in 1926. Meet my Auntie Lil. She’s also my Godmother. And my mother’s Godmother. A special lady.

Lil Coffey is a sacristan; a job she assumed full responsibility for when her husband Tom died in 1979. He was only 55; an age that seems ever younger to me as the years march on. I’m ridiculously hopeless at remembering dates but I will never forget the year Tom died. We were all due to go to see Pope John Paul during his visit to Ireland that week. Nobody in our family made it however, as everything got turned upside down. When my father turned up in my classroom in the Pres Primary and whispered to my teacher I knew that something was very seriously wrong. Lil could have been forgiven for turning into a bitter, cranky old lady from that day, but as you can probably tell from these photos she’s exactly the opposite; mind you, she can get cross and has the memory of an extremely remembering elephant!

So, Lil turned 86 the other day and we had a lovely family gathering in her honour (thanks Kate!). The occasion gave me just the nudge I needed to get off my ass and take a few photos. Every day for more than fifty years Lil walks up and down to the local church to open and close it. She prepares it for daily mass and all the ceremonies; baptisms, wedding and funerals. She’s the heart and soul of this little church. Thankfully she has been persuaded to give up the weekly cleaning of the entire building but that was part of her duties for most of her life. You’d be handed a duster or a brush if you turned up at the wrong moment I tell ya. I spent a lot of my summers with Lil so had developed my own way of speeding the polishing by kinda launching my bottom onto the duster and sliding along the seats. Great fun but probably not the most efficient method. There were a LOT of pews though; and there were trees outside waiting to be climbed!

I spent a lot of my tomboy childhood up a tree. In fact, when we were sharing memories of Lil at the party, that was one of mine: the day Lil told me in no uncertain terms to “get BACK up that tree!”. God bless her but she was forever telling me to get DOWN out of trees, or sheds, or other suitably dangerous places I chose to perch myself. But there happened to be a wedding in the church that day and I had climbed up the big tree in the churchyard in order to gain a good vantage point. It was summer time (and you know how hot the summers always were when you were young) so I was scantily clad in a pair of shorts and little else. You can imagine the scene just as the wedding couple and their guests emerged from the church in their finery, when this little tree urchin hung down with bits of twigs and leaves stuck to her long, unkempt hair and went “Hellloooo Lil!!” at the top of her voice. She was cross. Ooo boy was she cross!

My favourite part of helping Lil in the church was the laying out of the vestments. Each of those drawers had different coloured vestments for various feasts and ceremonies, even for different days of the week; with varying levels of embroidered embellishments. She had a particular and skillful way of laying them out so that the priest could slip them on with the greatest of ease; fair spoilt them priests.

Look at her the divil, she’s a terror for the climbing! She pulls out that bottom drawer in the sacristy to get up as far as the chalices. I suppose loosing her husband so young meant she had to learn to do things for herself. You’d come home and she’d have a room painted, a bathroom tiled or the back yard paved. Seriously. She never stops. Well, maybe a pause for a sherry every now and then. Or to tell a story. She’s the treasurer of most of the family sayings and stories. That’s another thing we should do more of: listen to our old people.

So she didn’t get to see the Pope that time back in 1979 but he did honour her many years later with the prestigious Benemerenti Medal. Benemerenti means to a well- deserving person. After fifty years of service to the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul sent her the Benemerenti. I couldn’t think of anyone more well-deserving.

For somebody of Auntie Lil’s generation, most especially one who has dedicated most of her life to the church, this medal was a big deal. She wears it with tremendous pride.

This is the effect Lil has on people. Her good humour is so infectious. I like this photo because it captures just that. Top Tip : Some of the best photos happen when you forget about the camera and are captured just being yourself. And you don’t need a medal from his holiness to be well-deserving of some nice photos.

Finally, Ethan adores her; as does every other child who has ever come within hugging distance. There’s always a little box of sweets and chocolate in the house for the kids. And 7up. Always. She’s been a second mammy to a lot of us: Coffeys, Kellys and O’Briens. Ethan likes to refer to her as ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and sure, she’ll forever be Marie O’Brien’s Lilly-Logs Maj xoxo