'I never thought I'd see it'
A Joyous occasion took place in Borrisokane last Saturday as Bushy Park Nursing Home celebrated a centenary birthday.
Peig Kennedy is the first Bushy Park resident to reach the age of 100. She marked the milestone with friends, neighbours and staff at the nursing home on Saturday, and counted herself fortunate to have attained centenarian status.
“I never thought I'd see it,” Peig said. “It's marvellous and I am delighted, and isn't it great to be so good? It's great that I'm alive and so well, and I have a great memory.”
Peig was born and reared at Ballycasey - about a mile on the Portumna side of Borrisokane - and she lived there for most of her long life. One of her earliest memories is of a snowdrift on Ballycasey hill, where a bus got stuck.
“I saw some very hard winters, much harder than now,” Peig reflected. “We never have such winters now. We used to have snow every winter at that time. We often went to bed at night and it would be all right, and then we'd get up in the morning to a white country!”
Peig lived with her grandmother Margaret (née Quinn from Aglish), a midwife, and mother Mary, more often called Molly. “She worked at everything she could,” the centenarian said of her mother. “She always had one wish: that she'd be able to work until she died.”
Peig attended the Convent of Mercy National School in Borrisokane. In the 1940s she began working in a pub, “Pidges”, later Patsy's bar at Tower Hill. She also served as presiding officer in Aglish and was involved in many elections over the years. She remembers in particular local councillor Liam Whyte, who died in late 2019 at the age of 92. “He was a lovely man.”
Peig nursed her uncle Jack, who was blind, for six years before his death in 1979. Her mother died three years later.
Though she rarely strayed far from her Ballycasey homestead, Peig played bingo in Borrisokane and joined the Cloughjordan Active Retirement group. She was also renowned for baking - often making bread for friends and neighbours - and also knitting and sewing; she made a wedding dress for ‘Cake-Up Artist’ Annette Donnelly, who baked the birthday cake for Peig's big day last Saturday.
Remarkably, she lived alone up until the age of 97. Having since taken up residence at Bushy Park, Peig attests to something of a new lease of life with the support of the nursing home staff and her fellow residents.
“I'm very happy here,” she said of Bushy Park. “They're very good to me. They could not be better.” She admitted that it was initially hard to move into a nursing home after living independently for so long, but this was a difficulty she quickly got over. “I'm here three years now, and I don't regret one bit of it!”
Reflecting on the great deal of societal change she has witnessed over the last 10 decades, Peig noted in particular changing attitudes in the Catholic Church. She was born out of wedlock, and speaks at length of the difficulties this presented for her and her mother. “The Catholic Church has come a long way, but it has a long way to go,” Peig observed, regretting that she never got married herself. “But they were different times and people are different now, and they have different ideas and there's a lot more mixture.”
As to the key to her longevity, Peig said there is no secret she can think of. She was a smoker for most of her life, confessing that she “could never get enough” of cigarettes. She tells of how her mother used to keep money hidden under a Child of Prague statue, and Peig would steal it to buy cigarettes!
“I had a good and a bad life, and I was short and I was well off,” Peig concluded. “I'm thankful for where I am now and I'm happy to be here.”