R.I.P. my dear Great-aunt joan

In 2016, I went to the annual 4th of July party hosted by my godmother Geddy and my uncle Doug. Great-aunt Joan was there and we sat in chairs at the side of the road and watched the parade go by. It was really my last time having extended time with her – as well as with my aunt Geddy, who died in 2020, and we all still miss her. Not everybody gets to have a close relationship with a Great-aunt and I feel very lucky. So here’s a post about my great-aunt Joan.

My dear great-aunt Joan passed away on Sunday – my birthday – at the age of 96. She was a towering intellect – an adventurer – an author (The Transformation of Hera; Creation Myths from Mesopotamia, Israel and Greece; and a book on Antigone. She was a professor of Classics for 30, 40 years.). She was a rebel, a Dominican nun (who left the order in the late 60s), and someone who played a huge part in forming me, although I wasn’t really aware of it as a kid, adolescent, young woman. Her example was there as a possible path, guiding me towards the unconventional, the rebellious, the do-what-you-want, the don’t-worry-about-what-everyone-else-is-doing, devoting your life passionately to your interests, cerebral and otherwise. In many ways – without the nun part, of course- hers is the path I have chosen. (Turns out, I wrote about Great-aunt Joan and Great-aunt Mary in my review of the documentary Radical Grace.)

I have a couple of favorite Great-aunt Joan stories. And I love the stories about her life (I’ve posted the tribute written by my aunt Katy at the bottom).

About 15 years ago, I took a writing class at the 92nd Street Y. One of our writing assignments was basically a writing prompt. Write a story and it has to take place in the ’60s. Whatever that means, whatever comes up. The 1960s. Go. I decided to write a story about the era of Vatican II, as experienced by Catholic college girls (based on my mother and aunts). Joan, as a nun in full habit, was on the Vatican II front lines (and the nuns were the ones called upon to get the word out, to go out into the parishes and rally the troops, explain the new dispensations, and get the crotchety recalcitrant priests on board). I called up Great-aunt Joan and interviewed her about that time. She sent me a couple of books which I still have. Some of the stories she told were amazing. In the early 60s, Joan and a fellow nun, a good friend, were sent to Ireland to basically get the priests on board with the new program. They bicycled around from parish to parish, meeting up with these guys. For years, for generations, these priests had been puttering around lazily in their gardens, murmuring Latin masses, rotely, and devoting their time to obscure hobbies, as opposed to serving communities. For the most part, these Irish priests were NOT happy to see these nuns bicycling towards them up the road. They were like “who are these two bossy American nuns, and why are they telling me what to do.” Joan said she and her friend would come back to their lodging every night, put up their feet, have a pint, and LAUGH at the absurdity of their experiences during the day, and making fun of the priests, complete with imitating their Irish accents. (Joan’s parents were immigrants with Irish brogues. So she was allowed.) The image of these two feisty windblown nuns, drinking beer and laughing at priests … You can’t get details like this in a book.

But here’s my favorite memory: I was in a production of an adaptation of James Agee’s Death in the Family in Chicago. It had been nominated for a couple of awards. Joan was a professor at the Southern Illinois University, and had been for decades, so she drove up to see the play. One of her best friends also drove in from … Michigan, I think? I can’t remember. So it was 1. a way for Joan to see her great-niece in a play and 2. an excuse for a nice trip with a dear friend. The two of them were in their early-mid 70s. coming to see a play in a little storefront theatre.

When Joan got home after seeing the play, she wrote to my parents (who hadn’t been able to come out and see the play because my dad was ill that summer) and gave them a detailed review of the show, walking them through every aspect: directorial choices, the lighting, the set, the adaptation (because of course Joan had read the book, because she read everything), the performances … I had no idea Joan had written this letter until years later I found it in a box of my dad’s. It was then I realized that on another level, Joan went to see the play FOR my parents because my parents couldn’t go. Reading her detailed hand-written review to my parents was incredibly moving.

I treasure this memory. I was 26 years old, and there they both were. We went out afterwards to talk about the play and catch up. It had probably been a couple of years since I saw her. Because I was young and wild and had barely thought this through, I took the two of them to a dive bar right down the street from the theatre. I just wasn’t equipped at the time to think, “Maybe I can find somewhere more age-appropriate to sit and discuss the play? Maybe a place that at least …. serves food?” But I hadn’t planned at all. I took them to the bar because it was three doors down. That’s how much planning I put into it. I hesitated at the door, suddenly realizing what I was doing. It was a dive, a local, with a dartboard, a couple of tables, and a bar. It wasn’t packed, but there was a crowd of drunken yahoo boyz. I said, “Is this …. okay?” It SO didn’t look okay to me, suddenly. I did have the presence of mind to be slightly embarrassed but thinking on my feet was not (and is not) my strong suit. Joan didn’t blink an eye. “This looks perfect.”

We went inside and we caused a bit of a stir. The people there were my peers in terms of demographics. I lived in dive bars at the time, lol. Joan and her friend were literally 50 years older than most of them. (In Ireland you see multi-generational crowds in bars all the time. Not so in America.) The three of us sat at the bar. Perched on bar stools. The young guy bartender was almost courtly with Joan and her friend – and this cracked my heart. He asked for their IDs, causing general hilarity. It was very charming. We ordered draft beers (not a pitcher, just glasses), and we sat there and discussed the play and James Agee and the theatre company I was with and everything. It was so much fun. I had never been “out” with Great-aunt Joan alone before.

Menawhile, behind us, the drunken yahoos played darts, but they also made it a point to say hello to the two elderly women. It was like everyone was aware the women were there and the place made a space for them. You could feel it. The dart-players were raucous. We were not paying attention to them, or disturbed by their noise, they were part of the scene like we were. At one point, one of them screamed “oh FUCK” when his dart flew wildly off the board. We had no sense that anyone should change their behavior just because we were there. Also, Joan was no polite little biddy. She bicycled around Egypt on archaeological digs, and camped alone in Greek ruins, and went to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and etc. and etc. She had heard worse, seen worse. But to this guy she was a nice little old lady, and he suddenly remembered we were there, and transformed into a shamefaced adolescent, kind of leaning himself into our trio, saying, “I’m so sorry for swearing.” Not in a boorish sarcastic way. He was legitimately sincere. We all started laughing and told him it was okay. Why is this so charming to me?

We were there for an hour or so, enjoying each others’ company, talking about the play and other things, and then we got up to go. Both women had a long drive to their respective homes the following morning. Every single person in the bar said, “Bye!!” to them. It was like the womens’ presence had blessed the bar or something. A surprising element had come into the familiar and sweetened the air. The bar – as in the group of people there – were aware of the blessing being bestowed upon it. It’s not every day an intergenerational moment like this occurs, and in a weird way everyone – even in their raucousness – were soft and open, and made the women feel welcome, because when we’re old we want to feel welcome too. The moment when we got up to leave felt something like that.

Joan was a towering person (literally and figuratively), and a common and invigorating presence for the entirety of my life. She was 96. I am not sad she is dead, not exactly: she is at peace now, she lived fully and long, a life filled with fun and learning and experiences and openness to new things, but I am in mourning because she meant so much. And mostly I am grateful and thankful to have known her.

The O’Briens. From left to right: my great-uncle Frank, my grandmother (“Mama” to me and my cousins), my immigrant great-great grandparents (I remember very vaguely meeting my great-grandmother when I was teeny tiny) and finally my great-aunt Mary and my great-aunt Joan – both of whom became Dominican nuns, both of whom left the order in the late 60s, going on to have vibrant careers as professors, scholars, and then world-travelers, peripatetic adventurers, etc. They’re all gone now, Joan was the last one, but they are together now, and live in our hearts and it is because of them that we are all here.

Here is the tribute written by my aunt Katy:

Joan V. O’Brien, Professor emerita in Classics from Southern Illinois University, author of The Transfomration of Hera, In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel and Greece and The Guide to Sophocles’ Antigone, died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 96.

Born in Meriden, CT, she graduated from Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, then taught in Hamden, CT for two years before entering the community of Dominican Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs as a novice in 1949. She began her teaching career in 1952 at Dominican Academy on East 68th Street in New York, where she taught Latin and Greek by day and slept in her classroom at night. Every morning, she and her colleague would scurry around to clear the classroom of any traces of their personal belongings. She always told of the day the students found her stockings and other paraphernalia hanging in the bathroom.

She received her Ph.D in Classics from Fordham University in 1961 and taught at Albertus Magnus College. In 1967 she left the Dominican community and joined the Classics department at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, where she spent the next thirty years bringing the ancient Greek playwrights to vivid life, leading the students in the staging the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus. Joan was a master teacher. She cried at the thought of retirement.

She led many student groups to Rome and Greece, opening their eyes to the treasures of antiquity there. In researching her book The Transformation of Hera, Joan spent several summers bicycling to archeological digs on the island of Samos.

She traveled widely, from Greece and Italy to the USSR and Egypt, swimming in the beloved ocean whenever possible, whether it be the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic or the Ionian!

Joan did not wish to be called Doctor. She much preferred Joan. She was devoted to the Catholic Church and her commitment to the underdog was unwavering. She donated large portions of her income to the poor. She was always there to provide a listening ear to anyone in need. She dressed simply, paying no attention to the fashion of the day. She was very partial to her camouflage-design porkpie hat and for the last several years she sported a fleece hat with fur trim (a gift from a dear friend) that stopped people in their tracks. She looked like Russian royalty.

Her attire was so odd that over the years she was stopped several times by the cops, who thought she must have wandered away from some nearby asylum. Once, when she was staying in a motel to officiate at her niece’s wedding, she decided to take an early morning walk from her hotel to find the local grocery store. A police cruiser stopped and the cop asked her what she was doing walking along such a busy road. This was not her first traffic stop. She answered, “I’m looking for a banana.” He gave her a ride to the grocery store in the cruiser.

Music was at the heart and soul of Joan O’Brien. She began piano lessons at age five and never stopped, playing Mozart, Grieg and her beloved Beethoven well into her 90’s. She hosted numerous informal gatherings of faculty and friends at her home in Carbondale, which always featured food (potluck — Joan was no cook), laughter, piano-playing and singing — everything from ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’ to church hymns to The Hut-Sut Song. Every church choir she ever joined (and she joined plenty) was delighted to add her strong tenor voice. Singing was central to her life.

She had many friends, former students and a band of friends from her Dominican days that never broke apart. They were all devoted to one another until the end.

Her Catholic faith was her guiding light. She was devoted to the church, but at the same time very involved in the push for change, for the ordination of women. She was there for some of the first meetings of The Voice of the Faithful in their push for transparency about child abuse by priests.

In her last years, she moved to Newburyport, MA to be near her niece. There, she quickly become a beloved figure, known simply to townsfolk as “Aunt Joan”. She walked to Immaculate Conception Church for daily Mass, rain or shine, winter or summer. Traffic stopped when she crossed the street: lucky thing, because she often neglected to look both ways!

She will be missed by her many nieces and nephews and her devoted community of friends, but she will have a joyous reunion with her God and all the saints who have preceded her!