Margaret Hayes, Skryne
The road to the Hill of Skryne from the Priest’s Cross is a far emptier place this new year following the death on Sunday 28th December of Margaret Hayes, who for 93 years was part and parcel of life there. One and all were welcomed to her home and treated with unconditional hospitality and home baking over her lifetime, and on Tuesday evening of last week, hundreds arrived to bid farewell to Margaret one last time as she reposed at home.
A woman of deep faith, she had said some weeks earlier that she didn’t want tears at her funeral, as she was going to meet her maker and those who had gone before her.
“When you read a biographical summary of somebody’s life, sometimes tacked on to the end of it is that they were a very religious person, as it if was an insignificant extra,” Fr Alo Connaughton SSC said at Margaret’s funeral Mass in St Colmcille’s Church, Skryne, on New Year’s Eve.
“But for Margaret, it was her relationship with God, with Mary, and with her favourite saints that gave her the oxygen and the roadmap for the way she lived her life,” he said.
He first met Margaret some 30 years ago, when he accompanied Sr Elma Peppard to a talk Margaret was giving on suicide.
“She had tragedy in her own life which had left very painful memories,” Fr Connaughton continued. “But after a period of reflection and looking inward, she decided the best contribution she could make was to get involved with groups and individuals who were struggling with probably what they saw as a painful list of unanswerable questions. Margaret didn’t know all the answers either, but in a compassionate way, she opened her door, was prepared to listen to people, give bits of advice to people whom she reached out to.”
She was very welcoming, always with a smile and a warm word, compassionate and generous, and an affirmative and forgiving person, he continued. Despite her devotion and dedication to her family, she was not inward focussed. She had a great compassion towards others outside, especially in their times of need, expressed in many different ways.
“We are stopping short of what a faith-inspired life is asking of us if we are just inward focused,” he added.
Margaret had a lot of significant loss in her life – the death of her 46-year-old mother when she was just 13; the tragic death of her son, Gerard, at the age of 24 in 1983; and the sudden loss of her husband, Jim, 20 years later.
Yet Margaret always took great consolation from a line in a letter that Gerard left, her brother Brian said in eulogy. It read: “I die happy in the knowledge that one day a better way of life will be brought about for everyone.”
Margaret’s life was a real effort to make the world a better place, simply by how she was, Brian continued. That is the experience of her that many people found - the goodness of her - and Margaret will live on in the goodness that we all do too, whatever it is, he said.
Margaret Smyth’s father, Brian, and grandfather, Patrick Malin, had both been headmasters of Skryne National School. The young Francis Ledwidge used call to Master Malin to have his poetry checked over on his way from Slane to his patron, Lord Dunsany, in Dunsany Castle. Brian Smyth was a founder member and initial organiser of the juvenile football club in Skryne, a nursery that was to produce many county and All-Ireland champions.
Margaret’s mother, Emily, died when she was just 13, and after schooling in Skryne and Navan, and a year at St Martha’s Domestic Science College in Johnstown, Margaret returned home to help raise her younger siblings.
In the early 1950s, Carlow man James V Hayes arrived in Meath to work on the Rural Electrification Scheme, and in a meeting with Master Smyth, first encountered his daughter, Margaret.
They married in June 1957, and settled in Carlow, where Jim then worked for the Revenue Commissioners. With his transfer to Dublin, they moved to Skryne and built a new house close to Margaret’s home place. A family of five was to follow, including All-Ireland winning Meath footballer, Liam, a well-known national sports writer.
Margaret and Jim were very involved in all aspects of local community and parish life, most notably the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. Margaret also enjoyed playing bridge and in recent decades had been a member of the parish and Meath Diocesan choir, which performed at her funeral. As a friend of former President, Mary McAleese and her husband, Martin, who both attended her funeral, she was invited to meet Queen Elizabeth II during her State visit to Ireland in 2011.
In 2014, Margaret was asked to cut the ribbon at the official opening of the new extension to the clubhouse at the local Fr McManus GAA grounds, and in 2017, she read Ledwidge's poem 'Skreen Crossroads' at the GAA grounds for a Ledwidge Centenary Cycle event.
In July 2017, the eight surviving children of Brian and Emily Smyth came together for a reunion on their mother’s anniversary. Since then, Denis, Sean, Mary, and Carmel have predeceased Margaret, as did infant sister, Eileen.
Margaret is survived by her family, Mary, Liam, Carmel-Anne, and Eileen; sister, Emily, Kent, England; brothers, Patrick, Cardiff, and Brian, Ratoath; 13 grandchildren; two great-granddaughters; daughter-in-law, Anne; sons-in-law, Harry, Sean and Fergal; extended family, and many friends and neighbours.
Fr Connaughton was joined in celebrating the Mass by Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin; Fr Thomas O’Mahony, PP, Skryne; and Fr Tim Bartlett, PP, St Mary’s, Belfast. Burial followed in St Colmcille’s Cemetery.