by Sr. Margaret Anne Meyer MMM                   USA                        10.11.2024

With the happy memories of our joyous goodbye embraces at Dublin Airport, I began to prepare for my departure for Uganda. I was fitted for lighter clothes in the sewing room and began hemming some new white veils. Sewing name tapes on white stockings and other garments occupied the time I was not praying with the Community or attending teaching sessions in the hospital. I was getting used to this way of life as preparation for finally going to Africa after ten years of training to be useful.

Then the news came that the Sisters would like me to study Tropical Medicine because they had a lay doctor from Canada who was not finished his contract and would be there another four months. I was disappointed but this was in our training to be ready for changes in the spirit of Our Blessed Mother, going in haste to visit her cousin, Elizabeth.

Advent was approaching and I looked forward to my second Christmas in Drogheda. A few days before Christmas, I was asked to go to the Communications Department in Bettystown to spend Christmas with the Sisters living in St. Ursula’s. It was a different house than the one there now but just as welcoming. I had never been at the sea at Christmas time, and this was a very memorable time for me. Sr. Catherine who was my first Superior in Rosemount, heartily welcomed me to celebrate Christmas with them. Sr Philomena Doyle and others were there. They all seemed glad of my company and I theirs.

I remember going to bed for a few hours before Midnight Mass which was celebrated in our chapel. When I woke up, I felt I was in a tray of ice cubes in the refrigerator. We dressed quickly and I felt remarkably close to Jesus as he was born in a cold stable. It was an incredibly beautiful experience for all of us. We enjoyed a hot cup of tea and Christmas cake afterwards and returned to bed.

Christmas dinner felt like home, being in a small but loving community. The Sisters were open to having me put on a play of the Light House Keeper’s Daughter which we had put on as novices in Winchester. The Sisters said their parts which I wrote for them and Sister Ann O’Gorman mimed climbing up and down the steps of the lighthouse. There were a lot of laughs, and it brightened the afternoon.

Soon it was time to return to Drogheda. When I reached there, Mother Mary sent for me and said that she wanted to take me to the Nigerian Embassy to get a visa to go to Nigeria. I said “Yes, Mother, but I thought I was going to Liverpool to do Tropical Medicine?” She told me that Sr. Doctor Anne Merriman hurt her back, and I might have to go to Nigeria to relieve her. I said “Yes, Mother” and off we went. The plan was for me to travel with Sr. Doctor Deirdre Twomey to Liverpool and wait for a call to go to Nigeria, if I were needed. That is what we did, but it happened in a different and surprising way.

We had settled in nicely to the Little Sisters of the Poor who had given Deirdre and me hospitality for 12 weeks to do our course when Deirdre received the telephone call from Mother Mary. I had told Deirdre what Mother Mary told me that I may have to leave the course. Deirdre said, “Mother, don’t you mean Sr. Margaret Anne?”, and Mother said, “No dear I mean you.” Sr. Doctor Marcella Duffy is extremely ill, and I want you to go to Nigeria to take her place. We were both flabbergasted. However, Deirdre was on the boat to Dublin, the next day. I missed her very much, but we met up again after 25 years and continued our Twomey-Meyer friendship in Nigeria and beyond I will continue about Tropical Medicine School in another story.