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I come from a lineage of lipstick-loving women. I don’t think ever saw my Mam or Gran leave the house without putting on their lipstick. Well, except for when my Mam was depressed and when she was leaving the house for the very last time to go to Our Lady’s Hospice in Harolds Cross. If, dear reader, you’re not one hundred per cent sure what that means, it means she was going to die and she knew she was going to die. Hospice care is the last check-in before the final flight into the sky. A fitting metaphor, given that my Mam was an Aer Lingus hostess (as they used to say) and my Dad is a retired pilot.

But I’ll come back to all that.

My Gran was a fabulous woman. Tall, jet black, thick, wavy hair that was shot through with grey, deep brown eyes and skin that became very tanned in the sun. ‘As brown as a nut’ as she used to say. She was tall, with a big bosom and slender legs. She was proud and dignified and had excellent deportment. She was sixty years old when I was born and thirty when my Mam was born, so there was a nice symmetry between the three of us. That’s not the only symmetry. All three of us have (had in two cases) excellent general knowledge, a great sense of humour and a tongue that could be a little too sharp. We were great letter writers too.

Gran probably didn’t have the easiest life. She met her husband (who died before I was born) in the post office when she was seventeen and he fifteen years older. The nuns had sent her down on a message and apparently, she put her eye on him and that was that. She was twenty-two when they got married and was widowed at fifty-seven. They lived in a three-bedroomed, three-storied house in Waterford City. I loved that house. So many happy memories.

They had five children, four boys and Mam. The eldest became a ship’s captain and sailed the world. Two of the boys spent their lives in hospital. Mike got grand mal epilepsy aged five and never recovered and spent his life in the Central Mental Hospital and Frank was born intellectually disabled, never really progressing beyond the brain of a nine-year-old. He eventually was moved to Palmerstown Hospital and was basically institutionalised. He was very sweet; I remember him clutching his Beano albums to his chest when we used to visit.

Gran had fought hard for services for people with disabilities in Waterford and was eventually awarded an M.A. in social work for her endeavours, though sadly her two sons spent the majority of their lives hospitalised in Dublin. Yet she remained cheerful and glamorous. God, she loved the bit of glam. Going for a walk uptown, or to mass in the Cathedral, or over to the park for us to play on the swings and see-saw always involved her washing her face and putting Oil of Olay and her lipstick. At night she wore Pond’s Cold Cream. I think the only times I saw her without lipstick was in bed at night and in the morning before getting dressed.

I really loved her. I used to take the bus down to see her on Saturdays when I was in my late teens and twenties, always bringing yellow flowers, her favourite colour. We would do the Irish Times crossword (Simplex), me calling out the clues. If we weren’t able to fully solve it, I’d ring her on Monday when the solution came out and she’d ask me about 12 across or 7 down. She’d also ask me what I was wearing, what style my hair was and if I was wearing lipstick. The all-important.

In the last years of her life, she gradually lost most of her sight and could no longer play her beloved bridge, or even watch television. She sat in her rocking chair, her lipstick in its designated spot on the adjacent shelf. Periodically she reapplied the gloss automatically, no need for the mirror. Somehow that made me love her even more.

I think for her lipstick meant glamour, and dignity and keeping herself together, and yes, appearances. And also, self-respect and self-love and keeping up a good front and a good face. She always presented her best self to the world, putting her best self forward so to speak. I adored her. She died twenty-three years ago and I still miss her, I still fantasize about time-travelling back to her house and soaking it all up.

Gran died in February 1998, Mam in May 1999. I wasn’t ready for either of them to go, as if you ever really could be.

In many ways, my relationship with my Gran was less complicated, less fraught and highly charged than that with my Mam. But the loss of the latter was exponentially worse than the former. No one wants to grieve their mother at twenty-six years old.

Mam joined Aer Lingus aged twenty-one in 1964 and flew until she had to retire for health reasons in her early fifties. She absolutely loved the job. It might feel like the distant past but there was a time when flying was a classy affair and there were no low-cost carriers flying in and out of Ireland. Aer Lingus was a semi-state body and Mam was of the generation that when she wore her uniform, she was representing her country and she did so with great pride and respect.

That pride extended to her appearance. I don’t believe she ever left the house with her nail varnish chipped or without her ‘lipper.’ She was, like Gran, very glamorous and well turned out. Statuesque even. Olive skin, brown eyes and wavy brown hair. Cheekbones to die for and a full mouth all the better for lipstick application. Like Gran, she could put on her lipstick without looking and with just three swipes of the hand. One for her bottom lip and two for the top. I’ve never quite mastered that skill, devoted lipstick-wearer as I am.

I used to love watching her get ready for work. The foundation, lots of eyeliner and mascara, Egypt-Wonder (who remembers that gem?), lipstick, of course - the bright the better. And clouds of perfume. She was the epitome of sophistication and poise. When she’d get home from flights she’d often put on her dressing gown, put her feet up with a vodka & tonic, or a cup of tea, depending on the time of day, and tell us about the passenger in 14C and if she was working in the First-Class cabin and there were celebrities, what they were like and whether they ate the meal! She loved her job and being well presented was part of it.

When I was sixteen and she forty-six she had a total nervous breakdown. It was agonising watching her disintegrate. She stopped wearing makeup, leaving the house and eventually almost completely stopped eating and drinking. It was at that point that she was given the ultimatum: go to the mental hospital voluntarily or you will be committed with a police escort. She chose the former, and I can’t really articulate how it felt to be privy to all this.

She spent three months in St Patrick’s Hospital in Inchicore where she was given electric shock therapy. I visited only three times, the last time vowing that I wouldn’t go again. I had to choose between me and her because going there was so traumatic for me. I was studying for my Leaving Cert at the time and basically had no stability in my life. I had to dig very deep inside to get through.

Eventually, she came home and got better. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer seven years later she said that she would prefer that diagnosis to depression, which was the worst thing she’d ever gone through in her life. She also told me she knew I had to choose myself when she was in hospital and that I was right to have done so. I just had to do a very deep exhale writing those last few lines. Memories may fade but feelings live in the soma, the body. Even writing these words triggers a visceral response.

Fast forward a couple of years and she’s dying at home. She has retreated from us and mostly wants to see her best friends, ‘the girls.’ And those girls are three of the women that she joined Aer Lingus over thirty years prior. The glam squad. Growing up I adored those women, each one glamorous and sophisticated.

I have so many photos of them that I took from Mam’s house as keepsakes and reminders of who she was and the life she lived. Photos taken at birthday parties and ladies’ lunches and sun holidays on the Continent and on flights in uniform. Such happy memories. Thank God they shepherded her through her final days. And that’s how she wanted it.

The day came to bring her to the hospice and my Dad, my brother and I drove out to our former family home. At that point, my parents had been separated for about 10 years but my Dad was a trooper during her illness and held our family together in so many ways. A couple of the girls were there and they got her ready and brought her downstairs for the final time. True enough to form she asked where was the cup of tea. So the kettle went on. I was pacing, trying to stay calm.

The time came to leave and I would not let her cross the threshold without her lipstick. Oh hell no. I remember the shade, it was coral and went beautifully with her camel coat, which was too warm for May but by then she was constantly cold. She and Dad walked out of the kitchen arms around each other and I had to step into the living room because it was too painful to see. Bernie, her very best friend stepped in too. Even now, twenty-two years later, I can’t begin to describe the agony.

She spent six days in the hospice on morphine waiting to die. No more lipstick.

And in the last couple of days as dark brown fluid dribbled out of her mouth the only thing I could think was please let go. Just let go and drift away. We were there when she did and there is no way I can say that it was beautiful or transcendent; it was peaceful and maybe that’s as good as it gets.

True to form she had picked out her outfit to be laid out in. Coral, just like the lipstick. Somehow the girls had handled all that. She looked beautiful, at peace and this might sound wrong, but more like her glamorous self. That was important. She needed to go out in style.

There’s absolutely no doubt that I inherited her love of style and lipstick and being well turned out from her. And she from Gran. It was something that was modelled for me my entire childhood and beyond and I had to honour that by putting lipstick on Mam as she made her final exit from our family home. Not to have done so would have let her down and failed to honour who she was and what she loved and respected. Values like self-respect and having pride in your appearance, matching the occasion.

But it wasn’t just my own mother that I anointed with lipstick. My mother-in-law Barb also loved to wear it, although being blonde she favoured lighter pinks. Barb was a peach of a lady who sadly lived with Alzheimer’s disease for about ten years before dying in 2018. It was very difficult to watch her lose her faculties. Positively devastating for my husband and his siblings. Being an everyday lipstick girl myself, I would try and do my part to take care of Barb when we were together and say ‘Barb come on, let’s do our lips.’ If she was in a good mood, she’d let me, though that became increasingly less common as she faded out.

She was like a sparrow when she died, tiny and frail. Just a little thing in a white gown. My husband and I went to the crematorium and did a ritual for her, covering her with rose petals and chanting Sanskrit mantras and a Buddhist chant to assist the dead cross over. But before that, I insisted on putting her lipstick on. There was no way I was going to let her go out without it. My right hand was shaking so much as I applied it that I had to hold my wrist with my left hand. I certainly didn’t do it with the panache of a make-up artist, but I did her justice and that was what mattered. Because somehow lipstick is more than ornamentation, more than just a way to colour our lips.

If a woman loves lipstick, it means she has pride in her appearance, she wants to look good. Our earliest ancestors found ways to adorn themselves for all kinds of reasons from pleasing the gods, to warding off evil demons, powers of attraction and more. There is something hardwired into us to love embellishment and adornment, to want to enhance and revel in our beauty.

I’m okay with this. In fact, I love it. I celebrate wearing lipstick, it makes me happy. I do it every day and I do it for me and for the women who’ve gone before me. Mam, Gran, Barb. Women who loved and lived and contributed to their communities. Women whose lives meant something, who were power-houses and bad-asses and Queens. And it’s exactly this connection that matters. Connection to the Queens in our lives who, like those of lore, adorned and embellished themselves without sacrificing their power and sovereignty.

I wear my lipstick when I feel like I need to tap into my super-powers, or sometimes just when I’m reading the paper on my own. It makes me happy and makes me feel more like me, a strong woman from a line of strong women who saw no conflict between looking good and living their purpose. I wear lipstick to celebrate my connection to those women and to signal that a little bit of them lives on in me.

Dearbhla Kelly, May 2021