Sister Maureen Therese Durkin was born in Superior, Wisconsin, and moved to Chicago at an early age. She and her sister Mary cared for their parents. Their mother was a nurse. When it came to the end of their lives, Maureen as a nurse cared for each of her parents.
As a young teenager, she worked in the kitchen of a community of sisters to defray her tuition. In high school, she could not afford to pay for the uniform shoes, and it was Sister Patricius who saw to it that her lack of uniformity was accepted.
As a School Sister of St. Francis, Maureen became an excellent nurse. She treated her patients with a mature respect and with kindness, but put up with no nonsense or self- pity. She was much loved as a nurse. She worked for some time in hospitals, but later, mostly in nursing homes for seniors.
After her workday was over, she liked to sit quietly, listening to music, playing games on her iPad, and finally, watching “Jeopardy” before an early bedtime.
Her relationship with God was personal, not sentimental. God heard from her the truth, as did all others with whom she related. She was conscientiously faithful. She lived so that when she met God face-to-face, he could not refuse her from heaven.
We come out of similar backgrounds, but I was shocked the first time I heard in a meeting, “I am Maureen, a drug addict and an alcoholic.” Those were not street drugs she was referring to. For over 40 years, she was faithful to her recovery from alcoholism. She has been a power and a help in a national organization for religious women who battle addictions of several kinds. She always attended as many 12-step meetings a week as she could. Her absolute honesty kept her and helped others to sobriety. On her deathbed, she refused morphine and other drugs so that she could die clean and sober.
Thousands of times she prayed the 12-step prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”