Marie Kennedy (17), Kilbarrack – ‘Her love of music and dancing was the reason she was in the Stardust on that night’

The inquests into the deaths of the 48 young people who died in the Stardust fire in Artane, Dublin in 1981 feature pen portraits of each of the deceased by, read by bereaved family members. Find all of the portraits and more coverage here.

These pen portraits have been incredibly difficult for us family members to write for many reasons. Decades of unprocessed grief, shock and anger. The unanswered questions. And the memories – the good ones can often be as painful as the bad.

Marie was a Christmas baby. Born exactly a week before Christmas Day, the family tradition of putting up the Christmas decorations on her birthday started then, and continues to this day.

She had an enormous love of music, singing and dancing from a very young age. She was dancing almost as soon as she could walk, and started going to Irish dancing lessons when she was around four. She loved it, won lots of medals and eventually took part in the St Patrick’s Day parade, Irish dancing her way across O’Connell Bridge in the freezing cold and pouring rain.

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Disco dancing was her really big thing, though. She loved the Bee Gees, The Jackson 5, Leo Sayer and Abba. Her love of music and dancing was the reason she was in the Stardust on that night – she wanted to see the dancing competition.

She had a love of fashion and worked at tailoring while she went to secretarial college.

Like a lot of us, she adored shoes and would spend her pay on them. I remember using her high-heels to sit my dolls in, pretending to drive them around in their glamorous shoe-cars.

She once turned up at our grandparents’ house wearing a pair of men’s steel toe-caped shoes. Our granny said: ‘Jesus Mary and Joseph Marie, what have you got on your feet?’. Marie laughed at Granny tutting and shaking her head and told her: “This is the fashion, Nana”.

Our grandad looked over his newspaper and said: “Leave her alone Mary, she looks great”. She looked glorious in her Aran jumper and silver jewellery, with her beautiful black hair and mischievous green eyes. Of course then we all wanted an Aran jumper, and our poor mother was tormented knitting them for us.

She was cheeky, fun-loving and mischievous. She would hug our mam from behind and call her Patsy. The two of them would smile at each other and our mam would say: “What are you looking for?”.

She was the oldest of the six of us and she always looked out for us. She was our best pal but we knew she wasn’t to be trifled with. She was in charge and we knew it. She was the ultimate big sister.

I was going to write a whole section about the night Marie died. About how our parents found her in Jervis Street hospital and our mam recognised her by her feet. How our dad and grandad went to officially identify her the next day and came out forever changed. How her loss destroyed our family. But in the end I decided not to. Marie has been lost in the smoke and devastation of the Stardust for too long. The decades-long fight for answers has taken far too much from us already. So today we’re taking her back and remembering her life. We are reclaiming her from the darkness and despair and bringing her back into the sunlight where she belongs.

She’s our sister, daughter, sister-in-law, niece, aunt, great-aunt, cousin and friend. She’s our Marie.