Sister Edward Mary Kelleher, Sister of Mercy, longtime principal and de facto mascot of the former Catherine McAuley High School in Portland, nun of the old cloth, passed away on July 30 at St. Joseph’s Convent. This marks the end of an era.

The grief hit me harder than I expected, given that I’m not even Catholic and graduated high school (mumble mumble) 15 years ago. It’s not that I thought she was immortal, exactly, but she was ageless and eternal and had sort of always been around. She had looked exactly the same as long as I’d known her, and not just because she wore the same habit every day, although I’m sure that helped. My brother thought her longevity was due to her devotion to Christ. My mom thinks it’s because she avoided men her whole life.

Sister Edward Mary was a little bit like the Old Testament God to me. I wanted to impress her, do right by her and find favor in her eyes, but she also kind of scared the crud out of me sometimes. I got my only high school detention from her, when she materialized from behind a large potted plant and caught me wearing a non-uniform sweatshirt.

On another occasion, I was hanging out with friends, sitting on top of a table, legs dangling, thinking I was cool as could be, when Sister Edward Mary beelined from the principal’s office straight to me. I can still hear her voice: “Victoria, I saw you from across the room and do you know what I could see?”

That lives rent-free in my head forever.

She knew all her students by name. And not just the students — their family members as well. Once, a few years after I graduated, we pulled up next to each other at a stoplight and had a shouted conversation across traffic through our rolled down driver’s windows. If she heard a sneeze in the auditorium during an assembly she knew exactly who it had come from. She used to have to literally shoo away clumps of guys in their late teens and early 20s who would hang around the front gate in the afternoon. (In retrospect, kind of creepy.)

I remember her Maine accent when she read the morning announcements over the intercom — “Fridey is pasta dey.” I was just as much of an annoying little liberal back then as I am now, but with a worse haircut. I got a couple of friends to observe a Day of Silence memorial even though we were denied permission to. I refused to shake the bishop’s hand while walking across the graduation stage.

I was in high school from 2006-2010; I came out as gay in early 2008. I was openly queer from then on, and it was never an issue at school. I’m not saying Sister Edward Mary was particularly woke or anything. I’m just saying you wouldn’t catch her suing the state to be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ students (looking at you, St Dominic’s).

I laugh when conservatives hold up religious education as something that will prevent children from having queer feelings or becoming feminists. I turned out the way I did not in spite of the nuns and Catholic education but because of it. Catherine McAuley, the Irish nun who founded the Sisters of Mercy religious order, said that “No work of charity can be more productive of good to society than the careful instruction of women.”

Sister Edward Mary not only believed that but dedicated her life to it. Ensuring that “her girls” got the best education possible formed the core of her Christian faith and practice. She had high expectations and she wholeheartedly believed you could rise to meet them. She didn’t just command respect, she earned it — even from snotty anti-authority kids like me.

Sister Edward Mary loved sports. Nuns like a win. She had a reserved seat at basketball games but also attended pretty much every event she could. Sister Edward Mary was there to witness me win my one and only track medal, a sixth-place finish as part of a 4-by-800-meter relay team, at a state meet in 2010. Of course, this meant she was also there 20 minutes earlier, when I got tapped to replace another runner at the very last minute and didn’t have time to go to the locker room to change. Some of my teammates had to wrap a couple of beach towels around me on the sidelines of the bleachers while I clambered into shorts. Thankfully, “SEM” never brought it up.

The Corporal Works of Mercy were framed on the walls of a couple of my high school classrooms, and they live in my brain still. They’re not a bad guide for a good life: Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Welcome the stranger. Visit the sick. Visit the imprisoned. Bury the dead. (Pope Francis added an eighth in 2016, Care for our common home, but I grew up with the seven.)

To abide by them, I went to the visiting hours for Sister Edward Mary to pay my respects. It’s not often one leaves a funeral home in a good mood with a smile on your face, but I did. The house was packed; I had to park on the street. This did not surprise me in the least.

The funeral home itself sounded like, as my former biology teacher put it, “like the cafeteria at lunch — so loud! So many girls!” (There were some men there, and at least four or five depictions of Jesus). You couldn’t turn around in there without bumping into an accomplished, successful woman, the type you meet at a party and think “Gosh, she’s so cool, and I love those earrings.” (If that was you I bumped into, I apologize.)

I was blessed in my formative years to have so many teachers support me as I grew into my own woman; to guide without pushing, to lift me up instead of grinding me down; teachers who allowed me to pursue my passion projects and be a generally weird kid.

I’ve grown into a generally weird adult, but one who is happy and well-adjusted. I was blessed to have Sister Edward Mary leading those teachers. If heaven has a dress code, I’m sure it’s being gently but firmly enforced right now. Nun better.