She was a lady, in the most generous term of the word. She was that well before she became the First Lady of the Republic. She was, above all, a wife and a mother, roles she fulfilled in a manner not always demonstrated by women in her position.

She was married to a politician. That situation always makes demands on the supporting spouse. Not all women respond to it in the same manner. Some become political wives. They take part in their husband’s planning of campaigns. Of personal campaigns, to advance within the party. Of electoral campaigns, to get elected in general elections.

And, the higher up one goes in hierarchy of the party, of politics in general, in campaigns of management, and achievement. Her husband was involved in political campaigns at all levels. He was lured into active politics at an early age, paying attention to the call perhaps more so than to his profession. I do not believe that led to any murmur by her that the family of an essentially working man required much to maintain it.

She could stretch what was provided, and did. She supported her husband quietly in those early days, as she was to support him throughout his life. She did not evolve into a political wife in the sense that some wives, with all positive intent and contribution, do. Some are almost as politically visible as their husbands.

She was not. She was by his side, always. Running his home. Caring for him and their children. In the sanctity of their home, he surely confided in her his innermost hopes, doubts, disappointments and joys. That was never externalised in her actions or public demeanour.

Not even when he went on to become leader of his party, at a time when politics were sharper and later tougher than usual. His advanced role was to lead to harder times.

One dark evening a mob, calling itself Labour like me but in fact including rabble of our land, coarsely invaded the sanctity of their home. Before her shocked and baffled eyes, because politics had always stopped at the doorstep of her house, they shamelessly bellowed and bullied and broke with banal bravado.

They left her and her husband to comfort their children against the trauma of the moment, to view the great damage done to their house, to start the process of psychological and physical repairing and rebuilding. She was part of the restructuring but still did not become an externalised part of politics.

She did not even do that when her husband became Prime Minister, won successive elections and with sheer grit climbed to a peak perhaps neither had ever expected. Her face became known, of course it did, warmly at her husband’s side on official occasions which invariably attracted media shoots.

But still she remained unchanged. Going about life in her gentle way. In their family house. Being a wife and a mother, and eventually a grandmother above anything else.

She still remained all of that when her husband became President, and she the First Lady. Public demand on her time grew to a great extent that often drew her out of her house. As chair of the Community Chest Fund, as the President’s companion, she had many functions to fulfil. She covered them all, to the delight of the media, who discovered an unexpected, unsung star. To the satisfaction of people of all political colour, to whom this homely, charismatic woman became known and dear.

And yet she remained the woman her neighbours and friends at Birkirkara had always known. She did not change. She continued to be a family-first person, preferring to continue to reside in her home rather than at the Palace in San Anton.

And yet, the more she held back, the better known she became, and loved by all. She is now gone. Sadly taken away at what is today an early age. She leaves her husband, her children, her grandchildren a great void. And yet, as her son Beppe said, it is filled by her constant memory, by the fortitude of her husband as he leads his family in the way she wanted it done.

Mary Fenech Adami was one of a kind. A lady in every sense of the word.