Better Late Than Never

Happy Mother's Day plus two to all the Moms out there.

With the big birthday, Mother's Day, and a sixty-second anniversary party for my aunt and uncle (that's sixty-two years of marriage, not a one-minute party) we had a pretty busy weekend.

This year, because neither Clare's Mom nor I have a Mom to spend Mother's Day with, Clare and I took Clare's Mom to lunch at a restaurant she's been wanting to try for years. It's a great location right next to a river, but the food was just good—and we expected fantastic. After lunch, we drove to the anniversary party where we ate again. Then when we got home, I had another piece of birthday cake. So much for fitting into last summer's shorts for vacation.

It was tough not having my Mom around for Mother's Day. It was even tougher for my birthday though—she used to call every year around 8:00 a.m. at the time I was born. (Yeah, that sucked in college.) This year there was no call.

It's strange how memories hit us. I can sometimes poke through my mother's things without any sentimentality at all. Then, when I go to get my driver's license renewed, I get teary-eyed because I remember stopping with her at the DMV after going out to lunch with her once last year. Maybe that's why Mother's Day wasn't so tough for me—because I'll always have great memories of my Mom—and because I have Clare and Clare's Mom to spend it with.

I hope all of you had a great Mother's Day too.

Saints and Poets

I still can't believe my Mom is gone. I expect her to call each day. I feel guilty for not calling her. I feel like I should be telling her that Clare lost another tooth, that I'm getting more work, and that her favorite gas station just closed (I think she was the only one who went to this highest-priced station in town). More than anything, I need her input in the Italian post-mortem scorekeeping of who sent mass cards, who sent flowers, and who sent food. It doesn't help that every day Hallmark and the rest of retail America intentionally inflict me with the distress of Mother's Day advertisements. For some reason, losing my mother is hitting me harder than losing my father did. It may be the relative shortness of her illness, it may be that I lived locally and saw her more often than I had seen my Dad before he died, or it may be that I have to face that I’ve now lost both parents.

In my head, I know that I have to move on. I've already been through almost everything she owned. Because she lived in an apartment building for seniors where I couldn't assume the lease, I was required to have her things moved out within two weeks. I donated many of her clothes to a shelter, donated small items to a school tag sale, sold what furniture I couldn't keep, and still had about a dozen boxes of photos, remembrances, trinkets, knick-knacks, and papers to either save or shred. Now I’m only waiting for probate and the DMV to decide when I can have title to her car to sell it.

The past two days are the first time that I’ve felt my life has returned to some kind of normal since my Mom entered the hospital on March 19. I’ve spent the past five weeks either sitting in the hospital, planning funeral arrangements, emptying her apartment, or entertaining Clare on her spring vacation. (We’ve rescheduled a planned Disney trip to May.) I’ve learned a few things in these past weeks. Here are just a few of them.

First, I learned that time plays tricks during days of stress. Sometimes the hospital and funeral seem so long ago; other times, it seems like my Mom was just here. While my mother was in the hospital, the days and weeks also seemed endless. I know though that she only spent nineteen days in the ICU—less than three weeks. That’s an incredibly quick illness and death for a woman who was out on her own just over one month ago. I have no idea how people can endure caring for family or friends who are sick for weeks, months or even years. When it’s necessary, I suppose, we somehow get the strength we need.

Next, I learned that if states ever require senior citizens to be retested before renewing their drivers licenses, most funeral homes will lose their drivers. (You didn’t think I could go without a cynical cheap laugh somewhere in here, did you?)

Finally, I learned that a lot people are more likely to send sympathy cards than they are to send Christmas, birthday or other holiday cards. I received a lot and so did other family members—some from people we’re rarely ever in contact with anymore. I’m not criticizing these folks, because there are probably people I’d send sympathy cards to whom I’ve otherwise lost touch with. It's sad though that it’s often not until a death that we re-establish contact with some friends or even family.

You may know I’m overeducated, so indulge me while I pull out a literary reference. It’s one that I’ve been thinking a lot about. In Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the spirit of a young woman who died during childbirth appears on stage and asks, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?” It’s the answer that I’ve been remembering: “No—Saints and poets maybe—they do some.”

Few of us are saints or poets, but I do believe that all of us have a little saint and poet in us—enough that we can recover from a difficult life experience and be jumpstarted into remembering how special every moment of life is. So, while I mourn and remember my Mom, I can move on because life, as they say, is for the living. And so it’s back to working, to cleaning, to blogging, and to enjoying the spring that has finally come to New England.

One thing I won’t be doing is reading the over one thousand posts that have accumulated in my Google Reader in the past few weeks. If I missed anything important, just catch me up in a comment or email. And thank you again, everyone, for all of your support, prayers and good wishes over the past month. I’m glad to be back.

Rose Farrington (1925 - 2008)

We were getting ready for Church this morning when the hospital called. My mother hadn't had a good night. Her vital signs were dropping and the doctor suggested that I come in as quickly as possible.

Her oxygen mask and all but basic monitoring devices had been removed. Knowing that she wouldn't have long, the nurses and doctors focused only on making her comfortable.

By the time I arrived, she wouldn't open her eyes or make any movements again. Her breathing was heavy and deliberate—a function of her lungs fighting involuntarily to the very end. Still, I spoke to her, told her I loved her, thanked her for being my mother, and held her hand.

Clare's Mom stayed with Clare and I was joined by cousins, my uncle, and my aunt—a woman who was older sister to my mother and knew her for all of her almost eighty-three years. I'm thankful to have such supportive family in them.

Several hours after the morning's call, my mother passed away. Her breathing slowed, then stopped. By this point, I had accepted that this would happen. The past nineteen days have been difficult in seeing the pain and trauma that she suffered. Today, I thank God that I was able to be there with her during this, to hold her hand, to pay her back in some small way for the hundreds of days she must have spent by my side, to kiss her cheek as she peacefully passed away.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Nana. We'll remember and love you always.

Ups and Downs

It's been another tough week. My mother was taken off the respirator on Monday and hasn't been back on. She's been constantly on oxygen though to support her breathing and both her heart rate and blood pressure have been all over the charts. She has pneumonia, infections throughout her body, and her blood condition may be progressing toward leukemia. Respective of her wishes, she won't be put back on a respirator if she needs it. Her doctors have told me that if she is put on the respirator again it likely would be permanent. She didn't want that and I agree.

Despite being off the respirator and not being sedated, she hasn't been fully coherent every day. She's very weak, but has had some better days where she's able to speak a few sentences through her oxygen mask. She recognizes us and asks questions, often about Clare. She also wanted a picture of Clare taped to the rail of her bed. Other days, she's been too weak to even lift an arm and, if she does try to speak, doesn't always make sense. Unfortunately, the bad times are seeming to outnumber the better times. In some way, the situation seems kind of one step forward, two steps back—a difficult and slow progression toward whatever may be.

It seems cruel to say it, but I wish that if she truly can't recover that she'd go more quickly. Seeing her in such discomfort with her health deteriorating is terrible and painful. All I can hope for is that all of us stay strong enough to handle whatever is meant to be.

Posting about my Mom's health seems kind of morose at this point, but I know that a few of you want to know how she and my family have been. I also want Clare to remember how much her Nana asked for her during both conscious and semi-conscious states. Again, I truly thank all of you who have left supportive comments or emailed with your good wishes or prayers. I'm sorry that I haven't responded personally. I know others of you have gone though difficult times and written that getting a few comments really is uplifting and that's true. We've got a really supportive group of blogging friends here and I'm thankful for all you. I'm sorry I haven't been reading your blogs; I'll try to catch up when things settle down. Until then, my thanks for your support and concern.

Semi-Conscious

Earlier this week I wrote that one of the hardest parts of seeing my mother in ICU may be her sedated and unconscious state. Now I think that seeing her semi-conscious is worse.

Doctors have attempted to wean her off the respirator for the past two days, but her lungs and heart haven't been strong enough to breathe for more than a few minutes. To help her try to breathe on her own, the sedation medication has to be reduced. When they do that, she begins to waken. At times, she was alert enough to acknowledge the people around her. Being intubated, however, she couldn't speak. She could cry. She could point—especially toward a photo of Clare pinned on a bulletin board across from her bed. She could try to speak, but even to a lip-reader, words mouthed around a breathing tube wouldn't be clear. After each failed attempt at removing the respirator, the nurses increased her sedative so she could forget the pain and discomfort of being intubated. Some doctors have remained optimistic that the respirator may be removed in a day or two; others have been realistic in admitting that she may succumb to her current conditions, that her heart and lungs may be permanently weakened, or that her blood disease may progress to leukemia.

In a different way, Clare has been semi-conscious too. She's aware that her Nana is very sick and in the hospital, but "intensive care" and "very serious" mean little to her. She knows nothing of heart failure, respirators, or blood diseases. At the age of six, she's also a master of changing the subject when she wants to. I think that she's uncertain of what's going on and possibly scared to talk about it. She's also more than a little upset and angry because we're very likely going to be canceling a vacation to Disney World in a couple of weeks. At six, I think I'd want to hold someone responsible for that too.

Clare's Mom and I aren't taking Clare to see her Nana. I truly thank all of you who shared your opinions and especially those who shared experiences of their own children losing grandparents or of losing a parent or in-law yourself. You made a lot of great suggestions. I don't want Clare to regret not seeing Nana or not getting to say good bye, but we'll find a way for Clare to say good bye if it comes to that. More importantly though, I don't want Clare to remember her Nana this way. I want Clare to remember a grandmother who gave her hugs and dollar bills for snacks, not a woman tangled in tubes and breathing through a machine. I think that Clare's wanting to avoid talking about her grandmother confirms that this decision is right.

My thanks again to everyone for the prayers and good wishes. We're continuing to pray and hope for whatever may be best.

No Good News

Unfortunately, I have no good news to report about my Mom. She's still in intensive care and, last night, her lungs started to fail too. For about the last twenty-four hours, she's been on a respirator. Doctors are still performing tests, awaiting results, and are speculating that she may have pneumonia, a very bad case of the flu, or an embolism. This is in addition to the heart issues. Because of the discomfort of the respirator, they've given her several drugs to sedate her, including morphine. As is usually the case when conditions are this serious, the doctors can't confirm that she'll recover at all.

I was going to tell you the hardest part of this, but there are a lot of hard parts. Not knowing the exact problem is pretty tough because it means that there's no way to know if the problems are treatable or curable. Having my mother sedated and unconscious is tough too. When a patient is alert, you can be sure that they know you're there, and you can say "good night" and "I'll see you tomorrow." With my mother unresponsive, I don't know whether I should I leave her at all.

The last hard part is how much to tell Clare. She knows that her Nana is sick and in the hospital. I haven't brought her to visit because I think that the tubes, machines and IVs would be way too much for a six year-old to understand—I'm not even sure the ICU allows children in any circumstances. Clare knows something is wrong though and—if the worst case happens—she'll need to be told.

Have any of you dealt with how much to tell kids about a severe illness? You're some of the wisest parents I know so I'd like to hear. Thanks also for all of your wishes and prayers. They truly mean a lot.

Life Goes On

When my Dad was struck with cancer and died seventeen years ago, I didn't handle it well. I didn't break down or get emotional—I did exactly the opposite. He had pancreatic cancer and, because I didn't know much about it at the time, I was probably in denial about how long he'd be around for me. I didn't visit often enough or even tell most friends that he had been sick until he died. Being a twenty-two year old who had never lost anyone very close to me (my grandparents all died either before I was born or when I was very young), I guess I handled it as best as I could at the time.

Since my Dad died, my Mom has played the old Italian widow really well. She's been depressed at times, has mastered feeling sorry for herself, has conjured up guilt in others, and has gone over funeral arrangements with me even when she was perfectly healthy. She's also somewhat of a hypochondriac. She sometimes seems to exaggerate symptoms, has carried on about feeling sick long after she should feel well, and is ridiculously cautious about not going out in the cold or wind so she doesn't get a cold or pneumonia. When she told me last night that she felt like she should go to the hospital, I thought it was the hypochondriac calling. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

For about twenty-five years, my mother had a blood disorder called polycythemia vera, which means that her body made too many blood cells. It was manageable through regular drawing of blood. Recently, the condition took a turn and her body is producing too few blood cells—this isn't uncommon among patients with this disease. The new condition is called myelodysplastic syndrome or preleukemia, because it is sometimes a precursor to leukemia.

Possibly because of the strain from the blood disorder, or possibly because of an already slightly irregular heartbeat, the nurses and doctors found last night that my mother's blood pressure was dangerously low, but her heart rate was about twice the normal level. In the past twenty-four hours, she's undergone dozens of tests and is currently still in intensive care.

My mother may recover and live for years. Her problems might also worsen. Maybe because of how I reacted with my father, I'm realistic about what could happen. I'm also, at the age of thirty-nine, thinking about the possibility of being orphaned. (The 40 Year Old Orphan. Wasn't that a movie?) There's something about losing both parents that changes a person no matter how old. I'm not quite sure what it is yet, but I know that there's something.

For once in the past few months, I have a couple other posts ready to go on this blog. I was even going to point out that the last post was my three hundredth. Instead, I'm posting about my Mom to explain why I may not be reading or commenting on other blogs or responding to emails for a few days. Life goes on, but part of that life for me right now is acknowledging that my Mom will need me.

I'll be back next week. Until then, Happy Spring, Happy Easter to those that celebrate, and a great weekend to you all.

Friday(ish) Talent Round-Up

Thanks to the Writers Guild…

…for giving me the time to watch or re-watch some older shows on DVD. This week we’re watching Arrested Development. We also just watched the first season of 30 Rock again. I’m not a big fan of Alec Baldwin personally, but he’s hilarious on this show. Tina Fey is a riot too. She only added commentary to one of last season’s episodes on the DVD, but I’d watch a disc full of those if she made them.

I was just clued in by John at The Disney Blog that Tina Fey is Tinkerbell in this photo ad for Disney’s Year of a Million Dreams campaign. I love everything this woman does.

Thanks to Facebook…

…for hooking me up with a few dad blogging buddies and a couple other dad bloggers that I haven’t read much. I just created a Facebook group that's open to all other dad bloggers. I noticed that the moms had a group, so I figured why shouldn’t we? If you’re a dad blogger on Facebook, look it up and join. If you’re not on Facebook, no pressure, but why not? I just read somewhere (don’t make me look for it again) that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is thirty and forty-somethings. That’s probably because the twenty-somethings and teens were all on there already.

Thanks to Mom…

…for making me obsessed with throwing some things out and saving some pretty unusual things. We’re not rat packers by any sense—I hate having clutter around. But I do have a few boxes filled with things I’ve saved as far back as grade school.

A recent conversation with my Mom showed me where I might be headed.

“Clare’s got four wiggly teeth,” I told her.

“Are they almost ready to fall out?” she asked.

“Just about. The tooth fairy’ll be coming to our house.”

“I’ve still got your baby teeth,” she said. “You want to see them sometime?”

My jaw dropped. I think I’m going to start throwing more out.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Friday (okay…Saturday) Talent Round-Up

Like last week, I missed posting Friday Talent Round Up early on Friday. This week I didn’t even get to it by Friday night. But I have an excuse…really…and it’s not that the dog ate my blog.

Yesterday was a beautiful fall New England day. And by beautiful I mean that the temperature was around 80 degrees. Today we may get to 85. I’m sorry for people who are waiting for cool fall weather, but—unlike the southern and western United States—temperatures in the Northeast in July and August were below normal. This is making up for it. So, my point is, I was outside most of yesterday.

Clare also had a half day of school yesterday. (It’s a first Friday of the month thing in some Catholic schools. Anyone else’s school do that?) When Clare got home, we did some playing, did some shopping, and visited my Mom—who broke bones in both of her hands from a nasty fall last week. She’ll have casts on for at least a month and Clare and I went to sign them yesterday and to see if she needed help with anything.

We were also out last night. Clare’s school had movie night. We packed some dinner, went to the school gym, and watched Hook. I’d give you Clare’s review, but she spent more time off talking to her friends than watching the movie.

Today, we’re headed off to a fair. I normally don’t like these things, but—since it’s going to be near 85 degrees—I guess I can handle being outside. Unless I can convince Clare’s Mom that we should go to the beach instead.

Six Things About...Grampa

In honor of Father’s Day, here is the final installment of posts about Clare’s grandparents. The previous posts are here, here and here. Thanks to Clare’s Mom for this post.

1. Grampa was the second of seven kids—six boys and one girl. He and his older brother were born the same year—his brother in February and Grampa in December.

2. Grampa’s fiftieth high school reunion is this year. As a teenager growing up in the 1950’s, Grampa sometimes got into trouble. He has a badge shaped scar on the back of his hand from when he and some friends went for a joyride and rolled the car. They grafted skin from his leg.

3. Being a teenager in the 50’s also meant that Grampa thought smoking was cool. He’d roll a pack of cigarettes into his t-shirt sleeve like James Dean. Unfortunately, even though he quit smoking in the early 90’s, the damage was done. He has emphysema. So please, if you learn anything from Grampa, don’t start smoking. He’s said it’s one of his only regrets.

4. Grampa served in the Army in Germany as a radio operator. He learned a little German and probably drank a lot of German beer. Later, he volunteered as a firefighter in his hometown, and, after he married Gramma, worked at the same place for thirty-five years until he retired.

5. Grampa’s family has been in New England for generations. In fact, some research shows that his great great great great great great great great great grandfather was on the Mayflower. Through Grampa, Clare is distantly related to at least two U.S. presidents, three First Ladies, Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Browning, Agatha Christie, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Florence Nightingale, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Julia Child, Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope, Spencer Tracy and Shirley Temple.

6. Grampa loves Disney World as much as we do. He loved going to Florida with Gramma, and EPCOT was probably his favorite park. He and Gramma would settle down in England for dinner to get fish and chips with some stout and get a table with prime viewing for the fireworks. Grampa hasn’t been back to Disney World since Gramma died, but he has visited his older brother in Florida.

Happy Father’s Day, Grampa. We love you.

Daba De Daba Di

My Mom hates milk. When she was pregnant and her doctor told her to drink milk, she mixed it with soda (so she told me). (Yeah, kind of like Laverne De Fazio.) I don’t think I’ve ever seen her drink milk straight. Consequently, she never made me drink much milk. I did have to take vitamins though. And then there was juice.

Once I was in college, I didn’t drink much juice either—except maybe when I mixed it with rum or vodka. But, since Clare was born, we’ve become a big juice house—probably like most other houses with kids. We get juice boxes, juice pouches and bottles of all sizes.

Since I started updating this blog more often a few months ago, I’ve been sent some items to review. (Unfortunately, those items haven’t included motor vehicles or electronics.) But, a few weeks ago I was asked if I’d review True Blue Blueberry Juice in exchange for a few bottles. Since I like blueberries and already knew that they’re the number one food for antioxidants, I said sure.

So, last week, I received a case of True Blue. None of you really know me, but I wouldn’t give this a good review unless I liked it. And I did.

At first, Clare didn’t want to try the new juice. But I slipped her some without telling her what it was. And her review was good too—she drank it. I also gave a bottle to my Mom (not to mix with milk I hope) and she gave it the thumbs up too.

So, if you’re looking for a new addition to the juice rotation, check out this healthy choice. According to the True Blue website, blueberries are naturally sweeter than most other fruits used to make juices and need “significantly less added sweetener.” As a result, the juice is lower in calories than many others.

Check out the True Blue website for store locations, coupons, and some “interesting facts” about blueberries—like the blueberry being one of the few fruits native to North America, blueberry juice being popular among Civil War soldiers, and July being National Blueberry Month. There’s even some trivia that AdventureDad might confirm for us—that in Sweden dried blueberries are used to treat diarrhea in children.

So, not only do you get a recommendation for a healthy juice in this post, you also get some useless trivia that you probably didn’t want to know.

Eight Things About...Nana

This is the third of lists posted for Clare about her grandparents. This one is about my Mom—Clare’s Nana—whose birthday is later this week.

1. Nana is the second child of Luigi and Emilia, who emigrated in the early twentieth century from a town called Giffoni Valle Piana in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of southwest Italy. She has one older sister and had a younger brother who died as a newborn. Nana’s parents both died when I was about five years old.

2. Nana’s parents still spoke Italian at home when she was young. She learned English from her older sister who started school two years before her. We still joke that they sometimes speak Itanglish, using words like scolamacaroni for colander and phrases like “It’s good, no, the manicotti?” In their dialect, consonants are slurred and final vowels are never pronounced.

3. Nana’s older sister once convinced her that she should try to fly. So Nana jumped from the roof of their house. Luckily for you and me, Nana survived the fall.

4. Nana must have had an adventurous streak in her before she was married. She road tripped with friends to the Kentucky Derby and flew with this same group to Puerto Rico. Looking at this group of women years later, you’d be surprised if they could organize a trip to the next town over—but that’s probably what having kids is doing to all of us.

5. Aside from raising me (of course), one of Nana’s biggest adventures was traveling to Italy for several months in 1955. I haven’t seen the pictures from this trip for years and don’t know if Nana still has them, but feel free to imagine it like Roman Holiday. The other cool fact about this trip is that Nana sailed on the Andrea Doria—before it sank of course.

6. Before I came along, Nana worked as a telephone operator. She quit when I was born, and has never gone back to work.

7. Nana doesn’t always say the most thought out things. She once visited me in Manhattan on a day that the temperature was about 100 degrees. We passed a homeless person on the street crouched in a doorway and wearing nothing but a plastic garbage bag. Nana’s reaction was, “Oh, my God! It’s too hot to be wearing plastic.” (I apologize for the joke at the expense of homelessness, but that’s a comment I’ll never forget.)

8. From the day you were born, Nana has loved to hold you and call you her “little doll.” I was probably about ten before she stopped calling me her “little baby boy.” We may get frustrated with her sometimes, but nobody will ever love us quite the way that Nana does.

Six Things About...Gramma

This is the second of lists posted for Clare about her grandparents; the first is here. This one is about Clare’s Mom’s Mom, or Clare’s Gramma. Since Clare’s Mom knew her mother a little bit longer than I did (by twenty-something years), I’d figured I’d let her take this one. And, yeah, I hadn’t known what Carpatho-Rusyn was either.

1. Gramma was the second of five children (three girls and two boys). Her father was Polish and her mother was Carpatho-Rusyn. Both came from large families, so Gramma had close to fifty cousins.

2. When Gramma was young, she wanted to be a plumber like her Dad. But her parents didn’t think that girls should be plumbers. Instead, she went to nursing school. Somehow, Gramma never saw the double standard when she wouldn’t let me play Little League.

3. She liked to play with people by making things up. She told your uncles and me that she remembered rolling down the hills in Iowa in her childhood (like in Country Time lemonade commercials), but she never lived in Iowa. She once told your uncle that dinosaurs are extinct because the Indians hunted and ate them; he put this in a school report. When she was little, she told her sister that the cigarette lighter in the car was an explosive device (apparently they ticked back in the 1950’s) and the car would blow up when it popped out. Her sister never forgave her for that.

4. You were Gramma’s third granddaughter, but she liked you best. (Okay…she liked everybody best.) We used to live further away and stayed with Gramma and Grandpa overnight sometimes. In the mornings, Gramma used to eat Rice Krispies with you. To entertain you, she also made “toe people” by drawing faces on the bottom of her toes.

5. She worked hard for what she wanted. When she decided she wanted a swimming pool, she went back to work after your uncles and I were in school and saved her money until she had enough for the swimming pool. She liked to remodel and redecorate too. She was still remodeling rooms when she died.

6. Three years ago, on March 25, 2004, Gramma died suddenly in her sleep. We just heard today that one of your great uncles thinks that Gramma sometimes visits his house by the beach and hides things on him and knocks other things off tables. You can decide what you think about that. Maybe someday, you’ll feel Gramma around too.

Eight Things About...Grandpa Joe

My own Dad, Clare’s grandfather, was Irish. Irish-American actually—he was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Since this is primarily a blog about Clare, I thought it would be fun to add in some facts about her ancestry. So I’m going to do a variation on a popular blog meme, and write some things about Clare’s Grandpa Joe. It’s usually five or six things, but I’ve come up with eight. I also figured that St. Patrick’s Day is a fine day to do it.

1. Grandpa Joe was the fourth and youngest child of Martin and Mary. He had a brother and sister who are still living, and another sister who died in infancy. Grandpa Joe’s parents died before even I was born.

2. Our last name is English, but my father's family originally comes from County Mayo on the northwest shore of Ireland. I didn’t wonder about the name until I started thinking about genealogy and ancestry. For centuries, the English settled in Ireland as invaders, farmers, laborers or for religious reasons. I have no idea what Englishman mixed in with the Irish on my father's side, or when or why, but I'd love to find out someday.

3. Grandpa Joe was a troublemaker as a kid. Once when he was forced to go somewhere in the car with his parents and didn’t want to go, he threw his mother’s purse out the window onto the side of the road so they'd have to stop. Don’t get any ideas, Clare.

4. Grandpa Joe had many childhood friends that he kept throughout his life. When I was a kid, we visited these friends often, went to parties at their houses, and sometimes went on vacations together. One of my favorite parties to go to was on St. Patrick’s Day. We’d watch a parade and Grandpa Joe and his friends seemed to know just about everyone in it and would yell out their names when they marched by us. I heard a lot of Pat’s, Mike’s, Murph’s and Sully’s.

5. Grandpa Joe became a high school history and social studies teacher. He taught at a community home for troubled teenage boys and at the local public high school for twenty-four years. He had great patience with lower-level students and mostly taught those classes. He also organized and chaperoned trips so these students could visit places like Newport, Rhode Island or Washington, D.C. The tests he would give in class were often very simple fill-in-the-blank or short essay questions. He used me to help grade papers and once, when he was looking for the missing year in the sentence “The Declaration of Independence was signed in _____”, I laughed when I saw one answer. A student had written “the summer.” My father told me to give it half credit because, he said, “it’s not wrong.”

6. He introduced me to theater by taking me to productions at the local high school. He encouraged students who weren’t so great academically or had trouble fitting in to find a voice for themselves on stage. He even had a bit part in a show once.

7. When I was in college, he came to visit about once a month. My friends loved him and he often brought a couple of us out to dinner. Once, when he and my mother came, he secretly handed his car keys to my roommate and told him to go get and hide what was in the trunk. He didn’t want my mother to know that he had brought us beer.

8. Grandpa Joe was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the spring of 1990. Although he was given only a couple months to live, he held out until August 1991. He also kept working as long as possible. I didn’t handle his being sick very well, and the last time that I saw him coherent I left by saying, “See you later, Dad. You’ll be fine.” He died a week later and, although I was there, we didn’t get to speak. I still miss him very much. He would have really loved you, Clare.

I’m not tagging anyone for this meme, but I think it’s a pretty good idea. I may even do it for the rest of Clare’s grandparents. If anyone wants to take the idea, be my guest.