Loose Leaf Notes

1. I come from a family of nine siblings. After losing my sister Kathy last week – and after the deaths of my brothers Jim and Dan in 2001 – it’s hard to grok that we are only six now and that I’m the oldest!

2. I’m glad that our family grieving time included tears, laughter and storytelling and that it was done in incremental steps with three events in three days – a family viewing, a wake, and a funeral mass service.

3. Most of my Irish Catholic working class family members like to gamble. Out of nine, only me and my sister Tricia did not get that gene. My sister Sherry had been bringing a $10 scratch ticket on Wednesdays when she visited our sister Kathy toward the end. The ticket scratching, which Kathy called their “casino day,” cheered her up. On the last Wednesday, the day before she died, I bought my first lottery ticket and scratched along with them.

4. The day I heard about Kathy’s death, I processed my initial grief by writing a piece titled “Gold” that explained their Wednesday lottery playing, among other things. The tribute ended with, “When Sherry was at Kathy’s bedside the morning Kathy died, she kissed her goodbye and said, “I just wanted you to be here for a few more weeks. I wanted us to win the million together!” We’re all winners just knowing Kath and having been part of her life. More HERE.

5. On the drive to Massachusetts from Virginia, my husband Joe and I saw about a dozen old cars stacked up on top of each other like a junkyard totem pole. “I live for that,” I said to Joe about those little things in life that surprise and don’t quite fit.

6. Before we left Virginia, Joe bought me another $10 lottery ticket called “Gold.” At first I thought I would put it with Kathy’s body the way people in the past have left riches for the dead to take to the afterlife, but then I thought how frustrated Kathy would be at the thought of unscratched ticket that might have a win on it, so I decided we would take turn scratching it for her.

7. At the after-funeral reception lunch, my brother Joey took the ticket around to each table and got a representative from each table to scratch.

8. Neither that ticket or my first ticket had a win, but it was fun to communally scratch, and my brother John won over $800 playing keno at the bar.

9. Someone made the comment, “After Jim and Dan died, the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 80 years, and now this. Thanks Kath.”

10. I believe that my father, who passed away in 2005, has shaken the holy water bottles on his dresser for me the way the character in the movie Interstellar made the watch shake and fall to give his daughter a sign. HERE is the story of the first time the bottles shook and purred like a motor.

11. The holy water bottles shook for me when I was staying in my dad’s room last November. On this trip one shook, along with my dad’s purple heart, for Joe when he was in the room alone after looking through some of my dad’s WWII books and wondering if he could take some home. I think that’s a “yes” I later said.

12. Joe and I saw the chair in the picture above when we walked from my mother’s house to A Street Pier to watch the sunset HERE. It was Sunday evening and we saw through people’s windows that every house had the Patriots Game on TV.

13. “Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde

_________________      Thirteen Thursday