SIBLINGS
(updated)
Death abruptly interrupts your late life stroll, grabbing you with grappling-hook intensity and staying there beneath the surface, poking you almost daily.
That’s of course if you’re still alive to feel the recurring pangs of your mortality.
Some don’t make it far enough to rock in an easy chair until someone younger helps you out of it.
You expect your parents to die.
Doesn’t make it any easier. Devastating when they go at a young age. My dad went first at 53. I was the first one to the hospital. Early afternoon. Saw him savagely fighting for breath as they moved him on a gurney to a room which would eventually be his tomb.
He somehow hung on till early in the morning when the last of my siblings, Joe, made it to the impromptu viewing. Seven children joined my mom as we said goodbye shortly after his nine-year agony with leukemia ended.
My mother went at 74. A doctor gathered us all together in the hospital beforehand to explain how hopeless it was. Joe was shaking his head as the doc spoke. He knew, then we all knew. I kissed her on the forehead shortly after her last panicky smile.
The only people who really know what it’s like to lose a sibling has lost one. Or three.
KATHY
Got the call from my brother-in-law John on an early spring Saturday morning in 2005. When the phone rang, I was heading out the door to coach grade schoolers in a track meet, one of my favorite things to do.
“Kathy’s gone,” he said. His words still linger in the portion of the brain collecting dust and sadness.
She was 13 months older than me, the most loyal person I have ever met. I can remember her once in grade school, taking care of one of my brother Joe’s agitators by sitting on the guy until he lost his will to attack any McQuades.
She simply loved her kin. She was so supportive in whatever her three brothers and three sisters did, from Cub Scouts to sports to crafting to jobs to well, if they did nothing she’d back them. She was also a perfect wall to lean on after rejection.
When there was only three of us kids she was a member of the Belles and Beauxs, baton twirlers extraordinaire. My dad would pile up into the back of the station wagon with push buttons for drive and reverse and we’d be off to watch Kathy in a parade in Hazleton or Scranton or on the Levittown Parkway.
We wanted no parts of the Beauxs but didn’t mind watching Kathy as one of the Belles. She taught me how to twirl the baton. Haven’t needed that skill but have it just in case.
Much later in her life when she worked for Sears, she once asked me to join her team in a company race. I jumped at the chance to be a ringer, even though it was clearly a relative term in this case. At stake mostly was bragging rights for her department. So as I started the 5K race, I looked over my shoulder and saw Kathy, who was supposed to be on the running team, meld into the back of the race with the dedicated walking team. She pulled out a cigarette for the leisurely stroll.
Her team won. I was the one sweating and breathing heavy after the race. Kathy wore a wide grin as she put out her cigarette. Her department got a free lunch and a year to gloat.
The Christmas after she died, her husband John, a very nice man with good intentions, gave a part of Kathy to all her siblings. Her ashes were distributed in six tiny whiskey bottles. Strange, yes but tender in a halting, avant-garde way. The oddity wears off after you remember she was a McQuade. I kept Kathy on my bookshelf for years before finally burying my piece of her in the backyard. She remains there under healthy shrubbery. I wave as I pass my old neighborhood. Such a sweet, loving, loyal person.
FRANNY
A bunch of people spoke at Kathy’s funeral. Joe gave a moving tribute centering on the first three McQuades, born to Andy and Alice. My wife, Denise, gave a short, revealing speech saying how Kathy was the first to welcome her into the McQuade clan. It’s a huggable group but marrying into the family is somewhat akin to sticking your toe into cold water. It warms eventually and both aloof and eager outsiders, if they have patience, eventually become McQuades. Kathy was the perfect person to open the sometimes creaky door.
I spoke at my mom’s funeral, remembering her skill at jitterbugging and obsession with soap dishes. I did not talk at Kathy’s funeral. I couldn’t speak. I was a zombie. Denise had to hold my hand on the way into the viewing. That was my big sister. I had avoided most funerals and vehemently hated when friends or family devolved into surprise stuffed strangers in caskets,
I was able to talk when Franny died. I had matured and painfully I had lived through the agony of losing a sibling.
Here is what I said:
The smile.
That’s the first thing that hits you about Fran. It brightens up the room when he enters.
I told him once that his smile is one of the reasons he had three wives.
Guess what he did when I said that?
Smiled.
His son, Shaun, told me Fran smiled just before he died yesterday.
Doesn’t surprise me.
He smiled a lot the last two weeks. He was all worried about how all his loved ones were saddened by his pending death. He was sorry, he told me.
We were the ones who were sorry. Sorry to lose such a nice man.
My brother was salt of the earth, a regular, blue-collar, hard-working guy who could have lived in Mayberry the way he enjoyed simple things like fishing and going to Phillies games.
My brother Joe might sue me for this but Fran was the best looking McQuade brother. That smile had a lot to do with that.
I’m so glad how close we grew the last couple years. It started with the brothers annual baseball game but evolved into Friday phone calls with Fran venting about the Phillies and sports from the guys on Daily News Live to the guys on WIP.
His kids all should know he also talked about them a lot. I heard plenty of stories about coaching Tyler and how smart Andrew E. is and how pretty Steph and Noelle are and how crazy but lovable Andrew M. is and how Shaun has grown into a real man and how much that pleased him. And his other kid, Finley, the dog, who he explained is a people person just last week.
His wife, Ruth, should know his love for her was unparalleled and the McQuades all love her enormously. When Fran emerged from his demons she was the person most responsible for keeping them at bay.
Couple quick Fran stories.
Once Joe was chasing after him for something and he went flying down the steps and I was running to try to catch him but all I caught was the tooth that flew out of his mouth after his head bounced off the step.
Fran and I were playing a pickup football game once and I had this interception all lined up and as it hit my hands I got hammered so hard I lost the ball. Fran was the one that hit me, yet he was on MY team.
Joe, Fran and I all played on a recreation basketball team and one game Fran almost started a riot by taking a charge so hard while sticking out his chest that the guy went flying. It had been a real chippy game and we had maybe one sub and the other team had about 10 subs and were much younger. I’ve seen Joe fight and he can handle himself but we would have been killed if the pending fight erupted. As it got close I looked over at Fran, who of course smiled.
Later that season we had a chance to get in the playoff with a do or die game and were down one point with seconds to go when Fran bulled his way into a crowd and got the rebound. Unfortunately the layup attempt hit the bottom of the rim. We all actually laughed out loud at that one.
When Fran was little some annoying friend of Joe’s started to call him Fritz and he hated it so being a wise guy brother I started to call him Fritz, too. Eventually he grew to embrace the name but I think I was the only one who called him that. In fact, ”Good bye Fritz,” might have been my last words to him. Meanwhile Fran recently got a hotmail account and Fran is anti-internet. Guess what his email address is: Fritz McFritz.
A couple years ago Fran got laid off and Denise asked him to put up shelves in my garage and fix our downstairs toilet but we wouldn’t let him do it unless he took money for it. We fought him on this because we would have paid someone else. Anyway, Fran is a perfectionist and he was never happy even when the job was excellent. We started calling him Columbo cause he would start to leave a million times but always spin around with one more question. Then he would go home and call from home with questions like : “Drew are you sure Denise is happy with the handle on the toilet.”
He cracked me up. Boy do I love my brother. And I’m crying as I write this but I’m comforted in the fact that all these kind of memories are etched in my brain and I can conjure them up anytime.
I’m smiling, Fritz. Crying but smiling too.
Kathy was 55 when she died. Fran was 56. In a warped view, I thought the seven of us would go in order so I should have been second. Didn’t work that way. I’m long past my turn now on the conveyor belt which hopefully doubled as an escalator going up.
Kathy made friends easily so the lines were seemingly endless at her funeral. Not only a giant group from Sears, but a bunch from Bishop Conwell High School and from the neighborhood. She and John were social animals and embraceable. They all came. It was a nice sendoff.
I might have thought it was record-setting until Franny’s funeral. He told his wife Ruth to reserve four hours and he called it correctly. Not only did all three wives show up, but their parents came as well. Franny had a way about him in that maybe you couldn't live with him forever but you could never fully leave him.
He’s the kind of guy who could be trouble but you just shook your head and smiled after his escapades. And his energy was magnetic.
When Franny was young, one of his friends was a stuffed monkey. He used to drag it around with him but there is no solid evidence that he had it with him during his carvings.
He would carve his name into furniture using whatever sharp objects he could find. Pens, paper clips, the file on nail clippers. Even The graffiti was not necessarily artistic. There would be uneven FRANNYS and FRANS on the bottom of drawers, in the back of chests. No one knows why. He always had this silly, endearing grin.
He was wearing it on his face when my mom spotted one of his carvings. When confronted he flashed his usual pearly whites and declared, “The monkey did it.”
Right, Fritz, which monkey would that be?
MARY ALICE
Mary Alice died so suddenly and senselessly it hurts every time you think about it. Broadsided on a lonely New Jersey street late at night.
She made it to 60 with so much love for her kids and extended family. Until then she was a survivor, coming out on the other side of some tough relationships with her chin up and a determined spirit.
Here’s what I said at Mary Alice’s funeral:
Mary Alice was a loud person.
Loud in a good way. She knew how to have a good time, how to get the wallflowers off the wall and onto the dance floor. She filled a room when she entered, she energized a lame party. She loved life. I had a party once when we lived in a duplex below a landlord who convinced himself he lived with us too and afterward he said “boy, your sister Mary Alice is a loudest woman I ever met.” She had to be. I always thought she was loud because she was in the middle of seven McQuade kids who never shut up. She wanted to be heard.
When my mother-in-law met my family at my son Dan’s communion party she said to Denise, “One thing about those McQuades they love to have a good time.” She was referring specifically to Mary Alice.
Mary Alice was also a beautiful woman of a million faces and hairstyles and hair colors and outfits. If I always had an iPhone I could have worked up a fabulous photo display of Mary through the years and had it up on a big screen behind me. Imagine all the hits that would get on youtube. It would be robust, full of color and sparkle and in the center beaming out at you would be an attractive woman.
Mary was sweet. It was inherent. Not everyone can be called sweet. No one ever called me sweet wth a straight face. For Mary it was a gift.
Mary was kind and loving and loyal, the best mom and perhaps an even better grandma. It may have been short but those little characters were so fortunate to be wrapped up in grandma Mary’s warm embrace.
Mary was also an unbelievably good sport. When she was about seven she stood up in a roomful of noisy McQuades and announced her inventive but odd mantra. She said “ah ee ah ee soup soup.” Of course it made no sense; it sounded like something the old TV show character Chief Halftown would say but that didn’t stop her siblings, especially her wise guy oldest brother, from ever letting her forget she uttered the silly phrase. When she turned 50, I even made up a soup can with ah ee ah ee on it.
Through it all when Mary should have said, give it a break you big goofball, or enough already. She didn’t. She always laughed it off.
She laughed loud and it was infectious and it made me laugh back. Mary was larger than life and her loss leaves an enormous void in a family deluged with losses. But I hope everyone can eventually do what I have been doing for far too long now after the loss of my parents, big sister, little brother and now younger sister.
I’ll hang on to the memories of Mary that make me laugh and I’ll be thankful she blessed us with her soulful vitality while she was here.
Younger siblings Joe, Mark and Rosemarie are still around for me to appreciate. At any given moment in time, Joe is on a flight to some exotic place, Mark is riding his bike near the beach in Wildwood where he lives and Rosemarie is crafting something.
I am blessed to have them.
