An Easter Like No Other

I already knew this Easter would be different. Not only was it so early, but two of the three daughters who usually share the day with us were leaving town. And the third? Read on.

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I was happy that Kate and her family decided to visit Patrick in St. Louis. She is coming to the realization that before long it will not be possible for her entire family to be together for some of the major holidays. Remember in my last post I said that Patrick is developing great skill as a writer? Look at this and the name in the bottom left hand corner. He was also the recipient of a handsome check. Perhaps the birthplace of T.S. Eliot is wearing off on him.

Liz and her family decided to go East to visit the boys in Maryland and Virginia. Bizarre as it sounds, it is usually impossible for them to make this trip in the summer, due to conflicting sports obligations for the fifteen grandchildren involved. Easter is usually out of the question too because some of the families are students or teachers in schools that get their Easter holidays before Easter while others get them after Easter. But it worked out this year.

Not to worry, there would still be the solemn pageant of the Easter services and a brunch with Lucy and family on Easter Sunday. However, 10 a.m. on Easter Sunday, the time when normally everyone would be arriving, when glasses would be clanking, and the aroma of Ernie’s traditional ham breakfast would be filling the air, found me alone in the kitchen chopping up fruit for a fruit salad. Ernie was in bed, where he had been since Friday, leaving me to go to church alone, though two of the girls and their families had been at church on Holy Thursday evening, before everyone took off, and Lucy and Peter were at Good Friday services. He was coughing to beat the band and was too lethargic to eat or to watch more than a few token minutes of basketball. And that’s the NCAA semis and finals!


BUT, and here’s the good part, I was not unhappy to go alone to Lucy and Peter’s house (and it is even more extraordinary that they made it to church those two times) because there was this—
Ronan Gabriel, born on March 23rd. Things are so different these days. Even though he was born by Caesarian section (for many reasons, not the least being that he weighed 9 and a half pounds) Lucy was released from the hospital after less than forty-eight hours. It was a stroke of good luck that Peter’s company had instituted a two week paid paternity leave just a few months ago. Gladys will be two this month and Joe is three and a half, so their house is a monument to diapers. A very happy monument.

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And the name? This photo hangs on our dining room wall. There is a better copy of the original photograph, and I will insert it when it is found. Sigh. The gnome-like gentleman seated to the right is Ernie’s great-grandfather, James Murray. Seated on the left is his wife, the former Mary Ann Ronan. Note how she is hiding her left hand: family lore tells that she mutilated it in some way on the ship coming over from Ireland. Her brother, Charles Ronan, married Elizabeth Fox and they had a son, Edward, who died in infancy in 1862.

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 Little Edward’s headstone found its final resting
place in our living room. How it made the trip from the graveyard in Iowa to a living room in Michigan is a long story, and perhaps destined to be another part of family lore, but I am assured that no laws, civil or ecclesiastical, were broken. So Lucy grew up with little Edward Ronan, who is now commemorated in our family one hundred and sixty years after his birth.

And me? I came down with the coughing curse and spent two restful days in bed, listening to the rain rattling against the windows.