Excerpts

While growing up, my enormous family often felt like a circus. Mom was the center stage ring leader who mastered the art of juggling nine activities at once. She could accomplish more in a 24 hour period than most people did in a week— serving up dinner for 15 each night, attending daily mass, and still finding the time to make our clothes. Below are a few of Mom’s life lessons.

Mom wasn’t going to let Sears get away with selling and installing a defective floor in her home. Who do they think they are? She needed a strong floor that could last at least ten years and withstand the wear and tear of fifteen people. With these thoughts brewing in her head, she put us to work. Nothing was too hard in our house and there was nothing that some extra elbow grease couldn’t fix! With Mom’s master planning, all of us kids spent the Easter school break working to unseal and chip away the installed floor. It was hot, sweaty back-breaking work, but Mom was on a mission. She was at war with Sears and planned to win this battle.

At the age of seventeen, I learned that it is horrible to watch someone die. It’s awful when the person dying is someone with whom you’ve fought and argued, and secretly despised off and on for many years. It’s brutal when you’re so racked with guilt and pride that you can’t muster the strength to be honest and say four simple words, “I love you, Dad.” However, even in my father’s last days, he couldn’t tell me he loved me either. It wasn’t his way. Talking and expressing emotions weren’t part of who he was. And as a teenage girl, I wasn’t mature enough to say what I felt in my heart. Before I knew it, it was too late.

Eventually, I moved through the sorrowful process of accepting Mom’s Alzheimer’s disease and came to acknowledge it for what it was. I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t control it – I needed to accept it. I learned to rationalize her illness in a light-hearted way. I talked to my sisters and we agreed that at least she wasn’t going to suffer the excruciating pain that Dad did. At least she didn’t die when I was in high school. At least she had lived a long healthy life so far and had seen her children get married and enjoyed the blessings of thirty-one grandchildren – even if she will forget all of it. I was a Lonergan and if Mom could tell me, she’d expect me to somehow find a “glass half-full” perspective amid her devastating disease. It was how she raised me.

Before Mom left for Middlebury, Dad promised to write letters and to visit. He kept his promises. Through their daily love letter exchange, their love blossomed and within three months they were engaged as Dad popped the big question on New Year’s Eve of 1952. On June 27, 1953, less than a year from the day they met on that blissful day on an Aruban beach, Mom and Dad were married in a small Roman Catholic ceremony in the tiny chapel co-located within the grand St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Lesson # 11—Work hard.

Lesson #22— Accept the things you cannot change.

Lesson #15—Forgive yourself.

Lesson # 2—Love is all you need.