C (oldest son) called tonight wanting to know if we have Irish or Scotch in our background. He was delighted to learn we do. Something about his music and clans in the USA. I told him I would look up the names of our ancestors for him. He wants to do a search. I have been collecting info for years in hopes of getting a family history done.

I looked around and found documents, letters, cards, pictures, newspaper clippings and I couldn't quit. I felt so close to my past, close even to the times before I was born. Close to relatives I never met. I can't explain it. It was if time had no meaning. Place? Yes, but even place not important.

Pictures of mother, dad, Aunt Petie, Uncle Buster, dad, our sons, F and me when young. Everyone's energy filling my room. It was as if no one had died. Everyone still here. In a sense they are, as long as I carry them in my heart and my memory.

March 3,1998

a memory

Tonight I watched the New York Philharmonic orchestra play Pathatique. It was so beautiful I cried. My tears burned my eyes. I remember the summer (1983) F and I visited mother and dad. On our way back to Connecticut I heard it on the car radio. F said it was known as the saddest piece ever composed. It is the saddest I've ever heard.

When we reached home, there was a note by the phone in K's (our son's) hand, "Call home. It's important." I thought it was bad news and it was. Dad had died as we were travelling home.

That piece always reminds me of him and the summer of his death and how we turned around and were there for the funeral and came back and I felt the raw grief the rest of the summer. I think he knew he would not see me again. When we left, he squeezed my hand so tight, frantically, until the ring I was wearing cut into flesh. That scene nagged me all the way home. It still does.

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