End of an Era

We laid my beloved aunt and uncle to rest this weekend at the church my uncle and grandfather helped build. Every single living member of our family was there, which has not happened since we were a family of just five cousins and our parents. And as this was the place that we memorialized my mother and grandfather, it felt as though they were there too. It was beautiful.

I was tasked with saying a few words. For someone who loves being the center of attention as much as I, I am very uncomfortable with public speaking. I have shared my words below, so maybe you can meet them a little. You would have loved them, everyone of you, because everyone loved them.

I woke this morning in my favorite place – the Berkshires – and I’m headed off to hike up my favorite mountain – Monument Mountain – before enjoying some art and good food with friends. So basically – living my aunt and uncle’s legacy.

Here is what I shared:

Hello.  I am Kathleen Drohan and I am Nancy and Dick’s niece. My mother and Nancy were beloved sisters.  I’m here on behalf of myself, my sister, Karen, her daughters Talia and Ava to talk about my aunt and uncle and how grateful we are to them and our mother for making sure that we always felt like we were one family. We loved them so much and we grew up adoring our cousins Janii, Steven, and Jon, we still do, and that love grew and grew as they brought spouses, children, and grandchildren into our little clan (not so little any more).

Karen and I moved around a bit as kids and for most of our childhood, were in a single parent household. Our single parent, our mom Judy, was amazing, of course, but we were always a little jealous of the boisterous stability we saw our cousins growing up in.  Hindsight is 20 / 20 and all that, and I know they had their issues, but from where we sat, there was nothing more fun, and slightly intimidating, than being around the controlled Peterson chaos.

Uncle Dick could make us laugh like no one else. He could talk like a duck – sometimes we called him Uncle Duck – and it would send us into hysterics. Sometimes, he would come to our house in the evenings and my sister and I would listen from the top of the stairs, long after we should have been asleep, as he chatted with my mom and stepdad, in hopes that he might slip into duck-speak.

Aunt Nancy had the very glamorous job of physical therapist, which included her often working in the pool at our local hospital, which sounded amazing! She was also the first Waukeela girl of our family. Waukeela Camp later became a summer home for my mom, my sister and me, and both my nieces, but Aunt Nancy was the OG. My sister was actually married at Waukeela and when I arrived for the wedding, my aunt was already there and we looked at each other and without saying a word, broke into a very out of tune version of the camp theme song. My brother-in-law-to-be looked on in amazement. “Karen told me this might happen” he said, shaking his head, “but I had no idea.” Little did he know how many Waukeela songs he would hear from that point on.

We got older and wiser and as a family we all moved around a lot, but we always knew that Aunt Nancy and Uncle Dick were there. They never forgot our birthdays, which conveniently were the same day, and called to check in on a regular basis. When Talia and Ava joined the clan, they were overjoyed. Uncle Dick resurrected his duck voice prompting a very young Ava to refer to him as Silly Boy, a name that stuck, and is still what we sometimes call him.

When our mom got sick, Aunt Nancy was with us every step of the way, often driving to Boston on a moment’s notice to accompany my mom to a doctor’s appointment or just to sit with her on her hardest days. After she died, both my aunt and uncle would check so regularly that it was almost too much, except that it wasn’t. Uncle Dick would come to my mom’s house, where I now lived alone and just walk around fixing things. Anything that needed even a little tweak would be tweaked to perfection.

As I was thinking about them and what I could say about them today, everything felt so obvious. You know it all. But I think the thing that rings so true to me is their capacity for goodness and love. No one is perfect, but boy did they overflow with goodness and love.

Uncle Dick loved people. All people. And he loved telling you about the people he met along the way. This one lives over on Governor’s Island and he had three cats. That one was just telling me about his neighbor’s girlfriend’s son who is going to school to learn math. No detail was too small, because he thought every detail was fascinating. He was fascinated with people and he wanted us all to be as well. What a gift.

And Aunt Nancy believed that there was always something good in every situation. She would say to me over and over when something bad was happening – in the world, in our town, in our family – she would say – “you have to find good and praise it.”  And she could. She should find something nice to say about the person who cut her off while she was driving. And when I despaired as my mom lay in a hospital bed, she could help me find the beauty in our being together. She said Find Good to me so often that I eventually had it tattooed on my wrist, and I look at that tattoo every time I find myself sinking into grumpiness or worse.

I am struggling to find good in their loss, but they had beautiful life stories, with each other and with their amazing kids, grandkids and great grandkids. And Karen, Talia, Ava, and I are so blessed to have been part of the story as well. 

We love you and we will miss you every day.