What we leave behind...
Today is a day that has been burned into my heart and mind for eternity. For most modern-day Americans, the world stopped turning on September 11, 2001. For me, however the world stopped turning long before that. The world stopped turning on September 24, 1987.
It is so strange to look back on the details of that week. I was rounding four years old - and in the twenty years that have passed, some details are a century away, and others but a few moments. A few moments ago I was in the car with my Memere, I made her take the knob off of the stick shift of her old Chevy and I would sing into it’s metal plated black plastic tip like it were a microphone. The song was, and was always in times preceding, Mr. Rogers’ theme song…
A moment ago, I was standing in her kitchen on Shaw Street, South Lawrence and watching her mash potatoes by hand, and fill the blue plastic measuring cup for me that she used to use to fill her iron on the porch where she did her ironing…
A moment ago, it was Christmas Eve, and I was sitting at my new playschool workbench. The door to my grandparents’ house next door to my Memere’s on Shaw Street opened, and I turned from my new toy and saw her smiling face and said “Hi, Memere!” As exuberantly as I could… That was her last Christmas.
In mid-September of 1987, my beloved great-grandmother had a last minute change in plans. Instead of babysitting her two great-grandchildren, Jennifer Kady, and yours, truly, she had a free afternoon and wanted badly to go pick up a pair of shoes at Sears in what was then the Methuen Mall, and what is now Home Depot of the Loop. She asked her sister, Gladys to go with her, but Auntie Gladys was unavailable to go. She said, “To hell with you, Gladys. I’m going anyway.” Little did she know that those would be the last words she ever spoke to anyone in the family. She went into Sears. Picked her shoes out, and went to the cash register.
From here on, some of the details are missing, so I will speculate based on family members’ recounts of that day. She began to suffer a myocardial infarction (heart attack) at the check-out counter. A woman who was also at the registers stayed with her as she lost consciousness. Being that is was twenty years ago, CPR was not quite as common as it is today. No immediate rescue measures were taken, as nobody at the scene was qualified, or willing. The woman, who’s identity was never discovered by anyone in our family - to my knowledge - held her hand and waited for the ambulance.
When the medics arrived emergency measures and defibrillation began. I.V.’s were started, medicines given, and the matriarch of the Landry family was rushed to what was then the Bon Secour Hospital, and what is now known as Caritas Holy Family.
Her heart was kick-started but the damage had been done. Her brain was without oxygen for too long. Emergency calls were placed to her new residence of 121 Berkley Rd, N. Andover, to a busy line - and to the National Convention of Realtors Conference in New York, where her closest relative, my grandfather, and my grandmother were attending a conference. They all rushed to the hospital.
After the decision was made to stop the vents, as there was little chance of her recovering and returning to the life she had before she went into Sears, everyone waited. My grandmother and her sister did what all Italian Catholics do, prayed the novena and waited. For seven days my great grandmother clung to life on this earth in the Cardiac wing of the Bon Secour.
I do not believe in God in the traditional, Catholic, sense. However, she did. And so I believe firmly and passionately that at fifteen minutes past the third hour of the afternoon on September 24, 1987; The God of Abraham, the God of Jewish-Christian faith sent an Angel of Peace and Mercy to Bon Secour Hospital. And when she did draw in her last breath, the angel carried her to Heaven where she was greeted by all the angels and saints who had gone before her. But when Lucille Imelda “Lilly” Landry left this world behind her, I do not think that even she could have realized the impact she had already had on my life.
I am twenty four years old in three weeks time. And in the last twenty years I have encountered death too many times to count. I learned of death as a toddler and it has been ever my companion since. Lilly Landry lived as she loved, and died as she’d hoped. I do not think she suffered, and I do not think her soul clings to the earth. But I do hope for two things: First, that when the hour of my death comes, I hope that I am surrounded by loved ones as she was, and second that when I get where I am bound to be going, may her loving smile and warm caring face be the first I see. And may we have eternity to share.
In my life and journey on the broken road I walk, I have made some rather unusual wishes. But now I wish for one thing. It is not for money, as money is a materialistic thing that I cannot take with me. I would not wish to be granted a free easy ride to nursing school. I know I will get there and I want to do it on my own. (The government can help though, I give them plenty) I would not wish to find my one true love, as I know that one special person will find me someday. No. If I could have one wish granted without any disastrous effects, I would wish for one more day with my memere. One more day to ask her all the things I never got to, to tell her all the things I’ve been wanting to, to look into her eyes once more, and hear the sound of her voice. And when our day together was over, I would finally get to say goodbye…
Though her smile is gone forever, and her hand I cannot touch. I will never lose the Memories for the one I loved so much. Friends may think I have forgotten, when oft they See me smile, but little do they know the pain my heart hides all the while.
Because when evening shades are falling, and I sit all alone,
To my heart there comes a longing if you only could come home.
It broke all our hearts to lose you, but you didn’t go alone, a part of me went with you,
The day God called you Home…
tu jour de amore, Memere.
To the eternal memory of Lucille Imelda Landry August 31, 1917 - September 24, 1987
“Gone but Ne’re Forgotten”
It is so strange to look back on the details of that week. I was rounding four years old - and in the twenty years that have passed, some details are a century away, and others but a few moments. A few moments ago I was in the car with my Memere, I made her take the knob off of the stick shift of her old Chevy and I would sing into it’s metal plated black plastic tip like it were a microphone. The song was, and was always in times preceding, Mr. Rogers’ theme song…
A moment ago, I was standing in her kitchen on Shaw Street, South Lawrence and watching her mash potatoes by hand, and fill the blue plastic measuring cup for me that she used to use to fill her iron on the porch where she did her ironing…
A moment ago, it was Christmas Eve, and I was sitting at my new playschool workbench. The door to my grandparents’ house next door to my Memere’s on Shaw Street opened, and I turned from my new toy and saw her smiling face and said “Hi, Memere!” As exuberantly as I could… That was her last Christmas.
In mid-September of 1987, my beloved great-grandmother had a last minute change in plans. Instead of babysitting her two great-grandchildren, Jennifer Kady, and yours, truly, she had a free afternoon and wanted badly to go pick up a pair of shoes at Sears in what was then the Methuen Mall, and what is now Home Depot of the Loop. She asked her sister, Gladys to go with her, but Auntie Gladys was unavailable to go. She said, “To hell with you, Gladys. I’m going anyway.” Little did she know that those would be the last words she ever spoke to anyone in the family. She went into Sears. Picked her shoes out, and went to the cash register.
From here on, some of the details are missing, so I will speculate based on family members’ recounts of that day. She began to suffer a myocardial infarction (heart attack) at the check-out counter. A woman who was also at the registers stayed with her as she lost consciousness. Being that is was twenty years ago, CPR was not quite as common as it is today. No immediate rescue measures were taken, as nobody at the scene was qualified, or willing. The woman, who’s identity was never discovered by anyone in our family - to my knowledge - held her hand and waited for the ambulance.
When the medics arrived emergency measures and defibrillation began. I.V.’s were started, medicines given, and the matriarch of the Landry family was rushed to what was then the Bon Secour Hospital, and what is now known as Caritas Holy Family.
Her heart was kick-started but the damage had been done. Her brain was without oxygen for too long. Emergency calls were placed to her new residence of 121 Berkley Rd, N. Andover, to a busy line - and to the National Convention of Realtors Conference in New York, where her closest relative, my grandfather, and my grandmother were attending a conference. They all rushed to the hospital.
After the decision was made to stop the vents, as there was little chance of her recovering and returning to the life she had before she went into Sears, everyone waited. My grandmother and her sister did what all Italian Catholics do, prayed the novena and waited. For seven days my great grandmother clung to life on this earth in the Cardiac wing of the Bon Secour.
I do not believe in God in the traditional, Catholic, sense. However, she did. And so I believe firmly and passionately that at fifteen minutes past the third hour of the afternoon on September 24, 1987; The God of Abraham, the God of Jewish-Christian faith sent an Angel of Peace and Mercy to Bon Secour Hospital. And when she did draw in her last breath, the angel carried her to Heaven where she was greeted by all the angels and saints who had gone before her. But when Lucille Imelda “Lilly” Landry left this world behind her, I do not think that even she could have realized the impact she had already had on my life.
I am twenty four years old in three weeks time. And in the last twenty years I have encountered death too many times to count. I learned of death as a toddler and it has been ever my companion since. Lilly Landry lived as she loved, and died as she’d hoped. I do not think she suffered, and I do not think her soul clings to the earth. But I do hope for two things: First, that when the hour of my death comes, I hope that I am surrounded by loved ones as she was, and second that when I get where I am bound to be going, may her loving smile and warm caring face be the first I see. And may we have eternity to share.
In my life and journey on the broken road I walk, I have made some rather unusual wishes. But now I wish for one thing. It is not for money, as money is a materialistic thing that I cannot take with me. I would not wish to be granted a free easy ride to nursing school. I know I will get there and I want to do it on my own. (The government can help though, I give them plenty) I would not wish to find my one true love, as I know that one special person will find me someday. No. If I could have one wish granted without any disastrous effects, I would wish for one more day with my memere. One more day to ask her all the things I never got to, to tell her all the things I’ve been wanting to, to look into her eyes once more, and hear the sound of her voice. And when our day together was over, I would finally get to say goodbye…
Though her smile is gone forever, and her hand I cannot touch. I will never lose the Memories for the one I loved so much. Friends may think I have forgotten, when oft they See me smile, but little do they know the pain my heart hides all the while.
Because when evening shades are falling, and I sit all alone,
To my heart there comes a longing if you only could come home.
It broke all our hearts to lose you, but you didn’t go alone, a part of me went with you,
The day God called you Home…
tu jour de amore, Memere.
To the eternal memory of Lucille Imelda Landry August 31, 1917 - September 24, 1987
“Gone but Ne’re Forgotten”