ST PATRICK'S DAY

And a Happy St. Paddy's Day to one and all.

I have two vivid memories of past St. Patrick's Days

The first involves my mom and the revival of the parade in Abington. Now, while my
mom was Irish American (with a little German thrown in) we had never been really
rambunctious a family over celebrating the holiday. But one year she and some others
got to talking about how it was a shame that a town like Abington that had such a
large Irish American community didn't have a St. Patrick's Day Parade. One of the
group, Eddie Bailey, owned a car repair place and said that if they wanted to do it,
they could decorate his flatbed tow truck and he'd drive them around town.

Of course, you need music for a parade, so Mom asked me if they could borrow my
boombox and I bought them a cassette tape of the Irish tenor John McCormack singing
all the old ballads. I brought it down to them at the shop and so I guess I was the first
offical parade spectator because I hung around long enough to watch the decorated
"float" drive out onto the main road with Mom and the others singing "When Irish Eyes
Are Smiling" before I had go to work.

Within a few years, it had become a major event with four parade divisions and marching
bands. Every once and awhile the local paper will make mention of the parade's origins
and Eddie was Grand Marshal still up until a few years ago. And for years, Mom would
always take the day off from work if she had to so she could march in the parade with
her VFW Auxiliary group. She never missed a parade.

Which leads me to my second memory.
March 17th, 1999. It snowed that day, and when I went off to work Mom was still in
bed. She had already scheduled the day off for the parade and could sleep in for a bit.
I thought it unlikely that there would be any marching that day because of the snow.

I came home at 5pm and found the apartment dark.I turned on some lights and walked
for the bathroom. It was only after I left it that I glanced into my mom's room and
realized she was in bed. It turned out she'd never gotten up. I asked if she had the flu
but she said no, and I told her I would cook some dinner for her. By 7 when she still
hadn't gotten up to eat and was not answering me, I got worried and called my sister.
Cheryl came over and we decided that Mom needed to go see a doctor, so we got her
up and dressed and Cheryl took her over to the hospital while I waited for Joe, Mom's
boyfriend, at the apartment to fill him in.
And that was it. The beginning of the end. In four months she was dead from cancer.

I think of the two memories, I prefer the first.