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My brother Peter died four days ago, four months after our brother Pat succumbed. Peter was 74 and Pat, 70. Cancer took them both, as it did our father, Paul Sr., at 71 in 1993. Dody Gardner’s body wore out at 96 in 2017.
That leaves me.
Do you remember the scene in Home Alone when eight-year-old Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), tormented by his family, wishes they would disappear?
Of course, they do, with hilarious results, but they come back.
Mine won’t, ever.
The deaths of my brothers have prompted me to think of my parents with gratitude. Here they are in 1952, with Peter and me crawling on the living floor out of sight and Pat on the horizon.
How did you do it? Nurture three such different boys to manhood.
Endings are eventually melancholic. It’s the one last standing who ponders the wonder of it all.
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