Page 17 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

My mother and I were a lot alike. We needed to be in charge. So, while she still had the strength, she dragged Dad to Kehoe’s Funeral Home to pick out her casket, her dress, the flowers, the Mass card, and whatever else Mr. Kehoe had on his extensive, expensive checklist.

Mary Katherine Donahue McCormick passed peacefully at 3:27 a.m. on July 4, 1997. My father was holding her hand when she took her final breath, but he didn’t leave her side to wake me or my sister until seven. His excuse: “The next few days won’t be easy on any of us. I figured you’d need your sleep.”

Dr. Byrne was a man of his word. He came immediately, filled out the death certificate, and stayed until Mom was on her way to Kehoe’s. No autopsy—the top box on her checklist.

Grandpa Mike arrived after eight o’clock Mass, and his eyes teary, his voice shaky, he announced, “I put a sign in the window and hung the bunting over the front door. Then I poured Kate her last drink, set it on the bar, and locked up. Just like I did with Grandma.”

It was only the second time since he opened the place on St. Patrick’s Day 1965 that the lights at McCormick’s had gone dark.

News of Mom’s passing spread quickly, and by 2:30 p.m. the first hot home-cooked meal made its way into our kitchen—chicken divan, delivered by a neighbor, Josie Henson, early forties, three kids, recently divorced.

Lizzie and I had been told what to expect. “You may get a few who bring flowers, or wine, or pastry,” Mom said. “But the ones on the prowl will come with Corningware, Pyrex baking dishes, or dutch ovens—anything they have to come back for a few days later.

“I can hear them now,” she said. “‘Just stopping in to pick up my dish, Finn. How are you holding up? Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.’ It won’t matter what he says. They’ll keep coming back.”

She was right. They came in droves. It didn’t matter that Dad owned a restaurant. They just kept showing up with food as if the poor man didn’t know where his next meal was coming from.

Grandpa Mike called them “women with casseroles.” But, of course, he was from back in the day, when a girl might get lucky with some baked tuna, noodles, and mushroom soup topped with crumbled potato chips. But the vultures of the late nineties had ramped up their culinary skills.

Some of the meals bordered on gourmet, like Isla Cantor’s Moroccan couscous with tender chunks of lamb, topped with golden raisins and slivers of almonds; or Nikki Conklin’s buttery quiche laced with goat cheese, arugula, and prosciutto; and my favorite, Jill Sawyer’s lobster mac ’n’ cheese, which Lizzie and I polished off in one sitting.

It was a competition with Dad as first prize, and by the end of the week Lizzie and I calculated that there were between eight and twelve contenders. It was impossible to get an exact count because some of them were so subtle we couldn’t tell if they were in play or just good-hearted friends.

We trusted none of them. So, when Andrea Tursi showed up, her Dow Chemical boobs cascading over the top of a scoop-neck sweater, we watched her make a beeline to the kitchen, check out the competition, and swap the name tag on whatever crap she brought with Deborah Roelandt’s signature chicken and dumplings. Then she headed straight for the golden ticket—my father.

“She’s exactly the kind of calculating bitch Mom told us to keep an eye on,” Lizzie said, putting the name tags back where they belonged.

Each night, we would transfer all the entries to Tupperware, wash all the dishes, and return them the next morning. We were pretty sure most of the women knew what we were up to. We didn’t care. We were on a mission. We dubbed ourselves the Casserole Patrol.

The wake was a two-day affair that snarled traffic along Brandywine Avenue for a quarter of a mile on either side of the funeral home. I knew Mom was popular, but as Lizzie put it, this was more than people paying their respects. This was Wake-a-Palooza.

The lines snaked around the block. My father wore the brand-new black suit and tie Mom bought for him. Pinned to his lapel was her tiny gold claddagh ring, a symbol of their love, loyalty, and friendship. For hours on end the three of us stood dutifully next to the casket as more than five hundred people filed in to clasp our hands, hug us, and softly speak words of sympathy and condolence.

The funeral Mass was at St. Cecilia’s on a warm summer Friday morning. Any number of people would gladly have been honored to eulogize my mother. But she made it clear that she only wanted her husband and her two daughters.

Dad went first. The man has the soul of a poet and is blessed with the Celtic gift for storytelling. For twenty minutes, working without notes, he mesmerized the room as he recounted the tale of their romance from the day they met on a high school running track to their final night on the back of a Harley.

He was brilliant—the quintessential loving, grieving husband—and my first thought as he stepped down was how proud Mom would be.

Then Lizzie put it all in perspective for me. “We’re doomed,” she said. “After that tribute, every single woman in the whole damn church is going to want to scoop him up.”

Lizzie was next. She introduced herself as Mom’s favoritebad daughter, and in her own devilishly sweet way, she put the F-U-N in funeral.

And then it was my turn.

I still have a vivid image of sunlight streaming through the stained glass as I stepped up to the pulpit to deliver my eulogy. I looked down at the sea of black dresses, somber faces, and anxious eyes, and I wanted to run. Then I looked down at the white casket with a spray of red roses, and I heard my mother saying, “Breathe. Repeat if necessary.”

I breathed. And the words flowed.

“My mother’s favorite place in the entire world is less than a mile from here. You all know it: Magic Pond. She loved to remind her daughters that she’s been taking us there since before we were born. I remember as a little girl tossing stones into the water, and wondering why some go straight to the bottom while others hit just right, and their ripples travel across the surface, transferring energy as they go.

“That same thought crossed my mind this week as hundreds of you came to the wake, and again this morning as I look out across this sanctuary, and I see her family, her friends, her neighbors, her restaurant family—both staff and customers—her book club, her garden club, her biker buddies, her three high school teammates from that historic five-thousand-meter relay, her coach, the ladies of the Christmas committee, our mayor, our school bus driver from Heartstone Elementary, doctors and nurses who cared for her during her illness, and at least a hundred people I hardly know, but whose lives were touched by my mother.

“Some people can live a hundred years and barely have an impact on the world. But the life force that was Kate McCormick for forty-one short years on this earth still lives on in this room. We are the many ripples she left behind.”

I’d written everything down on index cards before I spoke, and I still had two cards left to read. But as I gazed out at the crowd, at the women with tissues to their eyes, and men with heads bowed, I knew I had said just enough.

I stepped down and walked to the front pew. Dad stood and hugged me. Lizzie squeezed my hand. As soon as the three of us settled back in our seats, the choir director stood, and forty-eight men and women in magenta robes rose as one.

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