Sunday, May 29, 2016
Auntie was always very dear to me. I have so many wonderful memories of her.
Among my earliest memories are Easter egg hunts with my cousins at the house on Cherry Road. Auntie (as my sister Katerine & I called her), and that house, would become central to my 'family memories.' Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Paddy's Day, and Easter are all tied to my family memory through Auntie... and, of course, there is the steady faith that I learned from Auntie, and everyone else, in the Hartigan and O'Brien clans.
I am grateful for memories like sitting around Auntie's kitchen table with my cousins talking about hunting, fishing, and high school sports. I remember:
-- an evening when we cousins ate three batches of brownies and drank two gallons of milk.
-- my first successful duck hunt (Thanksgiving morning at 15 years old) when Auntie gleefully announced to the crowd assembled "Everyone, listen, Mikey caught a redhead!" (Can't you just hear her saying that now?)
-- riding my bicycle to Auntie's house after school to catch her when no one was home. My "cover story" was I went there to cut the grass, but I really went there to talk with her in the kitchen.
It seems proper that my own children each fondly recall Auntie's 100th birthday party at Coleman's.
God Bless You Auntie, ... we were blessed to have been loved by you.
