I'll remember Pop, Auntie Bridey

I've run a particular column in the counties I've lived in, at a
certain time of year. When the American Cancer Society raises money for
Relay for Life, I run this column.

I do try to make the point that news stories many times are universal.

I have been on two Relay for Life teams, both with different
newspapers. I helped create the team at The Cheraw Chronicle. I helped
create a team at The People-Sentinel in Barnwell County. (I have been
told that Allendale County, one of the smallest, poorest counties in
the state, has one of the best Relay events. It raises more, per
capita, than any other events in the state.)

Anyway, I ran this column a few weeks back on the News & Reporter's
editorial page. A woman came by my office Thursday. She had an English accent,
but she too was born in Ireland and emigrated to find work.

She said she thought reading this column was like reading her own life.
(I guess, except for the part about dying of cancer.)

Anyway,

I'll remember Pop, Auntie Bridey

I've got his naturalization certificate in a cruddy plastic frame, because I haven't had a chance to buy a nice frame yet.

John Patrick Guilfoyle, 41, white, fair complexioned, blue-eyed, brown gray hair, 5' 10”, that's basically all the information you can find on it, other than on Oct. 31, 1957, he became a citizen of the United States.

But it's got my grandfather's picture on it, one of the few we have in the family, and I wanted it, cruddy frame or not.

I'm still not as old as he was when he became a citizen of the United States. It's not necessarily a memory of him. It's a thought, a reminder of someone I knew a long time ago, but never really got to know at all.

He immigrated to the United States from Ireland, had a family, and worked in a repair shop of the New York City subway system.

He was the only grandparent I ever had. His wife died before I ever saw her. My mother's parents lived in Ireland and died when I was young.

The memories I have are few and rare, but all pleasant. He'd come visit every Wednesday. We'd run home just a little quicker those days, scream, “C'mon, c'mon c'mon” to make the elevator door close that much faster, so we could get up to our apartment and find him sitting on the couch, by the window. If it was summer, he'd have his radio by his side, listening to the New York Mets. No matter that he could turn on the TV and watch the game any day of the week. Better on the radio, he thought.

He had a little nonsense rhyme for each of us. For me - “Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even.”

Sounds silly to you, I'm sure. Sweetest words I ever heard. It's been about 30 years since I heard them.

I've got her picture in my wallet, in a little memorial card. Bridget Kristine Enright Williams. My mother's sister. She was born in Ireland. Like any Irish person who wanted to work, she had to leave Ireland. She moved to England, however, and went to nursing school.

Because there were too many Irish girls named Bridget at school, the damned English turned my Auntie Bridey into Kris. I'd always hear about her in letters my Aunt Catherine wrote to my mother. I'd always smile a little, knowing I had an Auntie Bridey out there somewhere.

Aunt Kris is so generic, so basic. Auntie Bridey is so lyrical, so musical.

She moved to England, got a new name to everyone else but me, got a job, married a man and had two children.

She visited us - in 1989 I think - and I finally got to see her. I was away at college most of her visit, but I remember a long night spent at the Spartanburg Amtrak station, the heater in my old Impala working overtime as we waited and waited and waited for the train to show up so
they could head up North for a few days.

Her husband was Welsh, and she made a great Welsh pot roast at the house once. Vegetables are a communist plot, but somehow my Auntie Bridey convinced me to ask seconds on the carrot-based dinner. I saw her for just a few days, then I had to go back to college. I came back
a couple of weeks later to drive her and her husband and kids to the airport. It was a big car.

In 1990, we put Mom on a plane and got her to England. Two of her brothers also live there. Two others flew in from Australia. It was the worst kind of family reunion. They all made it, just barely, before Auntie Bridey went.

My grandfather, Pop, as we called him, died of cancer. Lung cancer possibly from the asbestos in the brakes of the subway cars he worked on his entire life. My Auntie Bridey died of cancer. This nasty little disease barked up both sides of my family tree and took something from
me that I never really had a chance to know.

One of the ways to honor people like that is by buying luminaries as part of the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life efforts. It's a way to raise money to fight cancer. I bought one for Pop and one for Auntie Bridey this year.

That's what cancer has left us. A certificate, a dog-eared memorial card. I have memories. Just pictures on paper and in my mind that fade. Nothing to hold or tell a joke to. Nothing to smile at, nothing that smiles back.

The real horror of cancer is it takes away things you don't even know you had, things you never had a chance to get. I have a million pleasant memories. I'm a millionaire in remembrance, but I'd rather be poor in memories and rich in hugs from Auntie Bridey, and “Stephen, Stephen cut the bread evens” from my Pop.