Love, Loss and All That Remains

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything—if you do you start missing everybody.”  Holden Caulfield

From The Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger

I don’t know whether it’s fitting, or selfish that on this anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks I was remembering my friend Catherine Doyle, who died last December 18.  I had gone into the local branch of Wells Fargo, to finally close out a couple of accounts we held jointly—as Catherine said, “In case you have to pay for my funeral.”  I don’t know why it took me so long—after the cremation, and the payment of the legal fees of the estate, there were only a few dollars left and it seemed like a lot of bother until the service fees started coming in.  As it turned out, I owed the bank $6.95.  Perhaps I expected that with time, I would not mind the finality of it.  Instead I found myself telling the bank teller the story of Catherine’s life, and much to her dismay, crying while I did it.  Some things just don’t get easier, and presenting a death certificate is one of them.

The annual Western Regional Scottish Deerhound Specialty was dedicated to Catherine this past July.  She had been a longstanding member of both the National and Regional deerhound clubs and it was important that we honor her service to the breed.  I gave a eulogy, and others spoke as well, and our comments are too lengthy and at this point, too foggy to reproduce here. But there is one thing that lingers in my head, and so, with apologies to those of you who were there, I will repeat myself here.

After Catherine died, her jeweler Barbara called me and said, “I have something of Catherine’s that you will want.”  She mailed me a plain gold wedding band, worn thin from use, that she thought had belonged to Catherine’s mother.  As it turned out, that was not the case.  Inside the old band was inscribed “F. J. Malone to Clara, 1917.” As I turned over the ring and read the inscription, it seemed as if I was suddenly flooded with images and snippets of conversation from the past, across two continents and two World Wars:  Franklin J. Malone, a young Irish soldier presenting this ring to his betrothed, Clara, in a hurried ceremony just before departing for the Continent to fight and perish in the trenches of World War I.  Clara Malone, pregnant with her only child Alice, poor, bereft and with no means of support, booking steerage to come to America to find work as a seamstress and a better life.  Alice Malone, growing up fatherless, marrying a military man, Pierce Doyle, whose blue eyes and strong jawline reminded her of the only photograph she had of her father.  Alice, alone and in labor at a military hospital stateside, giving birth to Catherine while her husband served his country until the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought him home to his wife and only child.  Alice, Pierce and Catherine moving to New Mexico so that Pierce, now a high ranking Army officer, could oversee the nuclear test sites in the southern part of the state.  Catherine, smart, multilingual and witty going off to Barnard before a taxi cab hit her on the streets of New York, shattering her legs, and her dreams.  Catherine, coming home to New Mexico to live out her life in a place they had all grown to love.  And finally, Catherine in a photograph, imposing in her cape and tartans, holding a leash of deerhounds against a mountainous landscape of endless sky.

Sometimes, an act of war or terror changes the entire history of an individual, or a family, as it did for my friend Catherine’s grandmother Clara, and for the survivors of 9/11, and Iraq, and Afghanistan. I have nothing but the deepest respect for those who fought, those who rescued, and those who were left behind.  Someday, I hope that I hold that gold ring, and the fleeting images and fragmented conversations take the shape and form of a real story played out over the last hundred years.  And then, I will write that novel.