I don't need any of that...

Two deaths in the family...

I’ve lost two cousins in these late days of winter and early spring. Cousin Mo was 79, and AJ was 14. They died just a week apart on Wednesdays. I can’t wrap my head around these losses and make this piece coherent, so I’ll start over again and try to deliver the facts.

My cousin, Maureen O’Sullivan, “Mo,” died on February 28th, the day before Leap Year at her home in Santa Monica. In one of our last weekly Wednesday meditations with our group, she said, “There are no answers. Only now.”

My cousin, AJ Smullen, died a week later, on March 6th, the day after my late father’s birthday, after being hit by a car playing with friends on February 22nd in Niskayuna, New York in a notoriously bad intersection. He fought for his life until the end, surrounded by family, and a father who never left the hospital once.

I knew Mo well, but I didn’t know AJ at all. I grew up with AJ’s mother, Megan, and her eight siblings. Our fathers were brothers. We spent many summers together as kids, and I love this family. Somewhere, I have a baby picture of Norah with AJ’s oldest sibling, Em.

Mo’s grandfather, my great-grandfather, and AJ’s great-great-grandfather were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland in Lissalway. Patrick Madden, Mo’s grandfather, stayed in Ireland on the family farm, and his brother, John Joseph Madden, came to the United States. I was told stories of how my great-grandfather carried a briefcase of whiskey to sell during prohibition to feed his family. He wanted to look like an American businessman.

When I met Cousin Mo in 2018 after the sleuthing of another cousin genealogist, Mo already had stage four cancer that had returned, and she was having weekly chemo treatments. I imagined we’d know each other for a year, so we didn’t waste a second of that first year, getting to know each other, and sharing stories and pictures about our families, a grand feud between elderly sisters, impossible losses, relatives, and the ancestral home of Ireland and the selling of the family farm by a distant cousin called Agnes who lit off to Galway with a boyfriend after the sale, telling no one until it was done.

Instead of one year, Mo lived six-and-a-half years because of how she lived her life. She embraced traditional medicine combined with meditation, qi gong, exercise, diet, acupuncture, and her innate curiosity and love for living. She loved being alive. She was also sober, and she helped me tremendously with my son and finding peace with his choices.

One of the last things she told me was, “You know his freedom matters more to him than anything.” In her “Mo” way, she reminded me to let go and give him the dignity to live his life on his terms - something so hard to do but what choice did I have? I found tremendous comfort in taking deep slow breaths and turning toward the ocean on walks with Mo instead of searching places where he might be, begging him to see reason and come home.

Mo’s death is “a sad thing but not a bad thing” as someone said to me, but AJ’s death is wildly unfair. I want to talk to Mo about AJ and the unbearable loss for this family where he was the youngest child and the only boy.

I know she would be outraged by the loss of this beautiful kid whom his siblings and cousins called a “time traveler,” “a homesteader,” and “a huckleberry friend” - a boy who dressed in flannel and loved history and stories and was building a homestead in the woods on his farm. He refused to carry a cell phone to pretend he was in the olden days. His oldest sibling, Em, delivered the most extraordinary eulogy about AJ and made us all see the terrible hole left in the world at his loss.

***

My grandmother, Mary Patricia Morris Madden (AJ’s great-grandmother) was born on March 16, 1914, but always claimed St. Patrick’s Day as her real birthday. She died in 1999 when Norah was a baby, and my brother, Casey, paid for an airline ticket for me to visit GrandMary when she was dying. Once I realized I couldn’t leave her, Kiffen flew with baby Norah across the country from LA to DC and never left the airport as he had to get home to Flannery and Lucy and his job. We called him the “baby courier.” He brought our older children back to DC a week later for her funeral where the priest allowed for “Danny Boy” but not “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

Here is a picture of GrandMary in Ireland in 1978 taken by her son, Michael, after graduating from Notre Dame.

I wrote about GrandMary in an essay called “Death and the Days of Our Lives” years ago for Salon.

My grandfather, Joseph Anthony Madden, was born on March 9, 1909

GrandMary said she gained twenty pounds after he died because she no longer had to run up and down the stairs answering to his “Mary, get me a beer!”

My grandfather was a hunter, so prized deer heads hung on the walls, and feathered pheasant sat in the deep freezer. I loved my grandfather but there was a lightness when he left, windows and doors blown open with sunshine and calm. He had an explosive temper, shouting, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” when a grandchild made too much noise, but after his death, GrandMary’s warmth filled the house with an easy grace. She never raised her voice and made all her grandchildren feel welcome and loved whether it was a red sweater from Talbots, a chocolate milkshake at the “hot shop” diner on Wisconsin Avenue, or sharing a cup of tea and Sarah Lee Poundcake at her kitchen table on Burlington Place. After she was widowed, she traveled to 13 countries with Catholic tours, and every morning, I look at a picture of her sitting on a camel.

Last Saturday, I attended AJ’s memorial in Johnstown, New York on AJ’s great-grandfather’s birthday, March 9, 2024.

The reception after the funeral was held at the Pine Tree Rifle Club, a place AJ loved with deer and buck heads mounted to the wall, just like the decor of his great-grandfather’s home in Washington DC.

My brother, Casey, joined me for the funeral, and Casey said, “When I look at my cousins and their faces, I don’t see them as parents or adults, I see them as the kids we grew up with, and we are all ten years old again, running around.”

I started to try to write something about all of this on a bumpy flight from New York to Birmingham a few days ago, but it was all over the place, so I’m going to spare us all - we don’t need any of that.

I don’t need any of that.

That’s also what an elderly gentleman, said to my cousin, Molly, AJ’s aunt, last weekend after the memorial when he asked her if she was coming to breakfast with the family the next morning. To be polite, Molly offered some excuses for how she would try to be there, but he waved his hand at her and said, “I don’t need any of that” and walked away.

Can you imagine being able to say that when someone gets going?

I don’t need any of that.

Molly’s hilarious imitation was spot-on, but we were all in deep admiration at his bluntness. That man was AJ’s paternal grandfather.

I don’t need any of that.

On the flight out at five in the morning, I spent six hours in a layover in Terminal B at Midway in Chicago until I texted my family a picture and said, “I live here now.”

Leaving at the crack of dawn, I’d also brought the wrong phone charger, so I had to buy a new one, and the Apple clerk said, “All sales are final,” so I made sure she sold me the correct one as it cost $30.00. But it didn’t fit after all, and in a rage, I raced back into the Apple store weeping - “This doesn’t fit. You said it would. I’m going to a funeral.”

She looked alarmed and said, “Sorry. Here. Just swap this out.”

I said, “You won’t charge me?”

“No, I’m sorry about the funeral.”

I thanked her and left still crying, still in Terminal B. I walked into the bathroom to try to pull it together and looked into the mirror to discover a wad of dark green lettuce festooned to my front teeth.

I later told Casey the story, and he said, “Yeah, that clerk said to herself - I’m not messing with all that.”

I don’t need any of that.

The Ides of March. Here we are.

The morning of the memorial, I walked through Johnstown, New York on that Saturday to look at everything, and I stopped in “Miss Johnstown’s Diner” to have coffee and oatmeal. My waiter was a skinny 14-year-old boy, greeting everybody who came through the door, and taking orders from the cook who was frying orders of bacon and eggs. He wore a camo baseball cap.

Kiffen helped my mother watch the service from St. John’s Episcopal Church online from San Diego and afterward, she wrote:

So glad you are together. I was very impressed that the women ran the show. The Catholic Church ought to get with the program. I'm sure you would agree with that. Kiffen guided me on how to get it on my phone as it didn't work on the computer. Be safe please be safe.

I heartily agreed with my mother regarding the Catholic Church. This was also the first time in our family history that a woman delivered the service after a long line of Catholic priests at weddings and funerals, some indifferent, all of them unmemorable except for the ancient priest at my sister’s outdoor wedding in Pennsylvania who could not remember her name or her husband’s name and had to be prompted throughout the service.

I sent my mother’s note to Reverend Laurie Garramone who delivered AJ’s beautiful eulogy, and she wrote back her appreciation of my mother’s words and how grateful she was for the privilege of caring for the Smullen family for she, too, had lost her adult son tragically in an accident five years ago.

After AJ’s service, Mother Laurie told us to go into the world and love each other. When we stepped out of the warm church into the icy rain of Johnstown, New York, a bagpiper played on the lawn, and as we drove to the reception at the Pine Tree Rifle Club, it started snowing big fat wet flakes.

Molly said that last Thanksgiving, AJ asked, “Aunt Molly can we make a water pie?” Molly had no idea what a “water pie” was but AJ explained they made it during the Great Depression when they only had a little sugar, flour, and water, and they’d bake it and it all would congeal together into “water pie” so at least the family would have something sweet.

Mo used to always talk about the ancestral faces of the Maddens. Her mother was Kate Madden. One of my other cousin’s kids looked so very much like Uncle Michael, whom I wrote about in the previous substack. That boy is the oldest of six kids, and I practiced learning their names in no particular order: Branigan, Teegan, Summerly, Brody, Kiley, and Sophie.

I always loved seeing my cousins as a kid - AJ’s mom, Megan, and her siblings, and I used to say their names aloud - Timmy, Matt, Megan, Shannon, Justin, Ryan, Molly, Sean, and Katie. All the siblings came to be with Megan and Rob, AJ’s parents, and AJ’s siblings - Em, Haley, and Lily - except for Sean, who teaches in Korea and couldn’t catch a flight in time. Some siblings never left or they swapped out turns. Sean is coming next week when everyone will be gone and when he will be needed most.

Picture a huge family on a farm in the 1970’s - Timmy, Matt, Megan, Shannon, Justin, Ryan, Molly, Sean, and Katie. I remember trying to make them watch "West Side Story," but they were leaping and flying off couches, acting out their version. You could only hear the movie if you put your ear directly on the TV screen.

After the funeral, I took a train to New York to be with my sister for a few days, and then I flew home to Birmingham. Kiffen picked me up at the airport. I used to consciously not call Birmingham "home." How could it be home? California was home, and Birmingham was an outpost where I worked to support my family, especially Kiffen, who had taken the day job with insurance from the very start.

But for the first time, Kiffen picked me up at the airport in Birmingham, and we drove home. I told him all the stories, and he listened.

He didn’t say, “I don’t need any of that.”

Flannery called the next day, which was a relief because we hadn’t heard from him in a while. He sounded upbeat walking the streets of LA, and before we hung up, he said, “Mom, I’m so sorry about Mo.” He didn’t know about AJ, and so we told him, and he wanted to know everything. Then he said, “His name was AJ?” He sounded so sad.

Did I remind him of the time AJ’s mother, Megan, saved him when he was a tiny three-year-old and wandered out of the hotel room one early morning naked, in Greenville, South Carolina? We were all sleeping having flown from California to Nashville and driven all night to Greenville for Matt and Libby’s wedding. Flannery took the elevator down to the lobby without a stitch and Megan found him and called me and said, “I found Flannery and he’s fine, naked, though, so I gave him a Jesus towel.” (A hand towel) She brought him back up to me. I didn’t tell him the story, but I told Megan when I saw her at her home where the family was gathered, and she laughed, and I thanked her again over 30 years later.

I wish I could tell Mo. I wish I had known AJ.

In a few weeks, Kiffen and I are going to Ireland together, and we’ll drive to Roscommon to Lissalway and Castlerae where Mo’s grandfather and AJ’s great-great-grandfather grew up as brothers in Ireland.

This was all planned long before as part of my sabbatical.

The day Mo died, we walked along Vulcan Trail late in the afternoon, and Kiffen saw a fox. He hasn’t seen a fox in almost fifty years. I have never seen a fox in the wild. I was a little jealous that Mo came to him instead of me, but two days later we were driving home, and this time, a fox sat on a street corner in our neighborhood as if she were waiting for us. I was able to snap a picture.

And by the time I snapped the second picture, she was gone.

Earlier that day, I was writing a flurry of emails and texts, including one to Michael, Mo’s brother, about an olive-shaped cutting board one of her friends wanted, and then I felt someone behind me and a gentle squeeze on my left arm. I thought it was Kiffen, but I turned around and only Olive was on the bed, sleeping.

I knew it was Mo, maybe telling me to breathe, pause, and slow down, but I felt her presence. There is more to say, but that’s enough for now.

I’m grateful that Dad’s apple tree has new buds on it.

Links

AJ Smullen Memorial