Remembering

The month of April will remain now a major part of our family's remembering.  On April 2 my nephew Hugh Brendan McKenna left this earth.  On April 14th we will be thinking of Paddy McKenna, Hugh Brendan's father and my dear 

brother-in-law who left us six years ago.  April 26th will mark one year since Eileen McKeon McKenna, my sister and the mother of Hugh Brendan and his siblings Maureen, Brian, Eileen and Patricia left us.  So April, with flowers beginning 

to bloom outside and Easter celebrated in our churches is the time for being grateful for all those who we have known and loved over the years.  No one of us can avoid the destiny that has already called to Hugh Brendan, really too soon in his case. 

Up in Jaffrey, New Hampshire there is a gravesite I have visited several times over the years.  Willa Cather is one of my 

favorite writers and she is buried in a small cemetery there alongside a longtime partner and friend.  I have never forgotten what is etched on Willa's stone, a quote from one of her great stories "My Antonia."  "That is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and great."  I've often wondered about what "complete and great" means, what it points us to.  As I study the things Hugh Brendan loved, his music, his sports, his skiing, his karate, his teaching others, it seems to me he was and is "dissolved" into the beauty and energy of a life lived reaching beyond himself. 

If we listen quietly, we may even hear the lovely music of his bagpipe as it echoes in our family memory.