A Letter from my Mother, dated May 19, 2021

 

I believe a brief explanation is needed since my mother passed from this life on November 19, 1998. 

From May 17th until May 21^st, 2021 I attended a Maryknoll Mission Institute Zoom program sponsored by the Maryknoll Sisters of Saint Dominic of Ossining, NY. If you are not familiar with these wonderful women, I suggest you look them up and, even better, plan on attending one of their marvelous Mission Institute programs.

The particular program I signed up for was entitled, When Tears Sing: A Way Home to the Heart of God and the presenter was a guy by the name of William (Bill) Blaine-

Wallace Ph.D. He is an Episcopal priest and pastoral counselor, who lives with his wife on a farm in northern Maine. 

 

Bill Blaine-Wallace has ministered in parishes, hospices, mental health and educational settings. His passion is the stewardship of conversations that matter.  He helps religious communities and other organizations create spaces for conversations that move beneath the veneer of the presentable and tidy to the hard wood of life-the-way-it-really-is.  We were told that we would be able to share, in a safer space, conversations that matter, i.e., conversations below the veneer of our more domesticated social discourses.  And, after spending a week in this beautiful community of love, we did just that.

 

After hearing some of the background basics from our presenter, we were asked to “Look back over your life. Identify a tear. A tear that may still break open your heart.  A tear that possibly made for a turning point. A tear that transports you back to sadness, hope, joy. A tear that represents work you may still be called to.

Imagine walking inside the room of your tear. Who is there? What else is in the room? What does the tear teach you about what matters? Does the tear suggest who or what might be let go of, what needs to be held onto? What does the tear have to say to you? “

After a brief moment of deliberation, I felt for certain that I needed to identify the tear that has been a part of my life since the time I was six and a half years old, the monumental tear that occurred when my Uncle Joe was killed in Korea.  Since I’m not much of an artist (my sister, Meg, inherited all those genes) my visual representation of my tear contained primarily stick figures, multiple other tears (of the entire O’Donnell Family), the images of guns from the 21 gun salute at the Cypress Hills National Cemetery on Jamaica Ave. in Brooklyn, rosary beads in the hands of my sorrowful, kneeling mother and grandmother, a cross, a wooden box containing Joe’s coffin sitting on a sidewalk outside of the funeral home on Bushwich Avenue, a side table containing reminders of Joe’s travels during WW II, decorations from a Halloween party in the courtyard up the street from my house on Interboro Parkway, my mother, in our basement  attempting to share a “party time” with her brother’s children when she, herself was numb with grief.  All these things represented cloudy but heartbreaking moments in one of the biggest tragedies of my lifetime.    

We were separated into small breakout groups where we were each given the opportunity to share our tears.   I testified to my pain, and the others in my small group were witness to my lamentation.  It was a beautiful experience and it was healing to be held and supported in this beloved community.  

Before I go on to describe the next day’s assignment, I will once again share a brief summary regarding my Uncle Joe O’Donnell’s death.  I have shared this story many times before, but in case some have not heard it, I’ll include it here:

Remembering Uncle Joe once again this Veterans Day 

The night before my Uncle Joe O'Donnell left for Korea, he and my Aunt Marie stayed up all night talking. They wanted to spend every possible moment together, as they knew there was a possibility that Joe might not return.  The trip to La Guardia airport the next day was solemn and somber. We were all so terribly sad.  I was only 6 and 1/2 years old at the time, but until this day, whenever I pass the airport, I still feel the blanket of sorrow that covered us, Joe's family, as we hugged and said our final good-byes.
When Joe arrived in Korea, he had no way of getting to his post.  Since there was a desperate need for officers at the front, Joe arranged to share a jeep with an Army Chaplin, the Rev. James Meeder.
During their quiet ride together, Joe told Father many family stories about his wife and two little girls and spoke unabashedly of his tremendous love for them.  The next day, Joe shared in Mass and Holy Communion with Father Meeder and the rest of his platoon before leaving for the front.
Even though he was a strong and brave young man, my Uncle Joe was not what I envisioned as a warrior.  Although he had served his country for three and a half years during World War II as a member of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and had fought and survived the horrors of the Battle of the Bulge, when I think of Uncle Joe, I remember a kind, sensitive and unusually gentle man.
I remember a man who drew pictures in his letters home so his two little girls would get some idea of the people and places their Daddy was seeing.  I think of a devoted son - a son who composed an original poem for his mother one Mother's Day, adding a note of apology at the end because he wasn't able to get to a store to buy a "real" Mother's Day card.  I have no doubt this poem meant more to my grandmother than all the most expensive store-bought cards she ever received.
On October 13, 1951, 1st Lieutenant Joseph T. O'Donnell was killed in action while leading his men, soldiers of the 38th Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, up a hill called Heartbreak Ridge.   On the day the news of Joe's death reached us at our home in Brooklyn, my Grandma - a reserved and ladylike woman - ran out in the street screaming, attempting in vain to run away from the most horrendous news any mother could ever receive.  My Grandma had six children, but Joe was her only son, and he was just 29 years old.
I remember the bitter cold day in January when we brought Joe's body to its final resting place.  The six year girl in me can hear the loud and frightening 21 Gun salute, and the final, mournful sound of a bugle playing taps. But most of all, I still feel the sadness on my Aunt Marie's face as this 26 year old mother of two was handed the folded flag of a grateful nation.
Now, many years later, I walk up State Street and pass a memorial to another forgotten war, Vietnam.  There on the silent, dark monuments are the names written in bronze, too numerous for me to count.  I slow my steps and purposely allow my eyes to fall reverently on the names of the young Americans who gave their lives in service to our country.  I offer a silent prayer for them and for their families.  I learned at an early age the pain and sadness that lingers forever when one so young, one so beloved falls on a battlefield.    And, it causes me to think these thoughts once again.  May we continue to remember them.  May we never look lightly on war and may we work feverishly, unrelentingly to maintain the freedom and peace they died to preserve. 

 

 

Part 2 to follow