My sense of gratitude to my Mom and Dad is growing with each step I take on this Camino Portuguese pilgrimage. That photo of me smiling for my official portrait as the Captain of Paramus Catholic’s basketball team for my senior year is misleading to say the least as that period was easily the darkest chapter in my life. But as often happens with the gift of mother time and with God’s abundant grace, your perspective on moments can change, especially those dark nights of the soul which for me was my senior year of high school. This pilgrimage has really helped me see in a much clearer way just how helpful and loving Mom and Dad were to me during that time.
There is no doubt that Dennis’s unexpected passing in late April of my junior year dramatically changed my life’s trajectory, unleashing a lot of anger and despondency in me that I didn’t understand nor know how to communicate what I was feeling deep inside of me. It was also the first time in my life that I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and the expectations that people had for me. No longer was I the middle child who sometimes felt invisible to others in the family — something I learned in therapy is common. All of a sudden, I felt an added pressure to be perfect in every way and to be everything Dennis was and was expected to be as the first member of the Kirnan and Flaherty families to graduate from college and make everyone in my orbit proud.
Hearing my Mom tell me on the night Denny died that she didn’t want me to go away to college floored me because I had wanted to go to Princeton since reading a book about Bill Bradley called “A Sense of Where You Are” when I was 10 years old. Then just three weeks later, I was pulled out of my Calculus class by Mr. Bott — my basketball coach —who told me that due to financial pressures he was facing as the father of four young children, he would be leaving his job at PC in June. Coach Bott was my biggest advocate and he really believed in me as a basketball player. His leaving was another huge loss for me and by the time summer arrived, I was now facing a radically different senior year of high school than the one I had been planning on.
Looking back, it’s clear that I really had no idea of what was happening inside of me emotionally. It was hard to smile at everyone like I did for my official basketball picture and be my old self because all I wanted to do was to cry and run away from everything in my life. I realized later on in therapy that those feelings were quite natural and a part of the grief journey. I was in a deep spiral of denial, not willing to accept the fact that my life would never be the same again.
My parents were worried for me but they didn’t have a manual on what to do. They were grieving too and that must have been even harder for them knowing that their first priority was to take care of me, Matt, and Mary Claire. But when you’re in the denial and anger stage of grief, your awareness of how others are coping with a loss is severely compromised and that’s a regret I still carry to this day. But this pilgrimage has helped me see with greater clarity just how much Mom and Dad did to support me and help me through this darkest chapter of my life.
When senior year began that September, I felt as if all of my teachers and classmates were looking at me with a different lens and that made me extremely uncomfortable. It was really hard just to go to school every day, let alone be the leader I was both in the classroom and on the basketball court. I now had a new basketball coach who truth be told was absolutely terrific to me, but I really missed Mr. Bott who I had a deep relationship with and who had also coached Denny. The senior year I had hoped for never really materialized even though I still had the best stats of my career as the only three year starter in school history — in scoring average, steals, and assists. But the reality was that my head and heart were just not there like it had been before when Denny was alive.
So many nights that fall and winter I couldn’t sleep through the night. My bedroom was the same — two twin beds with a night table in between them and the lamp and a small desk on the other wall. Only now, the person who shared that room with me for 10 years was never coming back home. I would just lay there in that bed and cry thinking of all the games we played of Roger Maris baseball; all the statistics we would keep for our favorite teams, perfecting long division and our joint love of math; all the Mets games we used to listen to on WOR using our transistor radio and hearing the soothing voice of Mets announcer Bob Murphy. It was just too painful to be in that bedroom anymore.
So many nights I would go down to Mom and Dad’s bedroom well past midnight and I’d wake Mom up and every time Mom would either sit with me down at the kitchen table or we’d hop in the Ford Mustang and I’d vent all the anger I was feeling inside of me while she drove the car through town. Mom was incredible in those moments and really understood what I was feeling and told me that I didn’t have to sleep in that room anymore — that was my Mom at her best. Looking back, I still feel bad that I didn’t ask her enough that year about how she was doing because she was carrying all of us — Dad, me, Matt, Mary Claire, and Cathy who now lived with Jack in an apartment after getting married in September 1971.
As I walked the Camino this time, I remembered a few moments from that year that in looking back really made a difference for me and helped me begin to heal, moments which I am especially grateful for. The first moment came during the early spring of senior year. Brian’s brother Drew — who was best friends with Dennis in the same way that Brian and I are best friends — called me to see if I would like to work with him and the company he was working for at that time — Wilkens Landscaping. I needed to make money and so I started working with Drew and the other landscapers on Saturdays in March of my senior year. I had always loved doing any yard work for Dad and used to cut peoples lawns on the side but this was different because I learned so many new things about gardening and landscape design. So in early May about a month before my graduation I asked my Dad if it would be ok if I could regrade and reseed the area of lawn on the side of our front porch which was filled with weeds every spring. He encouraged me to do so and soon enough by the time of my graduation we had a really nice green lawn growing for the first time since we had moved into the house in December of 1962. Dad loved it and encouraged me to keep on doing other home improvement projects.
So later that summer as I was now working full time for Drew and Mr. Wilkens, I planted new azalea bushes in the front beds and then designed and installed a new patio connecting the back door to the driveway. I’ll never forget that moment right before I started my freshman year at Seton Hall when I asked Mom and Dad to look over what I had done. As I walked the Camino this week, I could still hear my Dad with a huge smile on his face saying “Jackie, the house is now worth at least $100,000”. He was so happy and it was the first time since Dennis died that I saw Dad laugh again and that maybe I can laugh again too.
The seeds of my renewal and resurrection were being planted in plain sight even though it would take me years to write these moments down of what Mom and Dad did for me. And today as I finished my walk, I remembered another special moment with my Dad that summer. We never had enough money growing up to be able to buy a power lawnmower. Dad had taught Dennis and I with a push mower which was great exercise but you had to cut the lawn twice to make it look respectable. So I surprised Dad that summer with a brand new Jacobsen’s power lawnmower with the earnings from Wilkens Landscaping. Looking back, Dad really fed my passion and love for yard work. Thanks Dad and to you as well Mom for getting me through my darkest days of senior year. Love always, Jackie
