Independence Day 1997

INDEPENDENCE DAY 1997

My parents’ summer home

Long Beach Island, NJ

July 4, 1997

As we approached the long holiday weekend, something was nagging at me.  I felt a need to make this Independent weekend a big event for my mother. The doctors had found yet another spot of cancer but I was confident that this time, they would get it. So maybe I thought my mother could use a little cheering up, something to keep her spirits high and optimistic.  So I took it upon myself to invite my siblings to my parents’ house for the long weekend.

I told my mother and she was thrilled. I assured her that I have beds for most of us, or at least the adults. So when my sister Kathy called on Saturday morning and told my father that she and her husband and five boys would arrive around lunch time, my father stammered a little bit, “OK, that’s great but we have a slight problem”, he tells her, “its not that we wouldn’t love to see you but we don’t have room for you.  You see, Jimmy and his gang are on their way down as we speak.”  With that, my mother calls to him from the other room.

“No, tell her to come.  We have room. Bridget is figuring that all out. Tell her to come”.

“Hold on a second,” he continues, “Mom just yelled out that you should come.  She said we have room.  I don’t know. I think it is going to be crowded. I hope I have a bed tonight”. He laughs at his joke.

So they do come and so do Sharon and her family and Jimmy and his kids and Patricia and her family. Some are only staying for the day but most will be here for the weekend.

After lunch, we head to the beach and spend the afternoon in each other’s good company. As the afternoon comes to an end, most of the beach crowd heads home.  But we linger until long after the lifeguards have finished their work for the day.

It’s just us on the beach now. And we take lots of photos. For some we pose and others are moments captured as we run to escape the waves and jellyfish.  We bury each other in the sand. We build castles and tell stories and pass around the san screen. None of us are in any hurry to leave this gorgeous beach.

My mother turns to me, full of delight with this moment in time and tells me, “Can you believe it, I am having 17 people for dinner and I don’t give a shit.  Isn’t it great.”

Yup, that moment was great.  It was our last 4^th of July together.  The cancer did get my mother. She died the following Mother’s Day weekend. I am so glad we had this weekend of freedom from the fear of this dreadful disease.