220317 Sentinel, Saint Patrick's Day

Today is a grand day for the Irish.
It’s celebrated here in America by the descendants of Irish lineage and the non Irish. It’s a good day for drinking here and in Ireland.

My grandmother and her two sisters emigrated here many decades ago. The Irish were discriminated against by everyone who wasn’t Irish back in those days, just as African Americans were back then. Jobs for the Irish were extremely difficult to find and those that were available were low paying and were what we now call basically slave labor with endless days of hard work. I was told by my mother that grandma was a fighter with her neighbors. She kept grandpa moving all the time. They lived in 23 different apartments in 22 years. Grandpa was a kind and gentle man who loved grandma and did whatever made her happy.

Grandma was a very big woman, too big for her health to be good. She loved her grandchildren, Carolann and Regina, my cousins. Grandma was babysitting them one afternoon while my mother went to the grocery store. When mom returned, grandma had had a massive stroke that took away her speech and made her an invalid for the rest of her life, but she held onto those two babies with her massive arms. The babies were fine, but mom could barely loosen those arms from them. When mom and dad bought their first home after WW-2 grandma and grandpa moved in with them, so mom could take care of grandma. Grandma had never liked my father and never spoke to him back when she could still speak. She never acknowledged his presence even when she was living in his home. I never got to hear her voice. She was always sitting in her chair, oblivious to those around her.

I give credit to my father for putting up with that. Grandma was always sick and on her deathbed. Mom would call the local parish priest to come over and give her the last rites, but when he started with them, grandma would pop up like a cork and last another few months. The entire family would be there with her. She finally passed away on a night when everyone was gone but grandpa. I remember going to her funeral when I was 12 years old. My first funeral. Later in 1974 we buried grandpa. I, my father, my brother Tom, my uncle Tom, my uncle Kenny were pallbearers. That was the first and only time I ever saw us all sobbing in tears. I have recently revived my tears over Joyce’s passing, but I never saw any of those men in tears except when grandpa died and we were following the hearse to the graveyard.