My burden is light.
When Mary and I became empty-nesters a few years back, we converted an extra bedroom into a home office, a godsend this hellacious year. Co-workers keep finding more efficient tools for telecommuting, and minus a daily dose or two of road rage, my blood pressure has dropped.
During editorial planning last March, as COVID-19 began to upend life, a few of those same co-workers emphasized the need to acknowledge the high school class of 2020, which would be denied rites of passage such as Senior Night at ballgames, full-scale graduations and proms.
The curmudgeon in me pushed back a bit. The lives of those kids are just getting started, and a prom is just a party. What about us Boomers and, even moreso, the Greatest Generation, who only have so many milestones left?
Combined, Gene Hoffman, Bill Korrow and Pat Maggio gave the Archdiocese of Baltimore some 150 years of service as teachers and coaches. All retired last spring, the first from Archbishop Curley High School and the other two from Loyola Blakefield, with little fanfare.
The travel industry – and family reunions – have been hit hard. Some of my siblings schemed about visiting France in 2020, the centennial of the birth of both our parents, now long gone. Both went off to Europe to fight fascism in World War II, and were still in uniform when they met in a Paris dancehall, a few weeks after VE Day.
It’s a wonderful origin story, the reason I keep a handkerchief handy when watching “Casablanca,” for when Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine defies the Nazis and nods approvingly to his house band, to play “La Marseillaise.”
Visiting Paris was a pipe dream. Taking in the Passion Play at Oberammergau was on the books, as my September should have included a Catholic Review pilgrimage to Austria and Germany with Father Patrick Carrion, which brings us to the issue of properly paying respect to the dead.
The last prayer card from a funeral home I recall collecting at visitation was for Father Michael Carrion, Father Patrick’s older brother, who died Nov. 30, 2019. (Their uncle, Father Martin Flahavan, was the priest who married my parents).
There has been so much loss in the interim, compounded by not being able to join with friends and family as they celebrate the lives of remarkable people.
Tossing old work files recently, I came upon one labeled “Deegan.” It contained research for a Sun article about the 2006 retirement of Jim Deegan, the track and field coach who helped basketball legend Jim Phelan put then-Mount St. Mary’s College on the athletic map. I made a mental note to call Deegan.
He died Nov. 7 at age 87, a month to the day after the passing of his wife of 65 years, Marge.
Deegan studied numbers; I scrutinize song lyrics. As tough as it is to lose athletic heroes such as Joe Morgan, the Baseball Hall of Famer who stood shorter even than me, it’s harder when a singer-songwriter such as Jerry Jeff Walker, who gave the world “Mr. Bojangles,” leaves us.
Christmas music is in the air. The French National Anthem makes me weep, as does “White Christmas,” written by Irving Berlin, a good Jewish man and great American, and introduced in 1941 as his countrymen and women went off to war, many to never come home.
Its British equivalent was Vera Lynn’s recording of “We’ll Meet Again.” Movie buffs recognize it as the coda in “Dr. Strangelove,” the brilliant anti-war satire, but it stands sturdily on its own.
For Catholics and those who believe in eternal life, of course, that song takes on deeper meaning when we ponder those who have gone before us.
Whether it is in this world or the next, we will meet again.
Email Paul McMullen at pmcmullen@CatholicReview.org
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