Best Friend

She's been my best friend for 34 years.

You could say we're joined at the hip, but it would be logistically impossible.  Julie Kayl is 4 ft. 9, and I'm 6 ft. 1.  In fact, sometimes when we're walking down the school hallway together, I become so impatient with her tiny little stride that I have to fight the urge to pick her up and carry her.  It would save so much time.

Back in 1977, I was a 22-year-old kid arriving at Grand Island Central Catholic to teach for the first time, and Julie was the English department head.

"Can you teach TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?" she quizzed me.

"I love TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD!" I said.

We beamed at each other, and a friendship was born.

At the time, we didn't realize all that our friendship would endure.  Julie and her husband Pat would be part of our wedding, godparents to our oldest son Kenny, and the couple we most enjoyed sharing a table with at Applebees.  As well, Julie and I would prop each other up through the births of each other's children, the deaths of our parents, and two generations of kids at Central Catholic.

And then there was the tragic loss of the Kayls' 25-year-old son Eric.  After Eric died, it was a long time before Pat and Julie would recover enough to return to some semblance of themselves.  I remember sitting close to Julie on her living room sofa gripping her hand the day she called me about Eric.  We stared at each other in wordless shock, and I was afraid she would never come back to me as her laughing, joyful, sardonic self.

But she did.

"Eric leaves me dimes," she confided a few months later.  In fact, she collected hundreds of dimes which mysteriously appeared in the middle of the table, the seat of the car, or on the kitchen floor that had just been swept clean.  She told everybody about those dimes.  Even her students.

"Julie," I said uncomfortably, "I don't know that you want to tell just anyone about your dimes."

She stared at me in amazement.  "Why not?"

Because, I wanted to say, it sounds looney.  What if people think you're too crazy to teach their kids?

But every single person at Central Catholic adores Pat and Julie.

"The Kayls ARE Central Catholic," my husband says.

If Mrs. Kayl said her deceased son was sending dimes from Heaven, then by God, enough said.  There was no reason to believe otherwise.

Julie Kayl is the toughest human being I know.  Retinitis Pigmentosa has robbed her of her vision and stolen her very independent life from her.  But she has adapted gracefully to the dramatic changes in her life.  She can no longer drive, and her tunnel vision requires her to swing her head around like a little owl when it comes to keeping an eye on a classroom of kids.  But she lets nothing deter her from her job.  She hounds the most unmotivated pupil and showers her love on all her students.

Several years ago, she complained to me of a pressure in her chest whenever she walked very far, and two days later she called me from St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Lincoln.

"I'm having triple by-pass heart surgery tomorrow," she said almost conversationally. 

I thought my own heart had stopped.  "I'm coming to Lincoln."

"No!" she said.  "It'll be fine.  I'll have Pat call you afterwards."

But I couldn't sit at home while my best friend was undergoing open heart surgery.  When I arrived at the hospital, her family had departed for the cafeteria, and Julie, alone in her room, was perched on her bed swallowed up in a hospital gown five sizes too big for her.

"Hi!" she greeted me as if we were meeting for lunch.  She was, in fact, diving right into a huge lettuce salad.  "Oh man," she sighed in bliss, "this is the best salad I've ever eaten in my life."

Somehow, I had expected her to be languishing away in bed devoid of energy, and instead, she was singing the praises of a hospital salad.  I hopped up next to her in bed, and it suddenly struck me how much she meant to me and how scared I was to lose her.

"Julie," I said, trying not to weep, "are you nervous for tomorrow?"

She waved her hand dismissively.  "Naaa.  If it doesn't work out, I'll go be with Eric."

But thank God, it did work out.  Her surgery the next morning was pronounced a success, and after Pat and her kids had visited her in I.C.U., the nurse allowed me to slip in for just a moment.

Connected to dozens of tubes and devices, Julie looked half her tiny self in her hospital bed.  "Hey there," she greeted me hoarsely.  "How are you?"

I manuevered my way around tubes and I.V.'s and bent down to hug her head.  "More importantly, how are YOU?"

She held my eye.  "I saw Eric."

I stared at her.  "When?"

She closed her eyes for a moment.  "Just a little while ago when I was waking up from surgery.  He was standing there, a little shadowy, smiling at me.  Then he went away."

I leaned close. "Are you okay?"

Her smile was dazzling.  "I'm perfect."

And she is.  She's always been perfect.

But now she and Pat are leaving.  None of us at Central Catholic ever thought they'd actually retire.  Pat's literally kept the building up around us.  Only Mr. Kayl is intimate with the guts of the boiler system and remembers what tile hides the leak in the gym ceiling.  The Kayls are the heart and soul of our school.  And Julie Kayl is my best friend.  Now she has the audacity to leave me.

"Will we still be friends?" I whined, feeling sorry for myself. 

"Absolutely not," she said with a poker face.  "I don't ever want another thing to do with you."

She can joke all she wants, but it won't be the same.  Never again will I dash across the hall to tell her what I just heard in the lounge or vent about a difficult student.

In the weeks before my mastectomy surgery, when I was feeling afraid, I'd step across the hall just to be reassured by her joyful smile.  I never told her what she did for me during that uncertain time when I was trying so hard to be brave at school.  On a difficult day, I'd only have to look at her sweet face across the hall to get my bearings.  Without ever saying a word or knowing how crucial her presence was to me, Julie's steadfast loyalty and absolute faith in things seen and unseen helped me through those weeks.

Thank God we have this summer.  We'll lounge in the sunshine out on the deck Pat built for Julie, and we'll gaze at her gorgeous garden.  She'll do her best to persuade me I really should start watching "American Idol", and we'll talk about her grandchildren and our favorite books.  And about Eric.

Basking in the sunshine, I will be grateful for my 34-year friendship with a tiny, remarkable woman who is every bit as important to me as my own sisters.

 Goodbye, Mrs. Kayl, and thank you, my friend.

You mean the world to me.

Graduation

It doesn't happen very often, but lately, I could cry at the drop of a hat.

Mary and I have completed our saline fills, and our last surgery is a month away.  An eternity away.  I'm sporting two hard mounds as tight as a pair of bongo drums.  Ricky Ricardo could go crazy thumping out "Babalu!" on my chest.

There's an appealing picture.

My next door neighbor Ann Hart is in the same boat.

"I'm in pain," she moaned the other day.  Ann's double mastectomy after her breast cancer diagnosis was three months after mine, but she opted for two huge fills whereas my sisters and I took the long slow route of nine or ten small fills.  Either way, the last fill is a bear.

"I've been a little moody lately," Ann confessed. 

Don't I know.  Filled to the bursting point, these plastic water balloons in our chests poke, pinch, ache and render sleep virtually impossible.

I always feel weepy this time of year anyway.  Today is graduation at our school, and I'm mad at the seniors.  Last Tuesday when the final bell rang, a great roar issued forth from the hallowed halls of Grand Island Central Catholic.  It was the triumphant bellow of the senior class on their last day of school.  You would have thought we were housing inmates staging a prison riot.

Why do they have to be so delighted to leave us?  It was the same way when my own boys graduated.  They couldn't wait to move out.  Are we so boring?  Is life with us so dismal?

This year's group of graduates is a particularly good one.  There's Garrett Coble, a future Pulitzer Prize winning author; Kelly Soto, who makes us laugh 'til we cry; Jamie Partington and Gracie Mohr, two lovely young women with wise old souls; Mike Jones who quietly mourns his lost father; Dizzy Lizzy McGowan who can dart like greased lightning around the basketball court; Brianna Golka with her angelic heart; Brenan Anspauch and Riley Jones with their sweet, little boy smiles; Seth Wardyn, the gentle but fierce competitor; Kate Maginnis, the great organizer; Callie Newman and Abbey Galvan, the class beauties; Michael Pfeifer and Eric Juarez, the gifted entertainers, my own two gorgeous nieces, Steph Brand and Kailey Brown - and those are only just a few of the extraordinary kids in our senior class.

For the time they're in our classrooms, our students feel like our own flesh and blood.  Every teacher in this school suffers at graduation.  How could we not?  Our kids are leaving us.  And they can hardly wait. That's the sting of it.

I was mourning our last week with the seniors when Dillon Spies, a great kid in my junior English class, casually announced he'd be undergoing a routine tonsillectomy.  Dillon is wickedly and irreverently funny.  But he was understandably subdued about having to have his tonsils yanked out.

"Don't worry about your English homework," I assured him.  "Go do this thing and eat lots of ice cream."

"Yeah," he hesitated for just a second.  "Thanks."

His mother stopped at school after Dillon's surgery to give us the real scoop.  "Dillon knew he had a tumor behind his tonsils," she informed me stoically.  "It may be lymphoma."

I stared at her.  Dorene Spies is a rock of a girl.  She goes off to god-forsaken places like St. Lucia with a small band of equally committed friends to minister to the needs of the sick and elderly.  I guess you could call her our own resident Mother Theresa.  "How's he taking the news?" I swallowed.  "How are YOU doing?"

She smiled calmly.  "We're all okay.  Dillon's wondering if he might have to lose his hair, but he's handling it."

His pathology report would come Monday, she said.  But when Monday came and went, I started to get nervous. 

On Tuesday, I dragged Dillon's good friend Kevin Donovan into my classroom.   "Do you know anything?"

He shook his head.  "Haven't heard a thing."

"Text him," I said.

He gaped at me.  "You know that's not allowed.  I can't text in school."

I stood over him.  "Text him.  Now."

In all my life, I've never waited so long for a text reply.

"He's okay!" Kevin grinned.  "Every thing was clear."

Dillon was here at school Wednesday for Honors Convocation.  He marched up for his "Outstanding English Award", and I could have cried at the sight of that good, handsome boy.

"Hey, Mrs. Howard," he whispered as I folded him in a hug.

Dillon Spies will live a long, happy life and do great things.  Like his wonderful mother.

This outstanding group of seniors, too, will go off, every one of them, to do their own great things.  And that's the point, I suppose.  It doesn't matter whether you're recovering from a risky tonsillectomy, undergoing a double mastectomy with those pain-in-the-neck expanders, graduating from high school, or leaving this earthly life for the next. 

The idea is to keep going.

I guess we'll have to let go of our Central Catholic graduates just like we do every year.  And I'll have to forgive them for thinking we're so boring.

If only they could see us in the faculty lounge on Strip Poker Tuesdays.

On Mother's Day

My mother told me once about the first dress she ever bought for herself.

"I was only in high school," she laughed with glee, "but I looked good in that dress, and I knew it."

It was a beautiful April afternoon, she recalled, and the moment she stepped out of the shop in her stunning new dress, she felt intoxicated by her own youthful good looks and the promise of spring.

"I sashayed down that street," she remembered dreamily, her brown eyes glowing, "and for the first time in my life, I felt that I was pretty."

So did everybody else.  One young man, a high school classmate, drove down the street staring so hard at Mom, he careened up the curb and smashed into a light pole.

If anything, Mom grew more beautiful with each passing year.  I yearned to be like her.  But where as she was tall and slender, I was too long and skinny with my father's broad shoulders and hawk-like nose.

"Be proud of your height!" my mother constantly nagged me.  "Walk like a queen!"

I was lucky to be born first.  Mom was there to guide me through those tempestuous adolescent years when junior high dances could shatter my fragile confidence with a single blow.  I wish my younger brothers and sisters could have known the comfort of our mother during their own painful times growing up.

As well, they aren't able to share all the memories that Joe, Mick, Rick and I have of Mom as the sometimes very human and lovely flawed person she was.  In the eyes of my younger siblings, Mom was a saint.  To be sure, she was sweet and funny and loving.

But Patti Brown was no saint.

For one thing, she was a  smoker.  The more we tried to pry her cigarettes away from her when we were kids, the more determined she was to hold onto them, until one day she at last relented.

"You're absolutely right," she admitted to all of us.  "It's not good for me.  Your dad quit, and I can, too."

And so she did.  One week turned into two, and before the month was over, Mom had kicked the habit.  I was never so proud of her and the ease with which she gave up cigarettes once and for all.

Then one windy day as we romped wildly outdoors, Mick alerted us to an open basement window on the south side of our house.  Peering in, we couldn't believe our eyes.  There was our beautiful mother perched with her legs crossed on an old suitcase in the storage room puffing away on a cigarette.

Outraged, we marched into the house to confront her, but she caught us at the window and dashed madly up the stairs.  When we burst into the kitchen, there she was casually drying the dishes.

Incredulously, we stared at her. 

"Oh, all right!" she snapped, flinging away the tee towel.  "I'm smoking.  And you know why?" she glared at us.  "Because I've got ten kids who never leave me alone, that's why!"

Poor Mom.  She never did quit smoking.  And I understand all too well .  I think of her stolen smoke in the storage room every time I give up on my diet to devour an entire can of Pringles or order the purse I can't afford from the Home Shopping Network.

Because it just feels good, dammit.

Life was a succession of days filled with endless laundry and meals for Mom.  For someone with her intelligence and creativity and humor, she must have felt smothered by it all sometimes.  That's when she'd sneak away to her piano and ignore all of us for a little while, even if chaos reigned around her.  Lost in the soothing magic of her piano, she was the calm eye in the middle of the storm.

But that she adored us, we had no doubt.

Terri remembers having a terrible struggle with her times tables in grade school.  Dad would chastize her and demand that she try harder.  But Mom understood.

"Don't worry," she consoled Terri.  "I'll help you."

Mom drilled Terri every night until she knew her times tables frontwards and backwards and better than any other kid in her fourth grade class.

Tom always remembered looking for Mom after kindergarten was over at noon.  He'd walk the four blocks down Capital Avenue until he spied Mom leaning against the mailbox by the street waving her arms at him.  Every day, his heart would lift at the sight of Mom so patiently waiting for him all those blocks away. 

"Shall we race to the house?" Mom would grin when he finally reached her.  "I think I can win this time."

Mysteriously, Tom always managed to edge her out just as they lunged for the door.

When it came to cuddling, encouraging and making us believe all things were possible, nobody did it better than Mom.

I remember coming home from my first eighth grade dance.  That was the year I grew five inches, and my arms and legs had sprung independent lives of their own.  The dance was a disaster, and I rushed up the stairs to fling myself on my bed and sob in adolescent angst.  A minute later, I was aware of the bed sinking beside me and the comforting feel of my mother's fingers stroking my hair.

By the time my sobs had subsided to an occasional hiccup, Mom pulled me over to cradle my head in her lap.  I wished so much I could have crawled into her lap the way I did when I was little, but I was nearly six feet tall even then with legs like a newborn colt.

She rocked my head and stroked my hair, and I sank into the safety of her.  Down the hall, I could hear my brothers wrestling on their beds.  Somebody was running water in the tub in the bathroom, and the radiator in my room hissed in the darkness.  The comforting sounds of home.

"This was just one awful night," my mother crooned softly to me.  "But you won't always be 13 years old, you know."

She was so good at helping me to feel that life was filled with possibilities and that one day I would grow comfortable in my own skin and "walk like a queen."

We're missing Mom this Mother's Day, just like we've missed her for the last 32 Mother's Days of our lives.  Terri feels especially close to Mom this year.  She, of all of us, was diagnosed with full blown breast cancer and is connected to Mom in a way that none of the rest of us can be.  Many times in the last ten months, Terri has traveled back 32 years in time to suffer and die with our mother.

But Mom would be so proud of Terri.  She would want her to be happy.  She wants all of us to be happy.

Although she couldn't be with us very long, her influence and the lessons she taught us will last forever. She taught Terri to encourage her children, Tom to laugh with his, and all of us to forgive ourselves once in a while.  And she taught her oldest daughter to walk like a queen.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.  We miss  you.

Brothers

Some of the nicest women I know were tortured by brothers.

We belong to a club - we sisters who have survived years of humiliation at the hands of male siblings.  If only there was a support group like Alcoholics Anonymous so that we could come clean about our pasts.

"My name is Cathy," I'd tearfully confess, "and I'm a tortured sister."

A sort of telepathic radar connects the reluctant members of our secret club.  We recognize each other on the street, in the grocery store, at the dentist office.  In that penetrating instant in which eyes lock, our souls are bared.  She, too, wore her brother's soiled underwear shoved over her head.  Yes, she, too, lay pinned to the floor screaming at the dangling spit waving seductively close to her face before it was sucked back up into the mouth of her wicked brother.

Tortured sisters deserve a special place in Paradise, and my own sisters and I deserve a spot far above that.  We grew up with five rotten brothers.  Count 'em.  FIVE. Joe, Mick, Rick, Tom and Jeff. 

As sister abuse goes, I'd put them pretty much at the top. The name calling was superior.  Four Eyes, Moose, Stick Legs, Big Butt, Zit Face, Mommy Dearest - it was all spot on.  But it was Mick who really perfected sister torture with his sheer creative genius.

I'll never forget when he kindly offered me a Fig Newton with a quarter buried inside.

Or the day he dragged my 10-year-old sister Deb, screaming and shrieking all the way, to the strange house of a neighbor we'd never met and tied her with a jump rope to the front porch.  Then he rang the doorbell and ran away.

Even younger, my poor sister Mary was Mick's perpetual victim.  The trouble was, she trusted Mick completely.

"How 'bout I take you out for some McDonalds?" Mick cajoled her one day with a friendly arm around her shoulder.

"Really?" Mary was delightfully unsuspecting.

Instead of McDonalds, unfortunately, Mick drove her straight to a mall department store and threw a pair of scuffed boots he'd worn for at least three months into her lap.  "Take those in and get me a full refund,"  he demanded.  Reaching across, he hurled the car door open and shoved her out.  "Then I'll buy you a hamburger."

Our terrible brothers, I'm glad to report, have all grown into very nice men, thank the Lord above.  We also give credit to their wives, every one as gorgeous on the inside as she is on the outside, for turning our rotten brothers into kind, civilized men who don't sneak asparagus into our milk glasses any more.

As well, our brothers survived some setbacks in life and emerged as even stronger and more compassionate men.

Joe, who sells pharmaceuticals, suffered a heart attack a while back.  A single father for many years, he quit his life long habit of smoking for the sake of his kids. Shortly afterward, he met the love of his life, Stef, and is as healthy and happy as I've ever seen him.

Mick and his wife Lori took over the family travel agency, but when the internet changed the travel business forever, Mick forced himself to change along with it.  And that's where his creative genius came into play. Now his agency buses kids to every school in town and offers a variety of services my dad's business never would have dreamed of 20 years ago.

At the age of 35, our brother Rick, who was unhappy with his business degree, decided to become a teacher like his wife Jan.  For years, he worked all night stocking shelves at a local grocery store and attended classes all day.  Watching him work so hard turned him into my hero for life.

Tom worked hard to earn his job as the beloved administrator of a nursing home doing what he does best - taking care of people.  He and his wife Sheryl take care of all of us, too, generously opening their big home for almost every family gathering, spur of the moment or otherwise.

And Jeff, who was born with cerebral palsy, has conquered many demons during his difficult life, including alcoholism and substance abuse.  But with an unshakeable newfound faith, he's remained sober and clean for several years and proudly lives on his own.

Many years after Mom died and my sisters and I were sure we'd endured all the brothers we could ever handle, Dad married Kris.  And just like that, we had another brother.  But Nolan was so young, he seemed much more like another nephew.  And he was certainly never as awful as our five older brothers.  He's grown now, ready to be married this summer, and he's such a good young man.

All our brothers are good men.

When we were young, there were times that my sisters and I would have been ecstatic to see our parents give all our brothers up for adoption.  But we're rather fond of them now.  What the heck.  We're crazy about them.  Even though our brothers weren't wild about our collective decision to choose prophylactic mastectomies, they nevertheless supported us completely.

"I guess now you can get the boobs you always wanted," my brother Joe joked about our reconstructive surgeries.

But he and the rest of our brothers remember all too well the pain of losing Mom.  In spite of the many cracks made at our expense about our diminished chest sizes, every one of my brothers rallied behind us.  They delivered food after our operations, worried about our pathology reports, and called frequently to cheer us up.

On Christmas Eve, while I was home recovering from surgery, I will never forget answering the doorbell to see my entire family, including my tall, handsome brothers, filling our front lawn to sing "Silent Night" in the frosty black stillness.  My husband swears Joe was choked up, but Joe would probably deny it until the day he died.

I'm glad my brothers tortured us.  By the time my sisters and I grew up, we realized Joe, Mick, Rick, Tom and Jeff had taught us some valuable life lessons - never to take ourselves too seriously and never to act like prima donnas.

And never to eat Fig Newtons without first checking for quarters.

Easter

Terri and Deb warned us.  The last few weeks of  breast reconstruction is the pits.

Mary and I are two fills away from the end.  The skin and muscles in our chests are expanded as tightly as possible, and the discomfort is profound.

"I feel like I could explode," Mary moaned.

I'm particularly fond of the rock hard shelf protruding from my chest.  I could set of glass of water on it.  And a couple of family pictures and a gallon of milk.

I've never felt so attractive.

But we're almost there.  Terri and Deb feel well and look so lovely and natural again that it spurs Mary and me on to the finish.  All week, we've been reminded how fortunate we are.

Last Tuesday, just before the start of Holy Week, my sister Mary lost a good friend and classmate.  Mary Kay Redman was a dark-haired Irish beauty from the Central Catholic class of '82.  Her smile and wide expressive eyes were as big as her heart.

All of us at Central Catholic are mourning.  Scratch very deep, and you discover the invisible chain that links so many of us together in this little close-knit Catholic community.  Mary Kay's nieces and nephews attend Central Catholic, and her oldest sister, the beautiful Sister Mary Margaret McGowan, has ministered for years to the parishioners of St. Leo's Catholic Church in Grand Island.

Mary Kay fought cancer for 15 years.  She never complained - not to her family, her friends or the kids she taught at Kearney High School 40 miles away.

"Get over yourselves!" her students lovingly recall her scolding them whenever they whined about the every day irritations that never really matter.

Just two weeks before she died, she posted one last loving message to all of us on Facebook.  "I'm so lucky to have my family!" she wrote about her husband, children, mother, brothers and sister who so tenderly cared for her around the clock.

I thought about Mary Kay during Holy Week.  Maybe we don't truly appreciate the agony of Holy Thursday and the horrors of Good Friday until we lose someone we love.

Mom died just two days after Easter.  That night, after Harry the Dog's bizarre behavior, sleep was out of the question. 

At six in the morning, I finally rose.  Wrapping a blanket around myself, I quietly crept out the front door to perch on the top step of the porch in the cold April darkness.

"Where are you, Mom?" I whispered into the black silence.

After a time, the sun slowly edged up over the horizon washing the world in dusky gray.  And all at once, a million birds burst out in a jubilant chorus to greet the day.

I was young then.  Before Mom became so ill, I obediently attended Sunday Mass and observed Lent without ever once pondering the great mysteries of Good Friday and Easter.

But when those birds sang out in the pre-dawn hours after my mother died, I felt the power of the Resurrection for the first time in my life.

Mom was safe.  She wasn't sick anymore.  She was someplace bright and shining like the morning sun appearing over the newly budding trees.

Mary Kay's there, too.

It was good to celebrate Easter today.  Kenny and Tommy were home at long last filling our quiet old house with their familiar laughter and perpetual banter.

We celebrated Mass this morning and laughed when Father Todd, meandering through the aisles to sprinkle the congregation with the annual Easter Baptismal blessing, drenched my husband John who was sitting on the aisle.

And later we crowded into my brother Rick's house.  He and his wife Jan grilled brats and burgers while nearly 60 of us sprawled throughout their home and spilled out onto the deck.  The boy cousins engaged in their annual good-natured baskeball tournament, but for the first time the uncles declined to play.  Arthritic knees have finally conquered ego.  And the little ones scattered furiously to scoop up treasures nestled in the grass for their baskets.

We talked and laughed and ate and drank.  It was an Easter afternoon just like a thousand others.  But it was uniquely different, as every one is, in that Rick and Jan greeted a new granddaughter into the world.  Gracelyn Nicole Brown was born on Good Friday.

Life, death and resurrection.

We lost a good friend this week.  She reminds me how lucky my sisters and I are to enjoy this beautiful Easter day with our families and each other.  And when I am tempted to complain about my sore chest, I imagine her fixing me with those big snapping Irish eyes.

"Get over yourself," she'd scold.

Godspeed, Mary Kay. 

And may the birds sing you to Heaven.

New Family

Grandma was never the same after Mom died.  The light simply vanished from her eyes.

In 1982, three years after Mom's death, Deb and Brian were married, and Grandma, afflicted with heart trouble and diabetes, couldn't make the trip for the wedding.  I promised to bring my little brothers Tom and Jeff to visit the very next weekend.

"We'll bring pictures of the wedding," I assured her.

I was shocked when she answered the door.  Grandma lived in Beatrice, three hours away, and in the two months since we'd seen her, she'd grown thin and gaunt.  But she grabbed us close to her with the same old vigor.  Grandma was always the best hugger in the world.

"Dearies," she cupped the faces of of Tom and Jeff, who were 13 and 11 at the time, as they nestled against her.

"Grandma!" I couldn't believe my eyes. "Did you pierce your ears?"

She covered her ears self-consciously, then looked me straight in the eye.  "Why not?  I'm 75, and I'll pierce my ears if I want to."

I laughed and threw my arms around her.  "You look like a teenager!"

It was a glorious afternoon.  We went through every picture and told her all about Deb's wedding - how Dad's tux was too short in the arms and about how Uncle Carl, who decorated the church, had us all out at the river gathering greenery for the altar.  It wasn't until Deb and Brian were ready to exchange vows that an alert groomsman observed a problem with the green foliage Uncle Carl had so carefully placed on either side of the altar.

"It was marijuana," Tom informed our grandmother.

Grandma exploded with her deep rich laughter, wiping the tears from her eyes with the perennial tissue tucked in her sleeve.

When Tom and Jeff ran outdoors to play, Grandma and I settled down to talk around her low kitchen table.  We'd discussed to death all manner of things over that table - family events, soap operas and books.  She was pensive this particular afternoon, however.

"Do you believe old grieving people ever hallucinate?" she asked suddenly.

"Well," I said carefully, "I don't believe YOU'VE ever hallucinated, if that's what you're asking."

She stared down at her lap.  "Something happened the other day, and I don't want you to think I'm crazy."

I gripped her hand.  "You're not crazy.  What happened?"

She looked up at me.  "I saw Patti."

I sat very still.  The ticking of Grandma's cuckoo clock all at once seemed too loud.  "You saw Mom?"

She sighed and sat back.  "I was sitting in my recliner, and the birds were singing.  I was so low, and I thought, how can those damn birds sing when Patti's gone?"  Her eyes filled, and her lower lip trembled.  "Then a column of light came through the ceiling right down to the floor, and your mother stepped out from behind it."

I couldn't blink let alone breathe.  Grandma described perfectly the gown my mother wore with a rope belt around the waist.  Her beautiful hair was golden and swept over to one side. 

"Did she say anything?"

Grandma shook her head.  "She only held out her hands to me and smiled so radiantly.  Then she stepped behind the column of light, and it all went back up through the ceiling."

I sank back against the chair.  "I believe you.  I do.  Mom understood how much you needed her."

Grandma smiled through her tears, grateful, and we reached for each other.

"I love you so much, Grandma," I sobbed.

"I love you, too, Dearie."

That evening, both of us recovered, Grandma made our favorite macaroni and cheese from her own special recipe.  Jeff wolfed down the macaroni but skirted carefully around his vegetables.

"Eat your peas, Jeff," I nagged.

Sighing hugely, he picked up his fork and glared mutinously at the vegetables until Grandma pulled him over on her lap and whispered into his ear.

"Grandma," I was irritated.  "I know you just told him he didn't have to eat."

Two pairs of guilty eyes stared up at me, and I laughed helplessly.

It would be the last meal Grandma ever made for us. 

That very night, she died peacefully in her sleep.  When I checked on her the next morning, she was already gone, sleeping on her side with her hands tucked under her cheek and smiling sweetly.

I never shed a single tear for my grandma.  More than any thing in the world, she longed to be with my mother and my Grandpa Al who'd passed 18 years before.  I could only be happy for her.

But my brothers and sisters and I missed her so much. 

Grandma's remaining sister and brother eventually died, too, and it suddenly struck me that nobody from Mom's family was left to us.  I vaguely remembered meeting a couple of Mom's cousins when we were kids, but I could only recall their first names, Carol and Shirley.  Desperate to find them, I searched the internet and even paid for a membership to ancestors.com.  It was all a fruitless effort, and sadly, I gave up the search.

Then last month, the OMAHA WORLD HERALD published a story about the prophylactic mastectomies my sisters and I had elected to undergo.  On the afternoon of the day the story appeared, I received a phone call.

"Cathy?" a pleasant voice on the other end inquired.  "My sister saw the article today.  My name is Carol, and I'm your mother Patti's cousin."

After 30 years, it was a single newspaper article that brought our mother's family to us.  My siblings and I were over the moon with excitement.

Last Thursday, four of my big handsome brothers - Mick, Rick, Tom and Jeff- and my sisters and I arrived at Carol's house in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Her sister Shirley, a tall stately woman so like our grandmother, answered the door and enveloped us in a hug.  Carol, just behind Shirley, was shorter with striking blue eyes and a warm welcoming smile. 

"We're so glad you're here!" her wonderful voice greeted us.

It was an afternoon none of us would ever forget.  We couldn't stop staring at those two attractive ladies, both in their 70's.

"You have Grandma's hands!" I marveled.

"You even smell like Grandma," Deb said shyly to Shirley.

While they asked us about our families and set us at ease, we drank in the sight of them.

Reinder, Carol's husband, invited us into the kitchen for drinks, and soon, we were all huddled around the dining room table talking our heads off just as we used to around Grandma's table as if we'd known each other forever.  We found out all about their children, and miraculously, Terri and Shirley's son already knew each other.

"Before I saw your names in the article," Shirley was telling us, "I saw Terri's picture and thought, 'Why, she looks exactly like my cousin Patti!' "

We shook our heads in amazement.

"It was all meant to be," Carol beamed around the table at us.

All too soon, it was time to leave.  But rising from the table, we promised each other we'd gather again this summer for a pot luck family reunion to meet Carol and Shirley's families and Cousin Mabel, the 90-year-old keeper of the family records.

Our time around the table with our two beautiful cousins was a divine gift, pure and simple.  Mom and Grandma felt very close.  I could almost see them leaning in close to catch every word.

Grandma once told me about a beautiful morning around her own kitchen table many years ago.  Grandpa was still living, and Mom was in grammar school.  The three of them sat with the aroma of good coffee and sizzling bacon filling the morning air, and Mom was chattering a mile a minute about her exciting school day ahead.

Grandma remembered that Grandpa looked up at her with a kind of piercing joy.  "Heaven can't be better than this," he said.

I think of the three of them together again. 

Today is April 17th, the anniversary of Mom's death, and it seems no coincidence at all that this would be the week we found her family.

I hope the heavenly table Grandpa imagined all those years ago is every thing he hoped for.  And I hope someday we'll all be sitting around it together again, along with Dad and all the people we love most in this old world, to laugh and talk and love and remember to our hearts' content.

Happy anniversary, Mom.

Race for Grace

Deb's oldest daughter Nikki turned 27 last week.

"I hate that I'm 27," she moaned to Deb.

And I hate it for her.  This is the year she will schedule her first mammogram.

The mother of two young sons, Nikki is completely on her own and making her own decisions.  But Deb made this one for her.  She is insistent about Nikki's first mammogram.  And when Deb makes up her mind, there's no budging her.

"I'll go with you," she promised my frightened niece.  "But you have to do this, Nik.  We can't afford to take any more chances."

I have 18 nieces who can't afford to take any chances.  My great-grandmother died of breast cancer when she was 36 years old.  In our family, three generations have been ravaged by this disease, and my sisters are determined it won't wrap its insidious fingers around a fourth.

But it's tricky.  No apparent breast cancer gene has been identified in our family.  We only know that our susceptibility is great.  So how can we determine who's safe and who's not?  My 18 nieces are all uniquely beautiful, and it pains me to think of what's ahead.  Are we a family of women destined forever to remove our breasts to prevent this disease from killing us?

It's easy to get trapped in a pocket of despair when you're trying to predict the future.  Fortunately for me, today was the Race for Grace.

Co-founded by two special friends, Lisa Willman and Julie Pfeifer, GRACE (Grand Island Area Cancer Endowment) raises hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for those in our community who are stricken by cancer.  Lisa and Julie, both breast cancer survivors, are the backbone of the foundation. 

You'd never guess the steely resolve that hides behind the beautiful smiles of my two young friends.  In spite of their youth, Lisa and Julie have fought their own dragons and won - both have reached the all important five-year benchmark.  Now they're determined to help their community.

The first annual Race for Grace started early this morning in downtown Grand Island.  More than 600 runners and walkers registered for the event, all of them commemorating their loved ones lost to cancer or fighting cancer with thousands of pink butterflies lining the route.

Deb and I volunteered to help.

"We need people to direct traffic!" coordinator Laura Dexter, our tall, joyful friend, coaxed us.

Julie and Lisa greeted and thanked us with a hug, and Deb and I saw dozens of people we knew helping with the race.  Spearheading the event were the Wenzl siblings - Angie, Kim and Leonard, all of them veteran runners whom I taught.  Dorene Spies, a human dynamo if there ever was one, was helping Laura register the scores of volunteers while her husband Michael donned an orange vest to direct traffic and her good son Dillon offered himself up as a teenage gopher.  Our school secretary Pam Fruin was there, and even our parish pastor Father Todd Philipsen volunteered to help.  They were only a few of many.  And all because of two lovely women who have made it their mission to fight cancer.

Deb and I drove to our post on a busy Blaine Street to direct traffic and encourage racers.

"How's this?" Deb joked, waving imaginary traffic through with her best Deputy Barney Fife impersonation.

But when the hundreds of runners and walkers first turned the corner and filled the street making their way to our intersection, Deb and I stared in awe.

"Thanks for volunteering!" many of them called out to us, laboring hard after reaching the four mile mark.

"High Five, Mrs. Howard!" a former student ran by, raising his hand.

To the last walker, they were inspirational, and Deb and I were choked up.  All of them were racing for a cause, especially one determined runner - Kim Willman, Lisa's husband.

Biking behind the very last walker, Terry Pfeifer, Julie's husband, made sure every walker and runner made it safely to the finish line.  "Thank you, Ladies!" he smiled warmly.

It's impossible to give into despair when you witness 600 runners and almost as many volunteers uniting for a common cause.  They fill me with hope.  The Race for Grace helps me to believe any thing is possible. Even a cure.

Lisa Willman and Julie Pfeifer are fighting for a community.  But they're also fighting for their daughters.  Lisa's doing every thing in her power to protect Daryn, Kamryn and Lauryn, and Julie's fighting for Lyndie and Natalie.  Their courage speaks to all of us - husbands, children and friends.  If they can believe and battle so hard for an end to cancer, so can we.

This year, my niece Nikki will have her first mammogram.  Deb will be by her side.  Nikki doesn't yet realize what a blessing it is to have her strong mother accompanying her to her first mammogram. But my sisters and I know.  Mom couldn't be with us.

So we're making progress.  And one day, perhaps each of my 18 beautiful nieces will make a life-changing appointment to visit her doctor's office for a breast cancer vaccination that will protect her for the rest of her life.

This spring, there are a million little communities all over the world running their own races - for their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and kids.

Someday, we'll find the cure.  We'll find it because of people like my good friends Lisa Willman and Julie Pfeifer, two young women who inspire a small community to do great things.