Waking Thomas Hynes
Dec. 6th, 2002 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenMichael O'Sullivan was my great friend. But I don't ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I'd congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend. - Waking Ned Devine
My mom comes from a Scots-Irish family. Catholic, so there's plenty of brothers and sisters. All with fine Celtic names - Margaret, Patty, Eileen, Anne, John, Billy, Thomas.
It's a family much like any other. Some members are closer than others. Everyone in it has had their trials and tribulations. My dad sometimes wonders if the Hynes family didn't have a few more troubles than most, but I don't know. I suspect in the end it's a similar story to everyone else.
There are a few things that define a Hynes. Chin and cheekbones, for example. Coloring. But most of all, sense of humor. We Hynes folk have a distinctive sense of humor. If you think I'm funny, you've got that side of my family to thank for that.
My Uncle Tommy is no exception to this rule. You'd never mistake him for anything but Irish. Soft-spoken, but smart and always quick with a quip.
Tommy is the family historian, a role I think my brother might be taking over - or maybe I am, in my own way. For years he was also in charge of family gatherings. Aunt Margaret had Christmas, he had Fourth of July barbeques. And, my family being what it is, I've got the memory of all the Hynes folk singing 12 Days of Christmas forever etched into my brain as much as the one summer that Uncle Billy, for some reason, thought he could pick up an ember from a lit firecracker and not burn himself with it.
The gatherings stopped happening after a while, though. Aunt Margaret died a few years back - she who was so proud of my writing that even at my cousin Kathy's wedding a couple of months ago the other cousins still talked about how much Peggy bragged about me - and many of us moved and the big gatherings weren't as easy as when we all lived in various parts of Queens.
I still saw Uncle Tommy from time to time though. He'd coincidentally moved not far from my parents, so I was able to touch base with him on my odd trips home. Then I finally moved back East and he moved, down to Florida (totally unrelated, I'm told).
So, geography being what it is, I never had the chance to hang out with him much. I missed out on a lot of the weddings, and the Christenings, and the various things that families do together.
But, even still, stuff like that doesn't make you a family. Family has connections that geography can't break.
Those connections don't lessen with time.
Tommy got cancer a few years ago. Not long before I moved back east, he was given at most six months to life. That was two years ago. As you can tell, he defied the odds.
But apparently not for much longer.
Mom just called. She was crying, which I haven't heard her do since Dad was in a car accident last year. He's in a hospice, down in Florida, where at least some of his kids are with him. However it's not what you'd call a move towards health. This is more like a move towards an end.
I can accept that, in the way that I can accept that eventually that's the better option, and that life and death are part of one big beautiful thing.
But that doesn't mean I'm not greedy. It doesn't mean I don't wish I couldn't be there to sit down next to him and say how much he meant to me, and how thinking about him always made me smile, and how glad I was that he was in our family.
I'm going to try to call him later, but Mom says he doesn't answer his phone often and when he does he's not always coherent enough to understand what you're saying. I still want to try, though. I don't want to say words at his funeral that I never got the chance to say to him in life.
My mom comes from a Scots-Irish family. Catholic, so there's plenty of brothers and sisters. All with fine Celtic names - Margaret, Patty, Eileen, Anne, John, Billy, Thomas.
It's a family much like any other. Some members are closer than others. Everyone in it has had their trials and tribulations. My dad sometimes wonders if the Hynes family didn't have a few more troubles than most, but I don't know. I suspect in the end it's a similar story to everyone else.
There are a few things that define a Hynes. Chin and cheekbones, for example. Coloring. But most of all, sense of humor. We Hynes folk have a distinctive sense of humor. If you think I'm funny, you've got that side of my family to thank for that.
My Uncle Tommy is no exception to this rule. You'd never mistake him for anything but Irish. Soft-spoken, but smart and always quick with a quip.
Tommy is the family historian, a role I think my brother might be taking over - or maybe I am, in my own way. For years he was also in charge of family gatherings. Aunt Margaret had Christmas, he had Fourth of July barbeques. And, my family being what it is, I've got the memory of all the Hynes folk singing 12 Days of Christmas forever etched into my brain as much as the one summer that Uncle Billy, for some reason, thought he could pick up an ember from a lit firecracker and not burn himself with it.
The gatherings stopped happening after a while, though. Aunt Margaret died a few years back - she who was so proud of my writing that even at my cousin Kathy's wedding a couple of months ago the other cousins still talked about how much Peggy bragged about me - and many of us moved and the big gatherings weren't as easy as when we all lived in various parts of Queens.
I still saw Uncle Tommy from time to time though. He'd coincidentally moved not far from my parents, so I was able to touch base with him on my odd trips home. Then I finally moved back East and he moved, down to Florida (totally unrelated, I'm told).
So, geography being what it is, I never had the chance to hang out with him much. I missed out on a lot of the weddings, and the Christenings, and the various things that families do together.
But, even still, stuff like that doesn't make you a family. Family has connections that geography can't break.
Those connections don't lessen with time.
Tommy got cancer a few years ago. Not long before I moved back east, he was given at most six months to life. That was two years ago. As you can tell, he defied the odds.
But apparently not for much longer.
Mom just called. She was crying, which I haven't heard her do since Dad was in a car accident last year. He's in a hospice, down in Florida, where at least some of his kids are with him. However it's not what you'd call a move towards health. This is more like a move towards an end.
I can accept that, in the way that I can accept that eventually that's the better option, and that life and death are part of one big beautiful thing.
But that doesn't mean I'm not greedy. It doesn't mean I don't wish I couldn't be there to sit down next to him and say how much he meant to me, and how thinking about him always made me smile, and how glad I was that he was in our family.
I'm going to try to call him later, but Mom says he doesn't answer his phone often and when he does he's not always coherent enough to understand what you're saying. I still want to try, though. I don't want to say words at his funeral that I never got the chance to say to him in life.