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Earth's the right place for loveTwo years ago tomorrow's sunrise, I had the call from Mary, my cousin, John's sister: John died during the night.
He was a sweet influence on all of the cousins in an extended family of Cleveland Irish. We are all descended from Annie Stanton and Peter Noonan. Those two left County Mayo on the rugged west coast of Ireland, the Connacht. Annie from Westport, Peter from Newport, six miles up the road. They never met until both had emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio. Annie worked for the "swells," the fat cats in Bratenahl on Lake Erie, a domestic servant. Peter, three years (or thereabouts) younger than her, went to work as a structural iron worker. There is a picture of him with a large crew that had just completed the original ore dock (iron ore, shipped in from Minnesota on the lake boats) at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. But, he died in 1919, in the midst of the great flue epidemic, leaving four children under the age of ten, and a frail fearful widow.
He's gone and we miss him. Though we were both raised in a traditional Catholic family and parish and schools, I don't think John clung to any of those mythic notions about an enduring life of the soul, a life that continues eternally either in heaven or hell, based on an omniscient god who functions as an accountant, totting up our offenses and good deeds.
"Earth's the right place for love; I don't know where it's likely to go better".
And he did indeed live it and pass it on. I am consoled by the thought that he taught hundreds of students every year. And that he did it for forty years running. If there is any immortality to be had, I think it is entirely in the legacy we leave, the imprint we make on our students, friends, colleagues, family. Woody Allen famously debunked that stuff. His take on immortality? "I don't want immortality that comes from the legacy I leave. I want the immortality that comes from not dying."
We could have had him longer. But, we didn't. Remembering him will have to do.
Jim Bouman
Waukesha, Wisconsin
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