HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

One of my favorite family photos is this shot of my mother holding me with all my living siblings at the time (a brother between my sister and me, John, had passed as an infant) and my dad. That's Tommy in the uniform (this was taken midway through World War Two), he later became a Franciscan Friar renamed Father Campion, beside him is Robert, whose real first name was William, and next to me in my mother's arms was Buddy, as we called him in the family but whose real name was James, like our father's (and who would be in uniform not long after this photo was taken). And that's my sisters Joan (the older one) and Irene in front. Only Irene and I are still in physical form, but the spirit of all the others is alive in me and my world always. Especially my mother who passed on Mother's Day forty-nine years ago.