He was a boy I knew as a kid. I have seen photos of him (slides, actually) that my brother has, at my birthday parties. We moved a few miles away and he got sick and died of brain cancer.
Now one of his little brothers has succumbed to cancer before age fifty. We were neighbors as little kids and had a great time playing baseball and touch football with the entire neighborhood. Every night during the summer the kids would call on my dad to play.
We would finish dinner and dishes then go out and everyone got to play. That was Dad’s rule. A while after we moved Tommy stopped coming to school and I asked what was going on. No-one would tell me and I didn’t get a chance to visit him in the hospital. I think parents did us a disservice back then not telling us about death (so I started reading Death Be Not Proud and The Diary of Anne Frank) or letting me visit him in the hospital.
Today, I found out belatedly that his brother has passed and called one brother and emailed another to give my condolences to a family that has had its share of heartache. I left that town decades ago but it is still my home and I hope my ashes are scattered there.
Each brother has a bar/restaurant and I’m eager to try both when I return. One of the brothers put my tooth through my lip the day before a class trip to the zoo. All is OK with us. What bothers me is that the brothers, my brothers, are dwindling.
Here’s to the Irish in all of us. Give it up for Patrick! Dee
Cooking with Dee 
Yet another Irish brother down. They must be having some kind of party up there. Why am I always the last to know?
I know why, I declined a Jameson’s shot on my soon-to-be boss’ birthday in favor of my Tab. Yeow, that ages me, Diet Coke hadn’t even been invented. And when he hired me I bought him a bottle to square things, that he kept in his drawer and yes, I had to do a shot to be hired. Cough.