What she collected was her memories, fragments, pieces of dialogue or just a moment in a grocery store, so many years later and feeling that wretched grief by just seeing a box of Lorna Doone cookies in someone’s basket could bring it all back, they were his favorite. Was Lorna Doone a mythic figure or someone real?
There were so many moments and growing up in a big family those memories are shared and sometimes you can forget if you were in that fragment or not, just because you heard the story and felt like you were in that frame and you could very easily have been somewhere else.
Like the time in the freight elevator at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. It wasn’t you, it was your brother Eddie, and sisters Eileen and Kathleen. And it was Kathleen’s idea as the best way to sneak into the hospital because you had to be 16 and you were and got to go the hospital almost every day with your mother and sometimes by yourself to visit your sister Elizabeth on her leukemia ride. You saw all the balding children and the hemophiliacs that seemed to disappear overnight.
So your brother and sisters couldn’t come in the front door during visiting hours because they were underage, 13, 14 and 15. And Kathleen’s 13 year old mind always knew you didn’t have to bend the rules you just had to defy them with bravado and nonchalance.
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Sometimes the best way into a big subject is through a tiny door, which is exactly what you do here. With this one, you deftly take us into the subject of your sister's leukemia ride & the hospital through the small door of sneaking into the hospital. It's perfect, because you don't overwhelm us all at once, you lead us in slowly. Excellent work!
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