Crawling, Sprinting.

I talk about my family, the Beedle side, a lot in this space. And why not? They’re pretty great and hard to ignore. And it is my blog after all. Last week I had a reminder of how remarkable the other side of my family is. The side that exists for me because I fell in love. It’s high time I wrote about them, so I shall now ramble on.

When Laura and I got married in 1986, I entered a family very different than mine. How different? Laura said it best: “You know how when your big family gets together for dinner, and if someone wants to interrupt they say, ‘excuse me’? That doesn’t happen with my family. What your family has in size, mine makes up for in volume.” This heavy bit of information was laid in front of me just before the first time I met Laura’s Aunt Marie and Uncle Jack, and her cousins Kieran, Jay, and Felicity. We were driving to their home in Staten Island to have dinner.

Laura’s brother, Jack, and his wife, Leslie, were on that excursion as well. I knew Jack years before I met Laura. (Fair warning: there are an inordinate amount of men named Jack in Laura’s side of the family. Even if your name is John you go by Jack—keeps things lively, I guess.) Jack and I played hockey together and were roommates with a few other hockey-playing knuckleheads. It was Jack who told me, “You should meet my sister.” Right then and there I knew … Laura and Jack were a package deal. They are each their only sibling, and to this day they talk to each other almost every day. 

Laura’s mother was named Emma. I never got to meet her. She passed away much too soon. I only have photographs, and Laura’s remembrances. Laura’s resemblance to her mom is striking. In the photos I see Laura; in the remembrances I feel the boundless love. I liked that Emma’s name was so similar to my mother’s name, Ella. Oh … and Laura’s dad’s name? Jack. Picture a guy named Jack. That’s Laura’s dad. More on him in a bit. For now though, I want to get back to that dinner at Aunt Marie’s.

Aunt Marie was Emma’s sister. Married to that other Jack I mentioned earlier, Jack Daly. Prepped with “don’t expect excuse me’s,” I was looking forward to meeting them and Laura’s cousins. Kieran, Jay, and Felicity had come in from their homes for Palm Sunday dinner.

If you’re losing track of all the names, that’s okay. There won’t be a test. Just let them seep in by osmosis. That’s what I did.

Leslie and I are the quiet(er) ones in the bunch. Leslie, like me, has fallen in love with a Keefe and somehow agreed to take a ride on this Tilt-A-Whirl. Dinner is all I expected: The volume knob turned to 11. F-bombs dropped. Rolls hurled across the table. Politics and religion are ON the table. The brain power, the quick minds, are next-level. Massive disagreements shift to loving exchanges in the blink of an eye. No “excuse me’s” uttered. Love is in the air—expressed overwhelmingly in the Keefe/Daly family style. Leslie and I—of the comparatively more sedate Beedle and Morris families—get a few words in. (As years passed, we’d get much better at it, but this first time it was a wiser move for Leslie and I to simply observe the professionals. It’s a bond I’m lucky to have shared with Leslie—to be invited into that world, thrown in the deep end, gasping for air between the laughs.)

Somewhere in the midst of this eventful dinner, it is clear that, for Laura, being with Aunt Marie is as close as she can get to being with her mom again. I see her bond with the entire family: Laura’s cousin Kieran is like another brother; Felicity, the younger sister she doesn’t have.

During dinner, Kieran, who is an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, discovers that my brothers and I once made a mindless Super 8 movie called Wake Up and Kill. He’s dumbstruck. Huge belly laughs. “That is the best title to a movie EVER!” “I have to see this film!” To this day I consider it a life-long personal victory that I could somehow get that reaction from a man so full of life, so amazingly full of energy, and so fearless.

I look back at those early years with Laura’s family … So much life … Almost more life than real life.

Too many of the people who sat around that dinner table are now gone. Aunt Marie and Uncle Jack lived full, long lives before they passed. Their son Jay, sweetness and innocence personified, was taken by Covid. Kieran, the man so full of life, seemingly indestructible, is gone too. And so is Leslie, my second sister who rode that Tilt-a-Whirl with me again and again. Those of us that remain hold each other close.

We don’t sign up for life. It is thrust upon us. Some days are a quiet stroll down the street and some days are a carnival ride. And every once and a while, that carnival ride stops to let the riders off.

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There’s a reason for all this looking back.

On January 11th, Ruth Morris, Leslie’s mom, passed away. Jack posted a moving message on the family text feed, along with some photos:

Some sad news. Leslie’s mom, Ruth Cornog Morris, passed away earlier today. She will now join Court and Leslie to no doubt straighten them out and get things in order. She was 94. Born in Camden, NJ she trained and worked as a nurse. She met Court, a Lehigh engineering student, when he came into a doctor’s office not feeling well. Obviously while cured, he was now smitten. We celebrate a long loving life. Rest in peace, we will rejoice in our future reunion.

Leslie’s parents were cool. They did everything together, and stayed active for a long time—always playing tennis or going skiing. They followed their kids across the country to stay close, and hold their family tight.

On another January 11th, exactly one hundred years earlier in 1923, Jack Keefe, Laura and Jack’s dad, was born. 

Laura shared some classic photos of this wonderful man and the beautiful woman he married. Jack and Emma Keefe. I wouldn’t be surprised if my father-in-law felt the same way about his wife as I did about mine: How the hell did I get so lucky?

Jack Keefe was one of a kind. Once a bunch of my hockey friends—practically the entire team—barged in on Jack’s house in New Providence, New Jersey on the way to see a New Jersey Devils hockey game. He put on a full spread for us: Piles of sandwiches and snacks and beer. We came, we ate, we drank, we laughed, and we departed. A frenzied sixty-minute whirlwind of activity. All the while, Jack Keefe was the most entertaining host for all us knuckleheads—enjoying every minute of yet another carnival ride.

I was able to know my father-in-law for nine short years. He passed away in 1995, living long enough to see the day we adopted our son, and hold him in his arms.

Onward this life goes. Crawling, then suddenly sprinting. Take it in. 

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Please consider donating to the Audubon Society in Ruth’s name: www.audubon.com

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