Remembering Katie

This picture was taken on Christmas Eve, 1957 in Oskaloosa, Iowa. From the left is Tony, Shelley, Joe and me.

Like so many of those earliest Christmases, I don't remember much about this one. What I do remember is my Dad coming home that evening  and telling us we had a new baby sister. Katie, who given name was Katherine Mary, was the fifth of what was to be 8 children in my family of origin. She was our Christmas Eve baby, a gift that I'm sure we older children ever appreciated as much as we could have. I'm quite sure I was more captivated by the stethoscope from the toy doctors kit I received than by the arrival of another sibling.

What I wouldn't give to have another Christmas with Katie. She left us much too soon when she passed away in November of 2011.  The innocence and simplicity portrayed in this black and white snapshot reminds me of the joy that Christmas brought to our young lives before life got serious...before we all had to grow up too soon.

As the 5th child out of 8, I'm sure Katie had a different version of what it was like to grow up in a large, somewhat chaotic family,  than I did. I remember her being the ringleader of the 3 siblings that followed her.  She was also the ringleader for numerous stray neighborhood kids and stray neighborhood cats of the feline variety. She had a unique way of getting people to do things for her.

Katie spent most of her career in the restaurant industry, the last 25 of it in Manhattan, New York. To see her in action in the small restaurant she managed down in the Cooper Square area of lower Manahattan was a sight to behold. Speaking a blended combination of Midwest English and whatever language one of her cooks, waiters or other staff spoke was part comedy and part genius. There were times when I think she just made words up and relied on her gestures and inflections to do the rest. Either way, she was a master manager or master manipulator, depending on your personal point of view.

There was the night in the late 80's when my brother Joe and I were visiting my older sister, Shelley,  who lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  We had spent the day wandering around Manhattan ending up in Katie's restaurant for the evening. After a late evening of drinking and dining, we needed to get back to Brooklyn. It was around 2am so instead of taking the subway, Katie said she would hail us a taxi. It wasn't long after we crossed the East River that I realized we were lost. Katie, who rarely left Manhattan, had given the cab driver the wrong directions and we were smack dab in the middle of an area we had no business being in. The driver, obviously new to driving a taxi, was getting nervous and so were we. Finally a deliver driver pulled up next us at a red light and gave us directions that sent us in the right direction and eased our panic. What should have been a $20.00 cab fare ended up costing us about $50.00. We never told Katie.

Katie eventually went to work for an Itialian restaurant on the Upper East side as the office manager. She met and married Ivan and they moved to Queens. They adopted a son, Andres, from Columbia, South America, Ivan's home country and life seemed to be going well. And it did for a while.

But as life has a way of doing, what seems to be the good life can slowly and insidiously turn into a tragic life. Katie actively struggled alcoholism, at least the last 10 years of her life. Her first treatment was in 2002, I think. She knew I was sober and every now and then she would reach out to me for a listening ear. In 2010, she entered another treatment program, having lost her job and was separated for her husband. She struggled without work and with limited income. But in May of 2011, she sent me an e-mail that had "Look what happened the otherday on  my journey through life" in the subject line. In the message was a picture of a cake presented to her by her AA sponsor on her one-year sobriety birthday. The cake had the words "Miracles Happen" written on it.

I can't begin to describe the joy and elation I felt for her when I read that e-mail. I called her and we had a good conversation and she sounded really good for the first time in a long time.

The summer passed and we didn't talk again for a while. I just assumed everything was alright. I was wrong. On the last Sunday in October, a Sunday, Katie called me. She had relapsed in August and ended up in the hospital again, but had a few days or weeks of sobriety, I'm not really sure. I listened and encouraged her to pick up where she left off, that she had earned a year on we before and that she could do it again. And we talked a lot about her son, Andres, who was now a sophomore at Stanford. Oh, how proud she was of her son.  That was the last time I spoke with her. 

Katie passed away alone in her apartment sometime during the next weekend. And when I led her funeral service held at an. old neighborhood funeral home in Queens later that week, I heard myself telling those who had gathered that has she had simply run out of time.  

The truth is there Is nothing simple about alcoholism and there wasn't much simple about Katie's life.

Her death haunts me from time to time, not only because she was the first sibling we lost, but because she and I shared a common disease with a common solution. "But for the Grace of God, there go I" couldn't ring truer for Katie and I. Her passing has only strengthened my resolve to achieve my only remaining life wish-to die sober.

So on this Christmas Eve of 2013, I will ponder and remember my sister Katie, who left us too soon and who left behind a wonderfully gifted and kind son, Andres, who I know misses her immensely.