{"id":95527,"date":"2015-01-30T05:11:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T10:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=95527"},"modified":"2015-02-01T12:36:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T17:36:14","slug":"the-obriens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=95527","title":{"rendered":"The O’Briens"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nMy cousin Susan posted this amazing photo on Facebook, one I have never seen. It’s been so wonderful to see everyone else’s photos: since my grandmother died on Wednesday, we’ve all been posting photos. It’s been a great way to remember, to commemorate, and also to feel like we are all together. <\/p>\n

This is the O’Brien family, my mother’s side of the family, lined up in a row. My grandmother is the second from the left. Lined up: my great-uncle Frank, my grandmother, my great-great grandmother, my great-great-grandfather, my great-aunt May, my great-aunt Joan. I am lucky enough to have vague memories of my great-great grandmother, who lived in Connecticut, spoke with a brogue, and we would go visit her when we were kids. I still make her tomato salad recipe (which we all call “Granny’s Tomatoes”), which I’ve been obsessed with since I first had it at her house, age 4 or whatever. My two great-aunts, Joan and Mary, were huge figures in our lives growing up. My great-aunt Joan is still alive. In her 90s. Still sharp as a tack. One of the most incredible women I’ve ever met. (Both Joan and Mary were nuns. I wrote about my great-aunt Joan here, a little bit.<\/a> I interviewed her about the impact of Vatican II and what that time was like for a piece I was writing. She’s a pioneer in Catholic feminist theology, as well as a scholar of the classics. She speaks ancient Greek. And of course Latin. She’s written a couple of books, one on Sophocles. She’s a powerhouse.) Of all of those people in the photograph, only my great-aunt Joan is still alive now. I have been thinking about Joan a lot since my grandmother died. Joan would come back East to visit her sister in the Retirement Center run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth. (They do such amazing work.) Joan would play the piano for Mama (they used to play duets together on the piano). My great-aunts and my grandmother were willowy, tall, beautiful women, scholarly and learned. Before Vatican II came along and everyone took off the habits, Joan and Mary were these formidable creatures striding in their full habits across the campus of Albertus Magnus, where they were professors. (All of the Sullivan women, the children of my grandmother, my aunts, my mother, went to Albertus Magnus. So did my grandmother.) <\/p>\n

It is amazing to see these people in this photograph. A family. Immigrants. My family. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My cousin Susan posted this amazing photo on Facebook, one I have never seen. It’s been so wonderful to see everyone else’s photos: since my grandmother died on Wednesday, we’ve all been posting photos. It’s been a great way to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[1101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95527"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95584,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95527\/revisions\/95584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}