To David on his 60th Birthday

I hold a photograph in my hand. A picture from long ago. Though frayed and fading, it is one that tells a story. A melancholy tale of family, friendship, love and loss. And the unrelenting passage of time.

I study the image taken with my father’s old Polaroid camera. Fifty years have come and gone, yet that day, forever etched in memory.

Two young brothers sit together on the front steps of our Long Island, New York door stoop. Clad in hand-woven Irish sweaters, their cheeks are ruddy, speckled with rosy patches gifted from the late autumn chill. Their skinny, knobby knees are scraped and dirtied from a recent romp in the yard. The older boy David, is dark-haired and although the photo holds no date, is likely around six years old. His younger brother leans contentedly onto David’s side. His small hand is just ever so slightly brushing his brother’s, whether in comfort or familiarity. He is fair-haired with a sprinkling of freckles on the rung of his nose. I guess him to be four years old.

Their younger sister, Aideen, appears to be no more than two and a half years. She is held by her mother Maureen, who stands behind the boys. Aideen nestles her small chin neatly onto her mother’s shoulder. Maureen gazes steadfastly into the camera with just a hint of a smile, her beautiful face a portrait of strength and calmness.

The children’s father, David Sr., is seen in the distance. He stands in the yard, lost in thought. He has been a close friend of my father from earlier days and a name spoken with admiration in our home for as far back as I can remember. Their paths have crossed in and out each other’s lives over the years, sparked by a shared love of the restaurant business; my father a restaurateur in New York City and David, in Dublin and the Southwest Coast of Ireland.

Though their roots and I suspect hearts, have never left Ireland, David and his bride Maureen relocated to the U.S. some years back, where they married. David has followed his passion. A career he has always loved, working once again back at the helm of the restaurant world, this time in New York City. Three beautiful children followed.

The family is visiting this Sunday afternoon for a day in the suburbs. The atmosphere is relaxed, one of contentment, the kind that old friendships evoke. And the sweet rhythm of life plays on.

Shortly thereafter, it all falls apart.

It was a day like any other. A visit to New York’s Central Park. A far cry from the emerald green hills of Ireland, but a reprieve from the city’s endless skyscrapers, nonetheless. As the boys played, a Rabbi who was seated on a nearby bench approaches Maureen. “Your son,” he says, motioning to David, “is ill. You must bring him to a doctor.”

And with those words, a family’s life changed forever…

For years and years I forget this family my parents held so dear and the tragedy of young David, who shortly thereafter the Rabbi’s omen, was diagnosed with Leukemia. And at age eight years, while back home in Ireland where his family had returned, quietly slipped out of this world.

I had forgotten this family from my childhood and the sadness that be-felled them, until the arrival of an email, written more than a half century later. A letter, that I now understand, returned them to me.

It was written from a now grown Aideen, the baby in that long ago photograph, who was seeking my help. Did I have any photographs or stories of David from their family’s visits to us in New York?

A string of emails followed, chasing the years.

We spoke of our parents now gone, and their everlasting friendship. Of our current lives and families; Aideen’s in Ireland and mine in Connecticut. She talked of her three siblings; two younger sisters who were born back in Ireland after the family’s return and her older brother who had remained in Ireland to raise a family. We touched on the good times and bad, the highs and the lows, the laughter and the tears.

We spoke of her brother David.

It would be his 60th birthday on December 20th, of this year. His mother Maureen, who perhaps bore the brunt of losing David more deeply than the rest of the family, never spoke of the loss of her first born son. It was simply too painful. So Aideen and her siblings carried on, from childhood to adults, with just a scant memory of an older brother they never really had the chance to know.

But now, all these years later, Aideen felt it time to not just remember David, but to celebrate him.

We felt it only fitting to meet at the beloved Irish establishment Rosie O’Grady’s in Midtown Manhattan, where both our fathers and families had worked together so many years before. And we had little doubt their spirit was with us that night, pleased to see we had reunited once again. A friendship found, through one departed.

“He brought us together you know,” Aideen said to me later that evening as we stood on the corner of West 51st street, saying our goodbyes. And amid the backdrop of the bright lights of Radio City Music Hall, I snapped the below photograph, to prove her right.

A gift to David, on his 60th birthday.