Susan has passed into the realm of being eternally 15. She always was. That’s how old she was when I met her — the often-bratty little sister to the woman who eventually became my wife. And who still is.
A four-year age difference when you’re 19 is like a chasm that can’t be crossed. As the years progress, of course, that chasm closes until it’s easily navigable. And if you go strictly by logic, there ceased to be a chasm long, long ago.
But I’m working off raw emotion here, and raw emotion says that Susan will always be the little sister who loved Charlie Brown and Snoopy, loved sunflowers and sunsets, and loved the Boston Bruins so much she used to keep a notebook, charting goals and assists of every player on the team.
Each Bruins game was a party unto itself in the Inserra family. There was Vito — Mr. Inserra — who couldn’t understand why each Bruin who touched the puck didn’t immediately shoot it. In fact, I learned the oft-used two-word exhortation “shoot it!” from hearing Vito scream it so often.
Mary — Mrs. Inserra — always fed me homemade pizza when I came over to watch, and that was often. I’d sit with them, scream with them, argue with Susan over who was better, and slowly, but surely, become more and more enamored with their other daughter, Linda. She’s the one I married.
They were, like my family, very close and fiercely protective of each other. We were married in 1977, and life was wonderful. And it stayed that way with few exceptions. In 1999, just a month before our son, Andrew, graduated from high school, Vito, who had coronary artery disease, died suddenly of a heart attack. Once we all recovered from that, life flowed, uninterrupted.
In the ensuing years, I lost my parents, both of whom lived long, fruitful lives. But Mary kept going. Two years ago, we celebrated her 95th birthday with a nice family get-together.
However, age catches up. And years No. 96 and 97 proved challenging. Susan was her caregiver, and for someone whose youthful brattiness always stayed with me, I have to say she stepped up to the plate in a big way. But, as it turns out, maybe a little too big.
This saga started on Jan. 16. Earlier in the day, Linda came home from her mother’s house in Saugus telling me that not only was Mary acting strangely, but Susan was too. Worse, Susan could not walk. Her legs kept giving out from under her and she was complaining about excruciating pain in her back.
That’s where we come in. I’m inclined to be somewhat philosophical about these things, as long as they happen to someone else. These things happen. None of us are immune. Why not us?
And I suppose on some intellectual level, I believe it. But when the lights are out at night, more of me than I’d like to admit looks upward and says “God, you bastard. Why?“
And of course, I ask myself why I didn’t see it beforehand. COVID has a lot to do with that. Mary didn’t want too many people in her house. Susan didn’t want to even think about nursing homes — even though it was long past time for that — because of COVID horror stories. We didn’t see them over the holidays for that reason.
When I finally saw Susan, Jan. 8 — we’d gone over there so we could watch Alex Trebek’s final Jeopardy show — I was stunned. She’d lost a lot of weight, and when I asked her about it, she couldn’t tell me how or why she’d lost it.
I chalked it up to the exhaustion of caring for a 97-year-old woman whose needs were overwhelming. That would tire out anybody.
So it was a week later, when Linda came home and told me of the situation, I told her we had to go back over there, assess the situation ourselves, and call 911 if we had to. We called our son, who had a lifelong bond to his “auntie,” and went over there. We didn’t like what we saw, and pulled the trigger.
I have no doubt that was the hardest thing Linda had gone through — to that point. Things only got more difficult, as Linda was the only sibling left to handle the affairs of both.
Mary was failing. Of that there was no doubt. But the sledgehammer was Susan’s news. A doctor at Salem Hospital called and told Linda her little sister had cancer. And — as it turned out — a particularly virulent form of it.
The time between Jan. 17 and the end of the month is a blur. There were phone calls to nursing homes, hospitals (first Salem then Mass General), the mounting realization that Susan’s cognitive difficulties were the result of her cancer, and probably weren’t going to get better, and deep dives into the finances of both to see what money was available to pay for the care that was sure to follow.
We’d just gotten Mary situated in a nursing home when we got a call at 4 a.m. on Feb. 2. She had died in her sleep. As terrible as that was to absorb, especially under the circumstances, you could at least celebrate her life. But we could not. COVID, plus the knowledge that Susan was extremely ill, muted any kind of a celebration. We had a funeral, but the only ones who attended were Linda, Andrew and me, plus two of Susan’s friends.
The day Mary died, Linda and I went to Mass General to tell Susan personally. Despite her cognitive decline, she understood. But when the doctor came into Susan’s room to talk about her condition, Susan acted disinterested. The news was devastating. Her cancer was stage 4, it had spread, and the doctor gave her three to six months.
If you think that was one of the all-time horrible days, as Al Jolson used to say “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Susan came home Feb. 9 — the same day of Mary’s funeral. The Susan who came into her house bore no resemblance to that 15-year-old kid. At that moment, I’d have given anything just to be able to shoo that little brat away, but I could not. Those days were over. Now, she needed round-the-clock care, and it didn’t seem either to Linda or me that she’d even last three months, let alone six.
She lasted four days. We got a phone call at 4 a.m. on Feb. 13 telling us that she, too, had died in her sleep. She was 63. This was only 11 days after Mary died, and it was just too much for Linda to bear.
And — as it turns out — me. You see, over the years, Susan became my No. 1 fan. She made sure she complimented me on articles, called me when I was sick, defended me on Facebook, and it became obvious that after all these years, we were forming our own adult bond and a genuine friendship. So to have this happen, especially now, just tore me up.
Our friends asked us to come to their house that evening, where they’d cooked a steak dinner. If you know me, you know I would never refuse steak.
But the minute I walked into their house, I got the worst chill. Coats, blankets, and even a rug didn’t stop it. I could feel myself heating up, but in my haze I thought it was just the blankets. Still, I was shaking.
Next thing I knew, I was in a bed and the bed was being rolled down a long corridor. There was an elevator. There were voices. But I didn’t know where I was or how I got there.
Slowly the nurses filled in the blanks. I had passed out in front of our friend’s house and ended up being taken to Salem Hospital in an ambulance. I’d had a fever of 104.
I stayed at Salem Hospital until last Thursday, and missed Susan’s funeral. There were real, clinical reasons for what happened to me. But I’m more convinced that my body had just cried “enough!” I don’t know why that happened to me, and not Linda, who has certainly borne the brunt of all this, but things don’t always happen logically. They just happen.
So we’re left to mourn a mother who dedicated her life to her children, to me, and our son; and a sister/sister-in-law/aunt whose love and generosity were boundless. We seek to make sense of it all, even if there’s no sense to be made of it.
My grandmother used to say, in situations like these, “life is for the living.” And she was right. It is. And that’s what we do. We live for the living.
But we mourn our losses intensely, and we will always cherish our memories.
