Jeanette S. Cleary

My family have known the Cleary’s before kindergarten. Have so many fond memories of our New York loving friends. We didn’t hold it against them – LOL. Mrs. Cleary always made me feel welcome over the years, despite the trouble David would get us into 😉 and her wit kept us smiling and laughing. Her and Bob were two peas in a pod and you could see the dedication and love they had for each other. My parents truly enjoyed their company having them at all 8 of our family weddings. Dad even driving in the blizzard to pick them up for Super Bowl at our home. An adventure and entertaining car ride they didn’t forget and memory still lives on. We were so blessed, when you think back at all time over the years we have spent together with school, church, baseball, bowling with my mom, and other social events. Even getting VIP hospital care from Gabby for myself and brother. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree there. It is a tough time in our lives as we care for our parents and it was wonderful to see David, Kirsten and Gabby and family providing such loving support for Mrs Cleary and Bob in her time of need. Rest In Peace Jeanette, we will miss you.

I first recall Aunt Jeanette over fifty years ago at their apartment in Yonkers which was just a mile from our apartment in The Bronx. My father and his brother, Bobby, clearly looked and sounded like brothers and both married wives with maiden names of Sullivan/O’Sullivan. Beyond that, the atmosphere in each apartment was shaped by the mothers. At what I thought was a boisterous gathering (but was just a normal afternoon for them) I saw Aunt Jeanette with a cigarette in one hand and a phone handset in the other at the end of the longest curly cord ever. She could reach three rooms with that phone cord – calling out directions to us children about the food and cookies.

Jeanette and Bobby also had a car. It was a station wagon and we’d carpool out to Long Island to visit our other cousins. Events like a first communion also involved picking up the grandparents in Parkchester (east Bronx). That meant three grownups across each bench of the wagon and six children in the back back laying in twisted formations playing and wrestling with each other. Later, while we crept in traffic towards the Throgs Neck Bridge tool booth, we might ask “Are we there yet?” or just lay and listen to the adults talk as Aunt Jeanette led the banter across the front benches.

After hours at the suburban party filled with frenetic games across a dozen children, full of sugar and exhausted, we piled into the back of the station wagon again for a quieter ride home. In the back back we nodded off in the dark hearing Jeanette’s laugh above the adult murmur. Back slowly over the bridge again they dropped off the grandparents and finally us – and it was time then, as it is now, to say goodbye.

Candles are lit in Brugge.