Family gatherings

I love gatherings of the Phipps part of my family. Because I wasn't born a Phipps, I can be a less attached observer.

I love all of them because they're so full of life -- so wonderfully brassy and bawdy and Irish. It's why I fit in so well. It eases the loss a little to sit and talk about Scott with them because the stories are so vivid it almost seems as though he's with us -- and perhaps he is, like Mike still is.

Burton and Tommy are so much alike that they get on each other's nerves. Burt says Tommy is insensitive to his feelings; Tom says Burt is self-centered because he can't see his pain Both are devastated by Scott's death. Tom wanted to open the urn and touch Scott's ashes, as though that would bring him closer to Scott again.

"Why is life so unfair?" he asked at the cemetery.

"It just is," I told him. "Marc died in 1980, Mike and Scott died this year and there seems to be no reason for any of it. We can hold them in our hearts."

Most of us go through our lives not thinking much about the unfairness of life until some like this happens.

Scott lives on in his kids. Nathan, his youngest, is a junior at the Rhode Island School of Design. Scott was the only architect I know of to have gotten his license without having a college degree. He was brilliant and incredibly talented.

On the back of a handout about Scott was one of his most recent home designs -- a huge house -- and the Biblical quote, "In my father's house there are many rooms..."

My stepmother had a hard day, but after the service was over and she was with family, she was OK. Burt will stay with her for awhile. He takes good care of her.

Burt is legally blind and because he can't drive anymore, my stepmother loves to take him places. The problem is, once he's in her car, he's trapped into whatever adventure she wants to have that day. My father always loved that. They wound up on Cape Cod or in Naragansett, southern New Hampshire or at one of the beaches in South County, RI. Sometimes she took him out to drive along the Mohawk Trail in western Massachusetts. He never felt like he was homebound because she got him out of the house almost every day, even though it took hours to get him out of bed and ready.

Barbara's kids got their love of life and their sense of humor from her. She's loud and funny and her granddaughter, Laurie, says her younger daughter has that same loud voice and crazy disposition.

Kenny, the oldest, is the rock of the family. He's a good, solid, dependable and pretty funny person. He and Linda married shortly after they got out of high school and are still enjoying being together. When he drives, she rides shotgun and navigates for him. I had to ask how Ken gets to work on his own without her there because it seems she really does keep him on the right track.

Sally, the only daughter and the youngest, always adored my father. She married a wonderful man, a kind and devoted husband who never gave up while she was in a coma from encephylitis for weeks. It was an incredubly slow recovery and there are still residual effects that leave her unable to work, although she's capable of taking care of her two sons now. But Kevin has been womderful. Even when her doctors thought she wouldn't recover, Barbara, Kevin, Kenny and Scott believed she would be OK. They sat vigil by her bedside, talked to her, prayed with her. She heard them and came back.

I feel very lucky to be a part of this family. It has been a great gift in my life. And I will miss dear, sweet, silly, fatithful Scott.