We'll Take What We Can Get

Their first date, as they would call it, was late in the fall of 1964. Frances, along with her sister Margaret, attended the first basketball game of John’s senior year. She would not miss another home game, always watching him and cheering him, and deep-down-inside insatiably waiting for him to walk her home, singing to her the entire way, as they walked along the snow draped front lawns of Fairmount Boulevard.

Then, Frances, at the young age of 18, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. The doctors performed the most up-to-date radiation procedures, ridding her of any traces of the ailment, but in turn, severely damaging her heart in the process. They told her, in their best wisdom, that she would be greatly fortunate to live to see the age of 30. Upon hearing the news John asked her to marry him. She declined, urging that she could not bear to love him not knowing when she would be forced to leave him.

John simply said to her, “We’ll take what we can get.”

Frances’ parents vehemently objected to the union, due to Frances’s age, and instead offered Margaret as a substitute. A week later, John and Frances eloped to Michigan. When they returned forty-eight hours later, they went on their honeymoon—a trip to the grocery store—and did their best, with what money they had from John’s graduate student stipends, to fill the fridge and cabinets of their first home, a small studio apartment on the lower East side of downtown Cleveland. John began his Master’s work in Chemistry at Case Western Reserve, and promised Frances every night he would provide her with a better home, even if it required building it from the ground up, with his own two hands.

By the fall of ’66 Annibella Marie was born, eight pounds and two ounces, brown hair and John’s hazel green eyes. They lived day to day, barely surviving on the stipends and student loans, but meagerly saved enough to upgrade to a one bedroom flat by the time Clifford Lemay arrived in the late summer of ’67. John received his Ph. D from Case in 1970, and accepted an assistant professorship position at his alma mater, John Carroll. The following Mother’s Day, 1971, John surprised Frances when he took her to see their first real home—a dinged up, weather-beaten, two bedroom Bungalow in South Euclid, which he was secretly ashamed of. Frances was floored with excitement, demanding that the house was all she could want, and continually dismissed John’s constant nightly promises to build her one better. A month later, on Father’s Day, Frances had a surprise of her own—Joshua Brian was due by Christmas. By the turn of 1973, John found himself building dual bunk beds for the expected Patrick James, who would join his three older siblings in the already overcrowded second bedroom. By the time Thomas Athanasius was born in June of ’75, John surprised Frances and their little contingent of five, with another house, this time a four bedroom brick manor on Belvoir, in University Heights. Again, the house was a work in progress, but it grew with the family, and by the time John obtained professorship in 1981, Frances had carried and given birth to Sarah Ann, Alison Mary and Jonathon Paul—the house had done its due. So, John purchased the most beautiful plot of land in Gates Mills the bank would lend him the money for, and built a five bedroom palace, as he promised, with his own two hands, Frances helping late at night once the kids were tucked away, bearing the cold as she held logs for John to saw. He sang to her as the snow fell, draping the front lawn of their much awaited estate.

Thirty four years after her diagnosis, Frances was 52, and heavily beating the odds. She had married, raised a family, helped build a house she had longed for from the ground up, and saw her first seven kids go on to higher education. However, years of bearing and raising so many children had put a great strain on her heart. By the time Jonathon Paul was graduating high school, she was taking seven different medications a day. Then, at the age of 53, she had a major heart attack. She was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic, and sustained two triple bypass surgeries within a week. All eight kids came back together, and in between the solemnity of prayer, they joked and laughed in the waiting room, recounting the stories which would come to define their family.

Only John was allowed to see Frances after the surgeries. She was in intensive care, fully conscious, but her heart was fading quickly. John didn’t sleep for the last three days. He read to her. He sang to her. He made faces which made her laugh. He told her things that made her eyes well up with tears. He held her hand and promised her that he did all he ever could have done.

By the very end—the last day—Frances couldn’t muster the power to speak, and in turn had to write down her responses to John on a small notepad.

The last thing John ever said to Frances was, “Who would have thought we could have created all that we have…the kids, the house…”

Frances took her pencil to the small notepad one final time, and slowly wrote, “You always said we’d take what we could get.”