"Had a note from Uncle A."

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

Indira Gandhi


The Nora Diary, Day 8

Very cold, looks like snow.
In the afternoon went in town. Got some linen for a dress also silk material.
When I got home had a note from Uncle A saying Grandpa had passed away Wednesday noon.
Went to Somerville in the evening shrunk my linen. Susie came out and stayed all night.
About ten felt hungry for sardines so went to the store and got sardines, pickles and crackers. Had a lunch before going to bed, about 11.


Nora was very familiar with loss and grief. Her mother, Lulu Ellen, died after giving birth to her brother Paul, when Nora was two. She and Paul went to live with their maternal grandparents, Wealthy Ellen Wormell Leavitt(1842-1901) and Loring F. Leavitt(1843-1905). Her father's parents, with equally fascinating names, Sarah Mariah Moore Marston Mahoney(died, 1908) and Captain James Alfred Mahoney pitched in as well.

Uncle A(lbert Leavitt) who sent the sad note was Nora's mother, Lulu Ellen's half brother. Albert's mother, Selinda Wormell Leavitt, died at 24. Selinda was Nora's maternal grandfather, Loring F. Leavitt's, first wife. He remarried Selinda's younger sister, Wealthy Ellen Wormell, after Selinda died leaving Albert motherless. The children, Albert and Lulu Ellen were raised as full siblings after Lulu Ellen's birth in 1869.

The newly lost grandfather in Nora's diary entry in February, 1920, was her dad, Eugene Mahoney's father. Captain James Alfred Mahoney, retired from the sea, and lived to 80 in the family home in South Lubec, Maine. He carved the rolling pin we all have used from local yellow pine along with the round bread board. James Alfred outlived his son, Eugene, Nora's father.

Eugene too remarried after Lulu Ellen's untimely death, when Nora was 4. She and Paul then rejoined their father and Susan Godfrey Mahoney(the Susie in this journal entry). Nora's half brother, Max was born in 1898. Susie was perhaps 14 years Nora's senior at best. She died when Nora was well into in her '80s.

In the summer of 1912, Nora's dad, Eugene, bought a shiny new pair of shoes and black socks. He developed a large blister on his heel that quickly became infected by the black dye from those new socks. He died of blood poisoning without the medicine he needed, the yet to be rediscovered(1928), wonder drug, penicillin.

Yes, Nora knew loss very well before the age of twenty.

I suspect the evening sardine lunch was very healing. As she would say, There is a Balm in Gilead, it was those sardines, the spiritual medicine from her childhood village of Lubec that she craved. Sardines, the tiny silver, shimmering fish that brought sustenance and prosperity to so many coastal lives.

For the Record,
This day came in foggy and warm, blue skies prevailed and it feels like May!