Only the Irish can laugh with tears in their eyes.
For us, the threads of joy and sadness are so closely woven together in the fabric of our Celtic heritage, they tend to reveal themselves most poignantly at times like this.
Upon hearing of Ray's death, a flood of memories tempered with grief of that moment filled my mind. I will now relate some of those vivid images:
I remember when Ray and I were little kids, we woke up about 5:30 one Christmas morning. We were so excited and knew we could not wait for Mom and Dad to awake. It did not take us long to decide to tiptoe into the living room and check things out. We made our way quietly to the tree and the urge to open a few of those brightly wrapped presents quickly seemed justified, since tags bearing our names were so prominently displayed.
Ray was soon taken up with a little railroad hand-car setting on a circular track. It had the figures of Popeye and Olive Oyle standing on a platform opposite each other to operate the horizontal pump handle. A large key for winding the spring motor could not be ignored and that is when things started to go wrong. Ray turned the key until the spring was tight, he then moved a small lever and suddenly the animated figures of Popeye and Olive came to life as the hand-car loudly began to Ding Ding Ding its way around the track. "Who is there," Mom called from the bedroon in a half awake startled tone. Ray paused to think for a moment and with a squeaky childlke voice replied, "Nobody."
Reflecting on simpler times and lack of the state of the art equipment that is availabe today, we often made our own fun. An original game Ray came up with was, "Please God Keep Me Running." The first thing he did was gather neighborhood kids in our big backyard. There was Dick and Jimmy Elliot, Vince Small, Billy Hundly, Ray and myself. We all knelt down on one knee in the middle of the yard. The idea of the game was for one player to suddenly rise up and start running around shouting, "Please God Keep Me Running," while the rest of us would try to tackle and bring him down. The one who could run the longest was declared the winner.
A few years back when Ray and his wife Audrey came to visit us here in Maine, we decided one evening to visit the big L.L. Bean store in Freeport. Ray and I were interested in checking out the fishing equipment while my wife Betty and Audrey would find other items of interest. As always, Ray and I were singing and clowning around all the way over in the car and continued our silly antics even after we entered the store. We were coming down the stairs to the ground level when Ray sang out loudly, "I'm from New Jersey, most everyone knows, I'm from New Jersey, some of DEES some of DEM, some of DOSE." There was laughter and clapping all around and a man walked over and asked, "What part of Jersey are you from?"
When our father, Tim Foley, passed away, Elizabeth, N,J, Fire Chief Edward Deignan asked me if I wanted to retrieve his uniform badge before they closed the casket, so he could present it to Ray who was just appointed a new fireman. I did so, proudly.
I love you brother, and I salute you as a fellow U.S.Marine...Semper Fidelis
P.S. The angels and saints in heaven are in for a real treat when Tim and Ray tune up and begin singing those old songs...