On Friday, Tim and I attended a fundraiser for the Bridget Anne Cullen Memorial Scholarship Fund at Bourbon Street on the Southside of Chicago. Bridget is from St. Cajetan, our parish home for the first ten years of our marriage and my childhood church, school, and world.

Growing up in that community, my earliest autumn memories include cheers of “We’re from Cajetan’s, couldn’t be prouder, and if we can’t hear us, we’ll yell a little louder!” which would gradually escalate into red-faced screams til we nearly popped blood vessels in our temples. I grew up down the block from Kennedy Park, the home field of the St. Cajetan Warrior football team, and I spent my fall Sundays at the park watching what I thought was the equivalent of the Chicago Bears.

My whole life revolved around St. Cajetan, and because I am the ninth of ten children, I honestly thought I knew everyone – such confidence for a ten-year-old. When Tim and I married, I said I’d live anywhere as long as it was in St. Cajetan. In 1986, we bought our first home, a two-bedroom raised ranch, at 10748 S. Maplewood six blocks from my parents and within two of four of my siblings. Our oldest daughter Katie was born two months later. Bethy was born Feb. 19, 1988, and that St. Patrick’s Day, I delivered Irish soda bread to neighbors only to learn from the Smith sisters across the street that they were selling their three-bedroom Georgian. With Bethy on my right hip, Katie at my side, and the steaming loaf in my left hand, I smiled and said without hesitation, “Well, if you are selling, we’d like to buy this house.” Tim says I violated every Pre-Cana Item of Concord with that statement.

A few months later, we moved into the Smiths’ home at 10753 S. Maplewood and stayed there until 1995 when we moved to Valparaiso, Indiana, an hour away but no longer stroller distance from my best friends. The Sunday before we moved, my kindergarten friend Peggy Kerrigan and I wept outside of mass. With great vehemence, I said, “Peg, do not let Tim bury me in Valpo.” At thirty-two, I had turned into my mother.

So two days ago, we were back with the St. Cajetan crowd, and it was as if we had never left. Our lifelong friends Peggy, Laura, Beth and Bill joined Tim and me as we gathered in honor of Bridget Anne Cullen, a Mother McAuley girl whose life ended on New Year’s Day 2013. Bourbon Street was packed with familiar faces showing support for Bridget’s family in their quest to find meaning in the loss of their daughter. The family had hoped to sell 300 tickets to raise money for Southwest side Chicago girls to attend McAuley with scholarships in Bridget’s name. They sold over 950, and my sister Eileen volunteered at the silent auction’s mob of friendly elbowing and trash talk.

Bag pipers, Irish tenors, folk singers, and rock bands played gratis for the cause as all wanted to do something, anything to help ease the pain. Bridget’s mother Anne climbed on stage and read from a prepared speech thanking the hundreds of attendees and volunteers as Tim and I held hands, praying for her, our children, and everyone on Earth’s children. St. Cajetan’s pastor, Father Frank, said a prayer as all bowed their heads in silence and remembrance.

Tim and I visited with old neighbors and old classmates. The connections were endless with banter as comfortable as an old slipper. I overheard a new friend say to Tim, “You went to Mount Carmel. What was the problem? You couldn’t get into Rita?” Tim is from St. Barnabas, a nearby parish, and he, like me, enjoyed the familiarity of childhood references. Old acquaintances delighted in the news of our granddaughter and bombarded us with jokes about growing old.  Over and over again, I was introduced as Eileen Rubey’s sister Nancy, something that never happens in Valpo. Greetings were followed by “I love Eileen.” “Me, too“, I thought each time the relationship was revealed.

Being part of something so much bigger and more beautiful than ever imagined reminded me of the old saying “good friends show up.” In this case, friends of friends of friends of family chose to become a community of supporters, short-term strangers, and believers united by faith in prayer, hope, and love.

On the way home, I said to Tim, “There’s a house for sale on the old block.”

“Not a chance, Nance. We have lives in Valpo.”

“I know. I just had to mention it, just to throw it out there. You have to admit, it would be pretty funny to own three houses on that block.”

“No, no, it wouldn’t,” he replied and kept driving across the border.

Valparaiso is our home now, but I’ll always brag that I’m from Cajetan’s. My roots and my identity are wrapped up in St. Cajetan, my church of solace and peace. And on Friday, I couldn’t be prouder.