Family Secrets
Baby Arthur
“’Cause I don’t remember being born.”
-Forrest Gump
grief (grēf) noun: deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement.
Born on Wednesday, April 13, 1955, Michael James was the first of six children born to Florence Anne (née Hooker) and Arthur Joseph Doherty, 42 weeks after their ceremonial nuptials. Ah, the good ole days when couples were capable of “saving” themselves until their wedding night! I’m sure getting married young probably helped a great deal, mom being only 19 and dad 22.
I remember my father telling me a story about when he and my mother first brought Michael home from the hospital while living in Queens, New York. Soon after his arrival, a neighbor who worked as a nurse stopped by to see my parents’ new bundle of joy while Michael was asleep. Noting the deafening silence and being shushed several times, the neighbor told my parents that keeping the home quiet would never help Michael learn how to sleep; therefore, they must make as much noise as on any given day they would normally make in their home before their new roommate arrived. I never forgot this advice and put it into practice after giving birth and returning home with my own kid. From vacuums to lawn mowers, suffice it to say, the kid could sleep through a tornado sucking up our house in New Jersey and crash landing in California during a magnitude 10 earthquake, only to wake up and complain that her covers were missing.
In quick succession, two years and one day later, Kathy arrived, followed by Maureen one year, nine months and six days later. Moving from their cramped apartment in Whitestone, Queens to a small house in Deer Park, Long Island, Arthur, Jr., born one year, six months and 13 days after Maureen, rounded out the “first half” of our family. Taking a brief hiatus from procreating, my parents welcomed Regina three years, three months and 22 days after Arthur and ended with me one year, two months and eleven days later, forming the “second half” of our family, never having known Arthur, Jr.
There is a route I often take that I refer to as my “go-to place,” a paved loop around the Cooper River, stretching west from Cherry Hill to Camden, New Jersey. This is where I go when I don’t want to think about where I’m going, the only decision being whether to take the hill on the way there or on the way back, having to choose between massive bodily exertion or wiping out on the curve and its multitude of potholes while every car breezes by me within inches of my life…literally. I’ve been riding this track for 15 years now and know it like the back of my hand. On occasion, I find something new along the way but not too often these days. However, what I do love about going there is that I can photograph the same site repeatedly yet see it differently each time. Sometimes it’s the seasonal changes. Sometimes it’s a slight shift in the angle. Sometimes it’s merely the direction of the light. Ever the observer, however, I’m always looking for something new.
Whether the hill is on the way there or on the way back, I used to pass a memorial at a bend in the road before hitting the bridge overlooking the river with a perfect view of Center City, Philadelphia. A small stone wall with dolls, stuffed animals and other toys encircled a large tree decorated with ribbon bows and photographs and a large wooden crucifix resting at the tree’s base. It was erected on October 13, 2015 and taken down at some point over the last few years. I never stopped to look at it – I knew it was there and knew why it was there; that was the day they found the body of a three-year-old boy in the woods nearby. His father was sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter after a jury found him guilty of suffocating his son with a pillow before dumping his body in the river so he could continue a relationship with his teenage girlfriend who apparently didn’t like children and gave him an ultimatum: it’s me or the kid. I cannot imagine what a parent is thinking when they commit such a horrific act, but I can imagine what the mother is going through, having lost her only child at such a young age.
The kid has been our entire world for nearly half of our lives. She’s put me and the hubby through some rough patches on more than one occasion, but the thought of hurting her, let alone killing her, has never crossed our minds. Trust me, we’re not perfect parents and do the best we can, considering neither of us had ever been in this situation before. I pray every day that we will never endure such a loss because I know what it’s like. Within their lifetimes, both my parents experienced the death of two children.
In an old photograph edged in white and dating from the early 1960s, there are four children in front of a typical suburban home in the middle of Long Island. Two sisters are wearing identical outfits: white polyester dresses with puffy crinoline slips barely grazing their kneecaps and teal button down wool coats, white kneehigh socks and black patent leather Mary Janes. The eldest son is wearing a white button down cotton shirt and black dress pants, the youngest son donned in yellow short overalls, white tee shirt and teal sweater. It’s Easter Sunday and the “first family” is wearing their best church clothing. Michael is front and center, sitting on the concrete stoop, Arthur, Jr. (a.k.a. “Baby Arthur”) perched on Michael’s lap while Kathy stands to his right and Maureen sits to his left. Baby Arthur was also three-years-old when his life ended.
Years ago, before the kid was born, I gathered my family together for a meeting at our parents’ home in Mays Landing, New Jersey to talk about Baby Arthur. All the mystery and silence surrounding his death had been a large part of therapy in my early 20s. My father and brother opted to stay outside on the back patio, the pain still too raw to recall, while Regina, Maureen, Kathy and I sat down with our mother to fill the gaps in their collective memories. From my understanding, Michael and my father were running errands as Maureen played in the yard and Kathy and Arthur were inside the house. My mother, four months pregnant with Regina at the time, couldn’t recollect what she was doing (maybe laundry or ironing?), only that she had not been in the kitchen or seen what happened. As a child, I was told that Arthur had been electrocuted after putting a metal knife into a plugged-in toaster. Obtaining his death certificate over 30 years later mostly confirmed what I already knew: it was an accidental death by electrocution after he stuck his hand inside a plugged in toaster that was resting on a wet surface. He was pronounced dead at the scene on Sunday, June 30, 1963 at 10:52 AM. I’ve heard stories from relatives and friends of how my parents reacted to Arthur’s passing, their devastation unimaginable, the death of a loved one being the most stressful life event a human being can experience. The demise of the first family had come to an end with the second quickly riding on its coattails.
Our parents visited Arthur’s grave in Long Island National Cemetery whenever possible until the day my father declared he no longer had the strength to carry his sorrow, each call becoming more and more intolerable. By then we had moved to Ramsey, leaving behind the ghost of Baby Arthur at that small typical suburban house in middle Long Island, a four-hour round trip drive away. And that was that. Aside from Michael and Regina visiting together once as adults, Baby Arthur lay all alone for over 40 years, no one from the family stopping by that cemetery again.
In the last years of her life, my mother would tell me how painful it was to not visit Baby Arthur’s grave over all those decades. So, after my father died in 2013, she petitioned to have Baby Arthur disinterred and reburied next to his namesake at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Memorial Cemetery in Wrightstown, New Jersey. After obtaining Baby Arthur’s death certificate and receiving a permit from the town registrar of vital statistics in Deer Park, the funeral director very diplomatically and very empathetically told my mother that, although it was possible to disinter Baby Arthur’s body, they would have to place his remains in a new plain pine casket. After decades within the earth, his coffin had deteriorated significantly. Although difficult to hear, mom didn’t care – she wanted her baby back. I remember being notified by the cemetery when Baby Arthur had finally arrived and was placed next to my father’s grave, a tiny three by three patch of soil indicating where he had been laid to rest; that’s when it dawned on me how young he had been when he died, just two months shy of his third birthday. Up until her death, I took my mother to see Baby Arthur every time she wanted, regardless of the hour and a half roundtrip journey or the weather. She had a lot of time to make up, eventually joining her husband and her son the following year and Michael’s ashes joining them eight months later.
After the family meeting adjourned that day so many years ago, my father came back inside, went upstairs and returned with Michael and the old black and white and color slides of Baby Arthur, the “second family” joining the first to reminisce of a young life cut too short – only this time there were no secrets.
My Gump Ride 