The Reason This Is a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I don’t ask “why” when reflecting on the fact that both of our children were born on holidays.

Our son Connor was born on Thanksgiving Day; our daughter Mary Brooks was born on Saint Patrick’s Day.

It could not be more appropriate that Mary Brooks arrived on a day of great revelry and celebration. Her birth was a joyous day then, and it is even more so now.

And now she lives in New York, where Saint Patrick is celebrated like no other place.

March 17th is the date that Saint Patrick is thought to have died, and I understand why you would celebrate the date someone dies.

But for our family, March 17th is a day of celebration for an amazing arrival into this world, not a departure from it.

I learn so much from Mary Brooks and Connor, and much of it makes its way into this “Thoughts for the Week” email. It is great having a daughter who does counseling and therapy for her livelihood. She uses her life experiences to ask questions as to “why” and uses the knowledge she has gained to benefit others, to help them through tough times, and to deal with life’s inevitable losses.

That those losses are inevitable is not to say they are easy. Mary Brooks has taught me that grief is a natural part of life and that it has its stages and its own natural rhythms. She has helped me realize that we grieve for much more than the loss of loved ones and how grief manifests itself in body, mind, and spirit. Grief is, well, complicated, and there is no “one size fits all” cure. She has made me more cognizant that loss is a part of life, whether in business, basketball, friends, family, pets, parents, or time.

She is the “go-to” person, the person who you know will listen. Her empathy is not manufactured or contrived but real and from the heart. Friendships are her art and her oxygen, and she paints that canvas with all sorts of colors, shapes, forms, and dimensions – large, small, near, far, loud, quiet, you name it, it is in her collection.

Did I tell you that I love her?

Mary Brooks has infused her life with joy, but maybe that just comes naturally, cosmically, because she was born on a day when people are celebrating, singing, marching, blowing horns, beating drums, and wearing green.

I know it’s Sunday morning, and it may be a little early for us to break out the bubbly, but sometime today, wherever you are, and no matter what your libation, raise a toast to Saint Patrick and raise a toast to Mary Brooks Perkey!