Peter McKay

This past Mother's Day weekend, my 15-year-old son was hard at work on a major spring school project. He had to prepare a large detailed chart showing his extended family members. All of the ninth graders in our neighborhood were doing the same that weekend, anxiously cutting out circles and squares, drawing exacting lines showing bloodlines and marriage dates. My wife and I both come from huge families, and my son's chart, as a result, stretched across three big poster boards, names spread out in both directions, some people he was familiar with, and others he had never heard of.

So I was thinking about family trees this past weekend, especially when I thought of our friend Helen. We've known Helen and her husband for 16 years, and our kids are the same age. As a result, our family has spent dozens and dozens of weekend nights in Helen's kitchen, talking until it got so late that we just had our kids sleep over while we went home. We always picked them up in the morning, but not until after they'd stuffed themselves with Helen's chocolate chip pancakes. It was a great way to get out of feeding our kids.

And my wife was so attached to her that whenever anybody would say something to kid Helen, my wife would jokingly but protectively put her arms around her and say, "Hey! Don't be mean to my Helen!"

Helen was also a fan of this column, or at least became one on my account. Years ago, I complained that I wondered whether anybody actually read my weekly rantings, and she assured me she, at least, did so faithfully. And just to make sure I didn't forget, or lose faith, at least once every couple weeks, she'd drop a sly reference to a recent column into conversation. Every time she'd do it, she'd smile and say, "See, I read you!" She didn't do this for a few weeks, or months, but for years.

Helen was just 45 when she passed unexpectedly and suddenly on Mother's Day, and it hurts like heck. For us, Helen was about as close to family as you can get without sharing an ancestor or at least without marrying into the family.

As my son finished up his family tree that Mother's Day night, I thought of the ancient arborists art of tree grafting, where they take a bud from one type of tree, one with admirable qualities, and attach it to a branch of another kind of tree.

What's funny is that we didn't really know who Helen's other friends were until after she died. My wife created a web page where friends who loved her could pick out a day and sign up to deliver meals to her husband and children. Within a day, the list had grown so long that the family would have meals halfway through the summer. At the funeral home, the line stretched out the door, across the porch, made a U-turn in the back parking lot, and then snaked down to the street.

People I've never met before would introduce themselves by saying they felt as if Helen were their best friend in the world. I was shocked. How could one woman have so many best friends?

It seems that even though Helen had her own family, she had grafted herself onto a lot of other family trees as well. People from all over were coming forward, claiming this woman as family.

The day before she died, I saw Helen for just a few moments in her back yard. I was driving our kids to a local amusement park for the day. As she walked away, Helen smiled and told me to enjoy the roller coaster. I was about to snarl that I'd written, just a couple weeks before, about my hatred of amusement park rides. Before I could, she turned, smiled, and said, as she had so many, many times before, "See! I read you!"

It's not all that easy writing week after week, years on end, wondering whether anybody's out there actually reading it. For me, it made things a lot easier knowing that every time I did it, there was someone who, if only to be kind, read me and who would pick out some nugget to mention later, just to prove it.

My guess is a lot of other people — people I don't even know — felt the same way that week: that their own family tree had suddenly lost a limb. It may have been grafted on, but it felt like it belonged there.

To find out more about Peter McKay, please visit www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.