When you open a memory box, bring a box of tissues too

   I refrained from opening the memory boxes that I have been stuffing for 30-plus years. I figured it would be too painful. So many memories would tug at my heart and the tears would flow when I picked through the items.

    It turns out, neither happened.

    There were so many artifacts, so many stories and so many events that I could barely get through the first box. My head was swimming when I considered each person and contemplated each anecdote that accompanied every program, news clipping and photograph.

   The scope was overwhelming. I had begun slipping items into a clear plastic, 18×24-inch box in my clothes closet in the 1980s. I’d crack the lid after a memorable event, tuck in my keepsake, and promise myself I’d sort through it some rainy day. When I moved to a newer home, the box moved too. When the lid wouldn’t stay closed, I bought another, set it on top, and continued the tradition. If this were a movie, it would start with videotape, move to a CD, and finish in my cellphone.

    When I opened the first box, sitting right on top was the yarmulke given by neighbors, Murray and Deb, distributed at their daughter’s wedding. Jamie was a lovely bride. Now she has two daughters of her own. Time has marched relentlessly.

  The golf ball tucked in the corner came from my only hole-in-one. I remember it well. I aimed for the center of the downhill, 140-yard seventh hole. The 9-iron drifted right, barely eluded the sand trap, rolled up a slope and into the cup. Better lucky than good.

    Coincidentally, a friend of my playing partners was tending bar and they insisted we stop at the turn for a drink. This guy poured enormous shots. They weren’t two fingers of Jameson; they were the whole hand.

  “Hey, let’s have another!’’ chirped one partner.

  “Whoa, fellas, I still want to play the back nine.’’

   They stayed and drank. I kept going and saved the Guinness ballcap for good luck. Still waiting on the next hole-in-one.

   There was a paper plate and a Christmas card thank-you note from Pat Sargent, my mom’s dear friend from Brier Hill. After several beverages, she insisted I write down the lyrics to my favorite drinking song, The Wild Colonial Boy, on the paper plate. She felt I should have it back, so I tucked it in the box.

    The thank you note remains priceless. Although she was compromised by the effects of a stroke, she labored over the note in her sketchy printing. To know she scrawled with that much thought and determination melts my heart and makes my eyes blur.

    I unfolded an obituary from July 4, 2014, for my boyhood Morristown neighbor, Cary Goodwin Barley. I was born July 24^th about 8 in the morning. His mother, Harriet, was watching Maureen, Mary Nora and Fran. Volunteer firemen were pumping water from a corner fire hydrant when she stepped across a hose. Somehow, it triggered her labor. Cary was born that night. We shared birthdays and sandboxes for many years.

   I kept sifting. I turned over a sepia-toned copy of The New York Times from the day I was born. “All The News That’s Fit To Print’’ declared the slogan abutting the nameplate. There were headlines from Moscow, London, Cairo and Washington, but the most troubling came from the capital where lawmakers were trying to water down civil rights legislation. It would take another seven years and countless acts of discrimination and racism before the Civil Rights Act was passed in July 1964.

    I found two tearjerkers. There was the program from my mother Eileen’s funeral Mass on May 15, 1998. I didn’t have the fortitude to open it. Sitting nearby was an original Journal newsphoto taken in June 1982 on the front lawn of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. When my father, Fran, died unexpectedly, Fr. John Murphy and my mother realized the church was too small so they moved the Mass outdoors to accommodate the crowd from the town and school. They were rewarded with brilliant sunshine and blue skies. Later that day, we held a wake that overflowed the house and a large tent in the backyard. I still chuckle about a comment from a neighborhood boy. “Wow, their dad just died and they’re having a big party.’’

   I picked through my daughter Claire’s high school basketball programs and son Liam’s programs from his acapella singing group. Next was a Special Olympics fundraiser program with Irish tenor Ronan Tynan on the cover. I thought of his impromptu duet with my daughter Katie while he was singing God Bless America.

   “I know all the words,’’ she proclaimed.

   “Well, you should go sing with him,’’ said a TV news anchor.

  So she marched to the front of the ballroom and began her off-key bedlam. Tynan was gracious. It was priceless.

  You can’t write these things. You can only treasure the memories. Just remember to box them up.

    Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com