Tuna Casserole

Sensitive content warning: this story focuses heavily on the death of a parent. Substance abuse is alluded to.

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Card Category: Thank You (Funeral)

Card Count: 100

Front Image: Dad_ActuallySmilingInThisOne.jpg

Front Text: Our Heartfelt Gratitude

Interior Text: [BLANK]

Val-You Greeting Cards, LLC

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Dear Father Peterson,

Thank you for your support during this difficult time and for arranging our dad’s funeral mass. He never told us exactly what music choices he’d prefer for his service, so we also appreciate your adamance that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, although a favorite of his, would not be appropriate for a procession song, in length or content. In retrospect, we wholeheartedly agree and appreciate that you prevented us from causing an incident with the older members of the family, or from incurring any stray wrath of God. Last week was hard enough as it was. 

Thank you, also, for informing us that Irish leader Michael Collins was not, in fact, made a saint. The way our dad talked about him made us assume that he was. In light of that, St. Patrick was certainly the better choice for the prayer cards.

Sincerely,

Christopher and Denise O’Toole

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Dear Uncle Liam and Aunt Lottie,

Thank you for all of your love and support throughout the last couple weeks. We couldn’t have made it through this without you. Thank you especially for somehow getting the news to the entire extended family within an hour – we’re still not entirely sure how you did it, but we’re so grateful that you stepped in. We were both kind of a mess at that point. 

Uncle Liam, we also wanted to say that we’re so sorry you lost your brother. Neither of us can imagine going through this without the other somewhere within reach. We don’t know how to convey our condolences, other than to say that we miss him too, and we’re so sorry he’s gone.  

Thank you, and we love you. 

Chris and Dee

P.S. Did you know that Michael Collins wasn’t actually made a saint? Fr. Peterson was appalled when we suggested him for the prayer cards. Dad always said he was named after St. Michael Collins and we never thought to fact-check him. 

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Dear Liam Jr., Michelle, Ronan, and Ben,

Thank you for your love and support during this difficult time. We especially appreciated the week’s worth of Michelle’s famous (and delicious!) tuna casserole.

We know Ronan and Ben are too young to read this, but please let them know that we genuinely appreciated their antics at the burial. We didn’t anticipate so many people coming to the cemetery, but we should have, and should have ordered more roses for people to place on the casket. We think Dad would have gotten a kick out of Ronan and Ben improvising and throwing grass on top instead. 

Also, Dee may have promised to take Ronan and Ben to a Red Sox game next month to make up for the lack of roses. She’ll text you this week to work out details.

Love you all,

Chris and Dee

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Dear Grandma,

Thank you for your support and love during this difficult time. The lasagna you dropped off got us through the week and we’re so grateful for it (we love Michelle but we hate tuna casserole. Please don’t tell her we said that). We also deeply appreciate your offer to give us one of your blood pressure pills at the funeral. It was probably in all of our best interest that we didn’t take it, but we appreciated the gesture all the same. We’ll see you this weekend for Sunday dinner.

Love you dearly,

Chris and Dee

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Dear Jill and Lorraine,

Thank you for your support and love during this difficult time. We are so grateful you came to our father’s wake and we really appreciate your generous gift to the Finnegan Sober House in his honor. We wish you both the best and hope to see you again soon. 

Sincerely, 

Christopher and Denise O’Toole

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To the Floor 7 Nursing Staff of Boston General Hospital:

Thank you for the care you gave our dad, Mike, while he was your patient a couple of weeks ago. We won’t sugarcoat how difficult it was to see our dad in the state he was in while at BGH, but it brought us so much comfort to know that he was surrounded by a team who did their best to care for him in his last days, even though we're sure he wasn't the most compliant patient.

Thank you too for the beautiful prayer blanket commemorating his passing. It touched us deeply, and will be treasured forever. Thank you. 

All the best, to you and yours, 

Christopher and Denise O’Toole

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To the Staff at Old Towne Public House (particularly Jim): 

Thank you for being such gracious hosts for the reception we held at the pub after our father’s funeral last week. We deeply appreciate your professionalism and care in the face of an overwhelming number of O’Tooles. It’s rare that we get so many of us in one room together, and funerals are, for better or worse, a bit of a family reunion too.

Thank you to Jim especially for giving everyone their first drink on the house, and for sharing your stories of our dad. We know he thought of Old Towne as a home away from home and we were glad to hear more about a big part of his life. 

We’d also like to deeply apologize for the attendants who thought that it was a fully open bar for the entire reception. We enclosed a check that should cover the remainder of the tab. 

All the best,

Chris and Dee O’Toole

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Dear Frank,

Thank you so much for coming to our dad’s wake. We know you guys had a rocky relationship the last few years but he thought of you like a brother and we were so glad to see you. It was so fun to hear some of the stories of you two growing up. He always claimed that he was the one who scored the game-winning goal in your high school hockey championship, which always felt a little fishy to us since he played goalie. We’re glad you set the record straight. 

We also are incredibly grateful for your sponsorship of Dad when he tried out AA. He never really told us why you guys fell out but the timing kind of made us suspect. Thank you for trying. Keep in touch, we’d love to get together sometime. 

Best,

Chris and Dee

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Dear Mr. and Mrs. Bertucci,

Thank you for your kind words and support during this difficult time. It meant a lot to us that you attended our father’s services. We wish you and your family well.

Sincerely, 

Christopher and Denise O’Toole

P.S. Mrs. Bertucci, I’d like to apologize. I was the one who broke the classroom window when I was in your second grade class, not Jack Rourke. He supplied the slingshot but I loaded the rock and shot it. Maybe this isn’t the time or place, but, I’m sorry. 

-Chris

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Rourkey,

Thanks for spending so much time with us last week, kid. Couldn’t have made it through without you. I think Big Mike would’ve appreciated the Miller High Life you tried to leave at the grave, but my mom didn’t want to piss off the cemetery staff. We’ll go back once the headstone is in. 

Chris

P.S. I told Mrs. Bertucci I was the one who broke her window. Your name is cleared. She brought us water at the wake and it didn’t feel right lying to her. Any more, anyways.

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Dear Allie,

Thank you for sending the beautiful bouquet of flowers and for the GrubHub gift card. I used it as soon as I got back to my apartment to get pad thai from that place I took you to when you came to visit. It made the crying jag a lot more bearable.

Also, it was great to see your mom at the wake. You didn’t have to apologize for her going on about her juice cleanse while in the receiving line. It was weirdly a nice distraction during the whole thing. A bit of normalcy (as normal as your mom can be) was a relief. 

Let me know if you’ll be back home around Christmas this year and if there are some good weekends for me to come visit you in Seattle. I miss you. I’ll call you this week.

Love,

Dee

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Dear Mom, 

It didn’t feel right not writing you a thank you card, even though you’re sitting in the next room right now. So, thank you for everything. Commuting in from the city the last couple weeks would have been a nightmare, so setting up at your house was such a huge help. Thank you too for helping us deal with the stickier aspects of all this. Who knew what probate was? We’re glad you did, because we certainly didn’t.

We’re sorry things didn’t work out differently with Dad, but we want to say we know you tried your hardest for so many years. We’re glad you chose to protect yourself, and we know this has all been hard on you too. We love you more than words can say.

Love,

Chris and Dee

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Dad,

Dee told me it might be helpful to write something to you. Something she heard in a grief group, whatever that is. I’m not sure what she expects me to get from this. But I’ll try. So, here it goes.

Thanks for being the best dad you could be. I think Mom and Dee think that we had a complicated relationship, or that I don’t recognize that there were bad parts of it. But our relationship was what it was, and at the end of the day, you’re my dad. I know you would’ve done anything you could for me and I always felt the same. That always seemed like enough to me. 

I miss you a lot. I tried playing golf with Jack Rourke, but he’s terrible at it. It’s not the same without you. Most things aren’t. 

Hope you’re taking it easy on the other side, big guy. Love you. Always. 

Chris

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Dear Dad,

There are a lot of things I want to say to you, or yell at you, or cry about to you. This is my sixth draft of this letter. Each one is worse. Chris is swinging by to pick me up soon though, so this will be it. We’re going to see how the headstone came out and leave the letters there. And Chris said something about leaving a beer, the irony of which isn't lost on me. But if you loved anything, you loved a High Life.

To keep it short, thank you. I know you tried your best. I wonder a lot these days if things would’ve been different for you if you’d been born a generation or two later. Maybe you would’ve been more open to help. Learned some different coping mechanisms, or a better way to communicate the pain you were in. But, you weren’t. And that sucks. But you learned to live with it, in your own way, and we will too. 

Weirdly, I missed you the most when Michelle handed us a tuna casserole the week of your funeral. All I could think about was the time she dropped one off as a housewarming gift for your new apartment. Chris and I came by, expecting to get a tour of the place. Instead, you made us all hold hands around the kitchen counter and say a prayer for the poor tuna fish that gave their lives hoping to wind up on a nice plate or in a sandwich, but found themselves in Michelle's casserole instead. You couldn't get through it without cracking up and we all ended up in hysterics circled around the damn thing. At your best, you were the loudest laugh in the room. The good and bad memories are all jumbled up, but your laugh cuts straight through a lot of them.

So, thank you. And I miss you. I hope that, wherever you are, you’re doing well. 

Love, 

Dee

P.S. I’m sorry Fr. Peterson didn’t let us play Led Zeppelin at the funeral (you were right, he is kind of a stick-in-the-mud). Chris said he already has “Thank You” queued up on his phone for when we get to the cemetery. He thought "Stairway to Heaven" might be too on the nose.