Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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A word of thanks to the readers who sent their condolences after I mentioned that my sister-in-law, Marylou Kennedy, had died of cancer in the University of Michigan hospital April 1.

She was 62.

The life-affirming e-mails and phone calls showed me again that people are more sensitive and complicated than you'd think from reading the news.

At Marylou's funeral Wednesday at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Ann Arbor, Mich., life was much in evidence.

The lineup of the children Marylou and my brother John reared said all that needed to be said. From ages 20 to 37, their six girls and three boys are calm, quiet, smart and kind.

They also like to have fun. Their parents taught them that, too.

At the service, at the reception afterward and at John's house that night, stories flowed.

Best customer

Nine kids meant 9 gallons of milk on every trip to the grocery store -- because that's how many fit on the bottom shelf of the family refrigerator.

(They actually drank more.)

The store manager knew Marylou. He would keep track of her progress.

When the first cart was full, he would take her an empty one and haul the first one back to a staging area near the checkout lines.

With her two carts loaded, Marylou would allow people with fewer items to check out ahead of her. That included people with just one cart.

The children with her thought they'd never get out of there.

When the kids were young, the average weekly grocery bill was $500. The record was $750 -- for one week.

Chance encounter

Marylou met John on a visit to Ithaca, N.Y., for Winter Weekend at Cornell University. She went to a small Catholic college in Boston. He was about to get his MBA from Cornell.

One of his roommates introduced them. Because her blind date was tied up with preparations for a track meet the next day, the roommate invited John to dinner with Marylou and his girlfriend, who was Marylou's best friend.

John went and had a good time. The next day, he showed her the campus and the town.

Late in the afternoon, he told her they should get back to the house so she could meet the blind date.

"I'm fine with this," she said. "Let's keep going."

Their long-distance relationship resulted in marriage in June 1968.

I remember asking her before the wedding how many children she wished for.

She said, "Twelve."

I laughed, but she was serious.

She hauled all nine kids from school to school and event to event in the family's 12-passenger van.

In time, Marylou turned to God for help with all of her activities. She also became active in political issues that meshed with her religious beliefs.

Though Catholic, she attended nondenominational Christian churches rather than the Catholic church, which John never left.

Before she died, she asked for a Catholic Mass and burial.

The Rev. Jeffrey Njus gave her the last rites.

Her final confession was the most unusual one he had ever heard, he said.

Marylou told him about her love of Christ, her desire to be "more Jesusy" and how happy she was.

She always viewed her cancer, which she fought for nearly five years, as a win-win situation.

If she lived, she would be with her family. If she died, she would be with God.

They never talked about any sins, Njus said. But he gave her absolution, and she was ready to go.

For me the story that summed up her life came from daughter Maura, who spoke at the end of the Mass.

A few days before Marylou died, she lay in her hospital bed with her eyes closed.

An announcement came over the public address system: help needed with lifting in such-and-such room.

Marylou smiled, opened her eyes and in a soft voice said, "I'll be right there."

She always was, for all of us.