To Love
by Bob Rannigan


"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
TS Elliot

"You'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take" Wayne Gretsky, hockey player.


To start I'd like you to meet my mother.

I was born Dorothy Frances Lemmon. I grew up to be Fran Rannigan with a husband, four children and seventy two years on earth.
From here I see my life was short, much shorter than it felt while I was living it. There seemed to be so much pain and suffering then, life just dragged on and on. Now, from here, well, I see the all the beauty around and in me that I missed then. Now I understand and can see how easy it is to overlook the love that's right there all along.
For me it was because of the shocks. I just never got over them.
Seeing my father shot to death when I was five. Mother sending me away then to live with my uncle and cousins, especially the boy cousins.
After that the shocks just stayed and stayed. They seemed to follow me. Until I met Clem, my husband-to-be when I was sixteen, and we started drinking. That made things easier. I could stop trying.

Now that I remember how it beautiful it is, I'm still undecided about going back again. It's so easy here. From here I can give the children what I didn't give them then. I'm not sure I could do it in a body yet.
They're all still on earth, raising their families, getting older. I'm so proud of them. They've all gotten over their shocks pretty well. They've taken what they were given and every one of them has grown wonderfully. Each one is a gift to me.
I didn't tell them that enough when I was with them. All those shocks following me I guess.
So from here I just keep touching them with love and offer them the encouragement I didn't know how to give back then. Every day I encourage them all day long now.
Look, there they are, all four of them sleeping. I love to watch them sleep, so peaceful and innocent. Always have. They still feel like my babies.
And oh look, Bob is getting up to meditate and write.
He touches me lovingly when he meditates. See how I'm glowing as he does that?
Now he's writing about growing up Catholic.
He started writing about that because of his wife Clare. Oh no, she's not Catholic. She's even less Catholic than I am.
You can't get much less Catholic than that.
That's why when my Bob asked his Clare what she'd like him to write about she said,
"I want you to write about anything that's real, that doesn't have to do with psychology or philosophy or God."
So my Bob sat down to write about something real, that doesn't have anything to do with God or philosophy or psychology. He started writing about himself and growing up Catholic.