If you’ve never read anything I’ve written about my baby brother, Woody, here are a few things you should know:
One year at Christmastime, my sister, Lynn, and her daughter, Johanna, had flown up from Virginia to visit my parents in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Woody was also visiting my parents at the time. The five of them got in my parents’ car and drove up to 
where I lived in Glastonbury, Connecticut, to have yet another Christmas celebration.
When they arrived, Lynn and Johanna’s eyes were red and teary as if they’d been crying. It turned out they had been, in a sense. Mom and Dad had smiles on their faces I can only describe as sheepish. Habitually curious as I am, I asked what happened.
It seems Woody had brought his Sony Walkman cassette player with him in the car. He was playing an Elvis Christmas tape, wearing his headphones, and singing along. As a result of wearing his headphones, he couldn’t hear himself singing. And while he does, indeed, love to sing, his singing resembles nothing so much as a sack full of cats in a cement mixer.
Perhaps out of the undeniable humor of the occasion — and likely because of their sincere appreciation for Woody’s blissful obliviousness — Lynn and Johanna had laughed themselves to tears on the ride to Glastonbury. Needless to say, that story is now an indelible part of our Family lore.
The Measure of Woody
When Dad passed away in January of 2014, Mom and I drove to the group home in which Woody lives in Middletown, Connecticut. As hard as Dad’s passing was for the rest of us, we imagined it would be hardest on Woody. Mom and I sat on either side of Woody on his bed and told him the news.
In that moment, he just looked at Mom and said, “He was so good to you.” (I cried as I wrote that.)
Shortly before Mom passed away in January of 2023, I took Woody to the long-term care facility in which she’d draw her last breath a day or two later. As we were driving from there, he said, “She’s down to her last wire.” (I cried then, too.)
As a recovering Catholic, I haven’t been to Mass since Mom’s funeral. Woody was there, too, of course. There’s something about the purity of his piety — about the way he treasures family, about the way he simply is in every aspect of a Mass, about the way in which he sings every hymn unabashedly — that moves me to tears that have nothing to do with humor.
The moral of this story is that everything — beauty, music, piety — is in the senses of the beholder. If you doubt that, spend some time with Woody. Singing is optional.
What a wonderful world.
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
