Remembering Kathryn Mary, by Kathleen Capraro

I never met anyone as loyal to her family as Kathryn. She always said that everything that had happened to her was her own doing. She never blamed anyone else but herself.

We met her at two months old when my sister and her husband took into their home their foster baby. She was adopted one and one-half years later. My husband, Paul, and I were thrilled to be the Godparents to our dear Kathryn Mary. I always called her Kathryn but my husband always called her "Mia Bella Bambino."
Kathryn took up all the space in any room -- especially learning to walk, which she did by running and crashing into walls. Never was a baby sweeter or friendlier than Kathryn. She loved to eat, and she ate anything you put in front of her.
The first sign of trouble arose for her in school when she encountered math, and that was her downfall. She struggled all through school, which made school years all the more difficult. She was never accepted there.
Once she was a teenager, more trouble arose to meet her. She started hanging out with the wrong crowd and picked the wrong boys to date. Soon she was sixteen and pregnant.
At seventeen, Baby Ana was born and another beautiful baby joined our family. Kathryn was in an abusive relationship with her then-boyfriend, so she moved into her parents' home in Waltham. She only lasted there one year and soon took off to Florida with her baby. She never returned to Massachusetts but instead made Florida her home. She was always drawn to bad choices in men and soon had Babies two, three, and four. All the men flitted in and out of her life and she was forced to make a life for herself and four babies by working menial jobs and with help from her family,
I never met anyone as loyal to her family as Kathryn. She always said that everything that had happened to her was her own doing. She never blamed anyone else but herself. And so it came to pass that on a hot July, muggy, sunny, Sunday morning in Bradenton, Florida, with all the shades drawn in her tiny darkened home, our Kathryn Mary, at 40 years old, wrapped a bicycle chain around her neck and hung herself from a rafter in her living room.
No note was left.
For Kathryn, her troubles were finally over, but ours had just begun.

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