My cousin Susan was the first grandchild in the family; the daughter of my Uncle Billy and my Aunt Dot. Billy died young, leaving Dot a widow with three young daughters.

It seemed for a while like the three of them were around a lot; my Dad became a surrogate father for them before he married, and even afterwards, we saw a lot of them when we visited my grandmother, and they came fairly often to the house. I remember her staying over one summer evening and sleeping out on the cot on the porch, and distantly remember, perhaps aided by photographs, of being with them on the Cape, and seeing a shipwreck buried in the sand.

All three girls were older than me, with Susan being very much older, there being about eight years between us, which is an eternity when you’re six.

This Christmastime marks the 60th anniversary of her death. All three girls were fond of horses, but in December of 1965, Susan was either thrown from or fell off her horse. At first she shrugged it off, but after a few hours, her mother noticed was something seriously wrong, and got her to the hospital.

I don’t know the exact details of her injury, whether it was a bad concussion or whether a skull fracture was involved. I do know she lingered, I believe in a coma, over the Christmas holiday while the whole family held its breath and prayed for her.

My mother often told us the story at Christmas of how she went to Midnight Mass that year, and started sobbing uncontrollably when the children’s choir started singing, to the extent that her father had to hold her tight.

Susan finally died December 28, The Feast of the Holy Innocents in the Catholic calendar. She was just 14, Dot was devastated of course, and her death created an additional hole in the extended O’Hara family; what once had been a threesome was now two, with one member always missing. And of the over two dozen cousins of my generation, only a few of us are old enough to remember her; I’m the only one of my own siblings old enough to remember her, and most of my cousins are younger, But those of us who do, remember her fondly.