John Patrick Sullivan

John’s loss is mourned by his parents, Monica and Terry, his brother James (Kate) Sullivan, cousins Michael (Marilia) Matysik, Mark (Peg) Matysik, Meg (John) Andree, Daniel (Angie) Matysik, Peggy (Jens) Anderson, along with a second generation of cousins, dear friends, and a long line of dedicated and loving Misericordia caregivers.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to: “In memory of John P. Sullivan, MFA #1117A, Misericordia Heart of Mercy,” www.misericordia.com

Our Son John

Diddle diddle dumpling, we said to him, from his very own nursery rhyme. He was five pounds and change soaking wet, and he was that too, when we brought him home from the hospital at just short of a month. A baby bird with a perpetual wink from one eyelid that didn’t open and long list of medical problems. We fed him with a tube, a gavage as they taught us, because he didn’t have a sucking reflex.

You can put a baby to sleep in 60 seconds when you shoot a syringe full of formula directly into his stomach but when his pediatrician said many months later to maybe try a little thin Gerbers’ rice cereal, we discovered that he had a highly developed spoon reflex. Ate his weight in rice cereal every day for years. We bought it in bulk, the way his grandma Lil bought toilet paper. And he grew, very slowly, and laughed when you bit his belly, a higher order skill.

We tied a musical bluebird to his playpen, and pulled it for him at nap time, and after months he reached up and pulled it himself. I don’t know who was more surprised, but he kept it up, and kept it up, and wore out three of those chirping birds. And months (years?) later he learned to turn the knob on a Playskool wind-up toy radio. Stuck his thumb through the handle and held it on his shoulder, like the world’s smallest boom-box. He wore those out, too, and we bought them in bulk, and then from eBay when they stopped making them. There’s one in that casket today. They played different tunes, but eventually we found one that played Happy Days Are Here Again, FDR’s anthem, because John was a Democrat.

Took ten years for him to learn to walk, but like everything else he learned, he never forgot—he walked an endless circular route in our apartment and was still at it 40 years later doing his daily rounds in the apartment at Misericordia—his home away from home, and then just home.

He clapped for orange juice, and ice cream, and for the people he knew, and grabbed his friends’ hands to make them clap too. And he applauded the school bus when it rounded the corner a block away. He loved riding the bus so much that the driver gave him a front seat and changed the route so John was first on board and last dropped off.

We read to him and read to him and he developed a fondness for flipping the pages of magazines for hours at a time. A young cousin once asked “can John read?” And I answered her honestly: “we don’t know, honey, and he won’t say.” Actually, we suspect it was the pictures, because he spent more time on the Victoria Secrets’ catalog than any magazine his father ever wrote for.

His brother James taught him to play bouncy-bounce (don’t ask) and how to pull all the books from the lower shelves of the bookcase, which was fun. And he learned to take off his shoes and twirl them by the laces on a finger, until eventually they went flying. His roomies learned to duck, usually, but that was nothing compared to the flying gym shoes inside the car. Nobody at Misericodia ever found shoes he couldn’t get off while you were walking around the car to get to the driver’s seat.

He could be stubborn, of course. One day, after 35 years riding in back seats, he stiffened up and simply refused to get in the back of the car. Slammed the door and pushed his mom aside to get in the front. Declared shotgun and never rode in the back again. We think he may have been planning it since those school bus rides.

But he was patient, and a perennial patient in many hospitals. We spent years holding him down while doctors, dentists, and nurses put things in and took things out of him—stitches, staples, catheters, IVs, and worse. He wasn’t in favor of these things, but when you had him pinned, he knew when he was licked and he relaxed. And you could always get a smile after it was over. He may have lacked a lot of skills, but the ones he had were all social, and highly developed. And they stood him in very good stead for all of his life.

So remember him as he remembered all of us. Maybe clap when someone brings you a drink, and smile at your friends, and hug them. Leave your shoes on, though, or someone could get hurt.