Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

So anyway, at the end of February all this shit went down.  On the same day, Black Friday 2/26/93, the World Trade Center got bombed and Nora and John Gallagher’s baby died.  She had the baby on Wednesday and his name was Sean Michael.  He was a big baby, 9 lbs. 6 oz., but he was born with a terrible problem, had surgery and couldn’t pull out of it I guess.  Something was wrong with his insides.  Everybody was praying for that baby… it’s such a tragedy for John and Nora.

The aftermath was awful.  Lisa (the bartender) called us the next morning and asked me and D. to tell our friends and, you know, try to spread the bad word amongst ourselves so that no one would spout off the wrong thing.  Also, the bar was closed until the night of the funeral on Tuesday.  I was surprised to see them open that soon, actually.  John was in the bar Tues. night and was drinking a lot and couldn’t even say two words.  Then Wednesday afternoon I saw Nora and we were crying a lot.  Then, Thurs. at open mic night, it was like a real Irish wake, with both John and Nora there, and everybody singing songs to them like Amazing Grace and whatnot.  The place was packed, and all these girls were clustered around Nora, crying and saying it’s not fair.  Girls I’ve never even seen before.  I sang "Making Believe" and Nora started crying and ran to the bathroom.  I had to stop after the song was done — it shook me up because I hadn’t thought about the words to that song — there’s stuff about making believe that I never lost you, etc., and I didn’t even think of that when I told Wild Bill to play it.  Anyway, she came over to me + D. right after and we hugged her and she told us to always love each other.

It was a really draining night emotionally but good.  And it peaked when Kate Yourke + co. came in with the special edition of Waterfront Week dedicated to John + Nora.  It was an art thing which a lot of people contributed to, my favorite being Tony Millionaire’s cartoon of a seagull in front of the Ships Mast holding a heart in its beak.

That’s why things were very uncertain as far as whether me and Jeff were even going to get to do our gig on Friday.  But Nora said she wanted us to play as normal, "he would have wanted it that way." Life goes on and all that.

I can’t wait to get this work shit over with.  Madeline is doing fine learning everything.  D. visited me at work today (+ so did Dave P.!) and Madeline and Sue M. were ribbing him bigtime.  He got all red in the face, it was so cute.