Katherine Joly Devine, 1936-2024

ACT ONE: 64 years. Behold a long run in a family comedy that has just closed.

She was really thinking about the next job. She was always thinking about our next job.

Before She floated to the Other Side, She ordered a whole set of new dishes and new utensils. I pretend to love them, but I wanted something bright like the plates in Margaritas Mexican restaurant.

She, quiet and dignified, ordered quiet dignified ware in a gray green tone with really tiny decorative specks here and there. This means I will spend what’s left of my life trying to get the tiny specks off. I think that was her idea of fun, designed to keep me busy.

Thanks to my daughters, I’m running the numbers of my life online and escaping checks and stamps. My youngest has taught me to practice frugality as her mother did, especially now that I’m in charge of what money She left me.

Numbers are not easy for a man of words, but I’ll learn. Yeah, you’re right, I’m a dummy. But I learn fast.

Kay Devine is shown in a photo earlier in life. Photo courtesy of J.P. Devine

I know how to do all of that. All of this is part of our family screenplay left in the sunset of another day. Pin this one to your fridge door: I will soon be returning to make you laugh and cry the way She liked it.

Dawn, the oldest, is still here holding me together, but hoping to get back to her husband and their two boxers Bluto and Olive.

As I write, She, who always took her time leaving for a trip, is moving somewhere between here and eternity. The end of a great story.

Now I will change my happy life dramatically — shop, cook for myself, watch the news, go to bed early and hope to wake early, if at all.

The girls will call a lot from the City of Angels. I need that.

It seems, by the notes I receive, that many of you are going through the same process, and are now waiting for me to grow up. It won’t work. She adored the little boy she married, as I did her.

Kay Devine is shown in a photo earlier in life with her husband, J.P. Devine. Photo courtesy of J.P. Devine

With your help I will keep writing and will go back to being the crazy kid on the block.

This is the part where I will need all of you to pray for me. You do pray, right?

I know this frightens agnostics, but it’s a spiritual practice that old school Catholics (especially Irish Catholics) embrace.

By now you’ve long known that I speak to all my “ghosts” daily — always have, always will.

No. Spare me the men in white coats, we don’t actually “speak.”

They float around, simply and spiritually. It’s a personal thing.

Kay Devine is shown with her husband, J.P. Devine, in one of the many plays they did together. Photo courtesy of J.P. Devine

Meanwhile, I watch the evening news with my small meals on the table. The news should calm me?

When my girls are back in sunny California, I will sit down to the 6:30 news, with one dish, one fork, a clean napkin, a place mat and a similar setting across the table, with Ms. Kramer beside me.

Oh, the picture. That’s one from one of the many plays we did together.

I’m showing her how to follow the evening star home — to me.

Thanks for reading.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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