Mckenna, Dolores Rose

If you want to know what Dolores will be remembered for, well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask the women at the bank, she worked at years ago, it’s for being a trendsetter, for wearing stylish wigs and slacks to work instead of a dress. If you ask any of her children, it’s for making things special, for turning a paper bag into a Christmas tree, a bit of fried dough into a feast, and a house into a home when times were tough. If you ask her grandchildren, it’s for homemade soup on sick days while watching movies, for belly laughter from goofy jokes, for hugs that smell like Tabu and hair gel. If you ask her sisters, it’s for cheating in card games. And if you ask anyone who’s ever sat at her dinner table, it’s for red sauce and lasagna and cookies and biscuits that make your mouth water. But if you ask anyone who knew her at all what she will be most remembered for, the answer is her utter warmth and unyielding kindness that couldn’t help but touch whoever she was near.

The song of Dolores dances on endlessly to the beat of its own rhythm, and if you listen closely, you can hear it in every act of kindness that you do for someone else, in every meal you make for a loved one, and in all of her favorite songs from musicals she loved to sing along to. The magic of Dolores is that through all of these things, she is able to live forever.