'GREATEST GENERATION' INVITES COMPARISONS.

Byline: James Bemis Commentary

Recently, I had the sad task of traveling to Northern California to attend the funeral of a beloved family member. I say ``family member,'' but Helen Gaffney was my brother-in-law's mother-in-law, putting her outside the legal definition of family. But the heart knows no such boundaries, and so she was a third mother (counting mine and my mother-in-law) to me and ``Grandma Helen'' to my kids.

It's funny, but no matter how well you think you know someone, there's always much more to learn. Each person's life is like a long, intricate novel, full of twists and turns beyond the imagination of even our most creative authors. The paths one's life takes - the sorrows, the delights, the spiritual highs and lows, the funny moments, the tragedies taking us to the abyss - are essential parts of our stories and yet are unknown to most of those around us. In the end, though, it is how we cope with what are, in Shakespeare's words, ``the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,'' that is the measure of a man or a woman.

Helen was one member of what Tom Brokaw calls ``the greatest generation.'' They survived the Depression, fought World War II and built a great nation on a triangular foundation of God, family and country. As they pass on now, it is inevitable their generation be contrasted with the next.

My generation suffers woefully by comparison.

Collages of old pictures adorned Helen's wake, marking the major events in her early life - baptism, First Holy Communion, high school graduation, nurse's training in college. Her happy childhood led up to her most joyful moment - Helen McGeehan, the new registered nurse, married Thomas Gaffney, a handsome doctor with a brilliant future awaiting him. It was Helen's dream come true, her delight radiating from every wedding photo.

But in 1967, the dream became a nightmare.

Within the span of a few months, her whole world shattered. Her intense, workaholic husband, Dr. Gaffney, became hopelessly addicted to drugs. One evening that fateful year, he committed suicide. A little later, her beloved first-born son, Tommy, died in a terrible car crash while playing a teen-age prank. Shortly thereafter, her favorite brother, a comfort to Helen throughout her year of living hell, died of cancer. It was a devastating, crowning blow, and at night she must have often heard the tiger's hot breath outside her door.

Helen was left to raise two daughters alone in what was still a man's world. Putting the girls through Catholic schools, she made ends meet on a nurse's salary, pulling through her ordeal by relying on family, friends and God's tender mercies. She managed to make it, though, learning to live a day at a time and filling the hollow hours by volunteering at church and hospitals.

Until the funeral, most of us had no idea of the tragedies and sorrows that shaped Helen's life. She never complained, never wondered aloud, Why me? - never looked for someone else to blame. She shouldered her share - more than her share - of life's burdens in a way that did her Irish ancestors proud. To the end, she loved music, wine and family, hating to be a burden to anyone. She was too wise to put her faith in anyone but God, and on Jan. 26, he welcomed her home.

It struck me that few of my generation would bear Helen's burdens with as much spirit and grace. Today, people buckle under fate's far lighter blows: A teacher's reprimand brings lawsuits, a job termination brings firearms, and all sorts of imagined ills are more likely to bring TV talk show appearances than sessions on a psychiatrist's couch. If Helen's was the greatest generation, mine seems to be the grievous generation; if hers was full of winners, mine is full of whiners.

The great Irish poet W.B. Yeats said, ``Things reveal themselves passing away.'' As the age group before us moves on to their final reward, they reveal themselves to be brave, noble and generous to a fault. What's more remarkable is that Helen Gaffney's great character and charity made her not exceptional but typical of her peers. It's a hard lesson learned, but my generation could do far worse than to learn - and imitate - the virtues our fathers and mothers so prominently display.