what's in a name?

There are a lot of nicknames floating around this house or knick knack names as Abby calls them. Most recently I was asked about the Lou/Louie I have listed in my profile. It does seem quite a long way from Shannon and Shan, which I get most often. Not a great many people call me Lou, just Mike and I, in return, call him Lou or Louie. We do it as a way to remember Ricky, to keep him close to our hearts.



Ricky was the fourth of five kids and my Mom's younger brother. Here you can see my Aunt Josephine holding a baby Ricky in what is, to my knowledge, the only baby picture of him. The circumstances surrounding Ricky's birth have become some what of a family legend involving my grandmother delivering her fourth child and second son all by herself in a truck stuck in a ditch while my grandfather was off getting help.



I can't be sure when exactly my grandparents got the word that their son was "different". I'm sure the word institution was thrown around. The 50's were a different time and no one would have expected my grandparents to keep a child with Down's Syndrome at home, but those people would have misjudged the size of my grandmother's heart. Keep him home she did, even though it couldn't have been easy.



Time marched on and Ricky grew up. My Mom taught him how to print his name and he would spend hours filling sheets of paper with Rickety in his tiny block printing and earing himself the nickname Rickety Rick. Over time the Rickety became Ricky and eventually he was able to manage his last name. A huge feat when you consider he was Polish. His vocabulary was quite small and we had to rely on a sometimes frustratingly confusing combination of words and hand signals. With such a limited vocabulary Ricky was forced to get somewhat creative with his language. He couldn't manage to say tea, but chai would work. My Grandpa he called Pop or son. And where you and I might call someone a bonehead Ricky would use Babalouie. For him it was one of those affectionate insults.



When I started dating Mike, he and Ricky had an instant connection. In fact I'm pretty sure that Ricky loved Mike more than the rest of the family put together. Since they had such a great rapport Mike and I began spending more and more time with him, taking him to the cottage with us, watching the hockey game together or just hanging out. Since my Grandmother had passed away a few years before it was a welcome break of each other's company for both him and my Grandpa. Spending time with the younger members of the family did wonders fro Ricky. His vocabulary was beginning to grow and my Mom had looked into programs and employment for him. His bablouie had been shortened to just louie and he would use it to identify all of us, often walking into a room and announcing hello louie in much the same way Uncle Leo used to say hello Jerry on Seinfeld. Things were looking up.



The year of Ricky's 39th birthday we threw him a surprise party after completely pissing him off by pretending to forget it was his birthday at all. I can't remember exactly, but I'm sure there were some louie's muttered when he realized what he had done. The entire night we teased him about turning 40 the following year. Ricky would pinch his lips together and vigorously shake his head no. No way was he going to turn 40. The heartbreaking part was, he was right. Two months after his surprise party and a devastating two days before Christmas Ricky quietly passed away in his bed. Our entire family was shocked and heartbroken at the loss. It's hard to believe it's been nearly 14 years. Seems like yesterday. Seems like a lifetime.