Santa Rosa daughter praises how her parents lived, regrets how they died

Family is huge to Madeleine Keegan O’Connell. It’s been so since her own birth increased to an even dozen the members of a peripatetic, musical, inquisitive, Irish-English-Danish-Italian Catholic clan who ate and debated around a banquet-sized dining table and piled into two cars for every family drive.

Now 55 and chief of YWCA Sonoma County, O’Connell lives in Santa Rosa with a family of her own and has siblings scattered across the country and beyond. She felt blessed when her worldly parents, Frank and Vivian Keegan, chose long ago to retire in the North Bay.

Frank had worked a career on the move as a college professor and administrator. Vivian was a former schoolteacher who as a kid in Santa Rosa caught the eye of Alfred Hitchcock and appeared in his 1943 film “Shadow of a Doubt.“

O’Connell celebrates how the two of them lived their lives — adventurously, always learning, full of fun. She can’t help but ache at how, because of the pandemic, they died.

“We didn’t get to hold their hands and see them close their eyes,” she said.

For many months before Vivian Keegan died in August at age 94, and before Frank Keegan passed in December at 95, COVID-19 safeguards prevented the O’Connells and other family members from being with them in their room at a Marin County nursing home. For a while, kin of the Keegans could only stand outside and visit them through a window.

“We kissed and hugged all the time,” O’Connell said. “You can’t do that through glass.”

As the coronavirus spread, with particular vehemence through senior care facilities, even those visits separated by windows were prohibited.

“It felt like they got taken away,” O’Connell said. “It was very hard on my father, who would ask repeatedly, ’Why?’ ”

The two Keegans had lived largely independently when, in 2016, Vivian’s advancing dementia and Frank’s blindness from glaucoma prompted their move into a care home in San Rafael.

Their many children and grandchildren adapted.

O’Connell and the three of her nine siblings who live nearby — Alice Keegan of Cotati, Elizabeth Minigan of Sonoma and David Keegan of Novato — visited their folks regularly. The sons and daughters of the Keegans who live as far away as the East Coast and Spain phoned often and flew in for visits, typically twice a year.

When Thomas Keegan traveled from his home in Massachusetts to visit his parents, he would drive them to Bodega Bay for a meal at Lucas Wharf. His dad swooned over the clam chowder and Key lime pie.

Madeleine O’Connell and her husband, Kevin, and their boys, 12-year-old John and 10-year-old Nick, would take the Keegans treats and meals, talk and sing with them and heap affection on them. “We’re a family of huggers,” O’Connell said.

The hugging and all the rest came to an abrupt halt a year ago, when regulations to impede the spread of COVID-19 banned face-to-face visits at nursing homes and similar institutions.

In July, both Vivian and Frank, along with a large number of other residents of the San Rafael residential care facility, tested positive for COVID-19. The Keegans continued to be cared for in, and confined to, their room.

Vivian’s physical decline steepened. Her family had not held the former schoolteacher’s hand or been in the same room with her for five months when she died of complications of the virus and other causes at the care home on Aug. 15.

Prior to the COVID-19 shutdown, her Santa Rosa daughter had loved to storm into the room with her husband and their sons and their dog as a surprise for her parents — “Particularly for Mom with her dementia, looking into her eyes and seeing her light up.” John and Nick O’Connell would kiss and speak to their grandmother, and swarm their grandfather.

“The boys loved to hug Papa, who sat in a recliner chair. They would lay their heads on his shoulder and give him a full hug,” O’Connell said. For her and all the others who loved Vivian and Frank, to be unable to see and touch them from the onset of the restrictions last March until Vivian’s death was anguishing.

Normally, Vivian’s family would have arranged a full funeral Mass at St. Rose Church in downtown Santa Rosa, the site of her marriage to Frank on June 11, 1949. A large reception would have followed.

Unable to host either, the children settled for a small graveside service Aug. 28 at Calvary Cemetery and a celebration of Vivian Keegan’s life via Zoom. All 10 of her children and about 30 others — grandchildren, various relatives, family friends — joined in the virtual gathering.

It was good, Madeleine O’Connell said: “Hilarious stories, prayers, spontaneous singing.” But how much better it would have been had everyone been able to gather and celebrate Vivian’s life together.

“It would have been a party,” O’Connell said. “We’re Irish.”

Her father, who’d tolerated COVID-19, was allowed to leave the care home for a day to attend the small, simple graveside service for his wife. O’Connell asked him afterward, “Did we do OK?”

He replied, “It was beautiful, honey; it was just beautiful.”

That signaled to O’Connell that her father would be all right with a scaled-back, COVID-era funeral for himself, once the time came.

The graveside rites marked the first time that the O’Connells and other members of his family were able to embrace Frank Keegan since March 2020. And the last time.

After the service, he returned to the care home. He lived for nearly another four months after his wife’s burial, and for all that time was again prevented from seeing any visitors.

“Imagine,” O’Connell said. “He lost his wife of 71 years, and now his kids can only call him on the phone.” She longed to embrace her dad and to see if he seemed all right, if he was dressed warmly enough and had laundered handkerchiefs.

Frank Keegan died Dec. 15, three weeks short of his 96th birthday. Though he’d earlier exhibited some symptoms common to COVID-19, his death was ascribed to other ailments and his age.

As brutal as the pandemic made his final months, his daughter in Santa Rosa regards it a blessing that on his last day he told his two roommates at the Marin home at about 3 in the afternoon that he was going to lie down. That was most unusual for him.

He got into bed, pulled up the covers, closed his eyes. And that was that.

“He went quietly,” Madeleine O’Connell said, “which is how he always said he wanted to go.”

3 questions with Madeleine Keegan O’Connell

Q: What was the moment when you realized the seriousness of the pandemic and that life would be very different moving forward?

A: When we were asked to visit the boys’ school to pick up all their books and supplies, and Mom and Dad’s care facility closed to visitors, it felt like we were in for a long haul.

Q: What’s your most vivid memory from last year? Is there a particular moment that stands out?

A: We’ve been holding tight to the memory of the last time we hosted friends at home for our annual St. Patrick’s Day dinner. We elbow-bumped hello and goodbye that night.

Q: Has anything good come out of the pandemic, something that you will continue doing after the pandemic is over?

A: When the boys were little, they called weekends “stay at home days.” We’ll continue to be sure there are many more unscheduled days for the four of us to connect.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.