Joyce McKenna

Joyce McKenna is a retired public school educator with nearly three decades of classroom and leadership experience. In her retirement she alternates her time between writing personal essays that often center on her large, Irish American family, pet ownership, and local history; and her volunteer work at a cat shelter and her local historical society. Her pieces are at times serious and other times droll, and she entertains a small but loyal following of her blog, Scosche of Class.

Bobby’s Irish Goodbye

It’s always been remarked upon in my family — by family I include all my cousins — that whenever there’s a large gathering, my brother Bobby, youngest of all the twenty-one cousins, will slip away unnoticed, thus aptly demonstrating the “Irish Goodbye.” He began his disappearing act at the age of two and a half.