Two Babies and Two Dead Doctors
This is an honest story about two babies and two dead doctors. The truth is stranger than fiction, and more meaningful too.
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In the final year of the nineteen eighties, I entered this earth under the watchful eye of Doc Croghan. My mother is an immeasurably modest woman and I'm going to imagine my birth was as mortifying for her as her own birth must have been for my grandmother 30 years earlier.
It was just another day at work for Doc Croghan, a beloved Ohio physician. He was a world traveler (35+ countries; maybe all 50 states) during a time when it wasn’t as easy or cheap to do as today.
I don't remember much... just kidding, I remember nothing. I assume I cried? It was a good day. My first day.
Fast forward to the early oughts and Doc Croghan had a cool hobby: he was volunteering his time and his home to tutor students in his favorite musical style: jazz. I say volunteering because he was way undercharging for his services as a private music teacher and jazz pianist. He must have wanted a family's finances to not get in the way of a budding artist. A teenage trombonist named Dantan took to him very readily and the pair enjoyed years of camaraderie and music-making.
Doc Croghan left this earth in 2009.
I was a few years away from being a fully licensed funeral director, but I worked the door at calling hours. That's the insider way to say I opened the door for people approaching and offered to hang coats or point them in the direction of the restroom. Funeral homes may just be the final bastion of hospitality in America. Not the fake kind you find at hotel check-in, the real kind where people only do such a job to ease someone's burden out of true concern. They will likely be the last place to install automatic doors, but I'm not naïve enough to think it will never happen.
Doc was on hospice and I later heard that he was playing the piano even the day of his death. His musical selection? Charlie Chaplin's Smile— made famous by Nat King Cole (click to listen).
Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky you’ll get byIf you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through for youLight up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so nearThat’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you’ll just. Smile
Less than a decade later Dantan became my husband.
Less than a decade after that (two years ago) I was the funeral director for Doc's wife, Judy. Her funeral was the day before my husband’s 34th birthday.
Now, Dantan wants to visit Hallstatt, Austria—for as long as I can remember, he has wanted to go there. It was a surreal moment when her son stood up at her funeral and said Judy's favorite place on this earth was Hallstatt. I can't wait for the day we go. I hope he loves it as much as I loved Girona, Spain—my long-awaited destination.
I hope he loves it as much as Judy did.
I felt a deep gratitude for the people in this world like Dr. & Mrs. Croghan. I thought to myself "life is still worthwhile" while running my fingers through their collection of world currency on display at the church funeral luncheon: a display that mirrored our own little cash box at home.
And I smiled.
Hallstatt, Austria 🇦🇹
Less than two years after my grand entrance, my brother Gideon burst on the scene. With a rare heart condition (Kawasaki Syndrome—which my best friend also, somehow, had as an infant) and troublesome Eustachian tubes, Gideon's birth was maybe more tumultuous than mine, or certainly the days that followed were. The doctor presiding (and once again seeing too much of my dear mother) was Dr. Capaldo.
Last month, September 2025, Gideon had the honor of serving the Capaldo family as his funeral director. A more perfect full-circle moment for his family I couldn’t begin to imagine. I’m sure they had a similar moment while saying goodbye to their patriarch in the very hospital where he delivered thousands of infants.
I wish I’d been in the room when Gid shared that he was one of those seven thousand babies delivered by Guy’s hands. Living proof that his life was full of meaning.
I may never have written this story if the Google Search Monthly Summary hadn't hit my inbox this morning. It noted that the highest visited obituary page last month was that of Dr. Capaldo. He was a great man. Born in Italy, he didn’t take the easy road, but showed up for others, his faith, and especially his family.
As I sat across the long line of tables pushed together tonight at Bob Evans for the eleven of us to eat "breakfast for dinner,” I glanced at the syrup dripping from each of my nephews’ forks and smiling faces—even the one fighting leukemia—and my eyes rested on my brother Gideon. Still in a full black suit. Eyes tired from holding it all together. Ears tired of hearing "no" from the insurance companies. Arms that comfort countless others were comforting his youngest son (who can’t bear even 90 seconds away from his exhausted mother). And hands that hold so many worlds together (at work and at home) didn’t look tired and certainly weren’t resting... I thought about the circle of life and our part in it.
I marveled at how lucky blessed I am to have such a brother and wished I could be more like him. He takes everything in stride and measures each action with kindness.
I wonder if Doc Croghan is the reason I love to travel so much. I wonder if he’s the reason I joined the jazz band in high school. I wonder if Doc’s the reason I married my husband?
And I wonder if Dr. Capaldo is the reason my brother holds so many roles, helps wherever he’s needed, and is—
“the ultimate provider, deeply devoted to ensuring [his family’s] well-being in every way.”
The exact lines Gideon penned for the obituary of his delivery doctor may very well be typed in his own obituary.
Click on the physicians’ names above to read their obits. ♥