My Irish Catholic grandmother—no slouch herself to rosary beads and the Stations of the Cross—had a friend, Wilma, who was far more pious than she. So pious in fact, that she refused to answer the telephone, eat, cook, read the pay-puh or turn on the TV on Good Friday between the hours of 12 and 3 pm. Instead, she knelt in her living room and prayed during the Three Hours’ Agony—the hours of Christ’s crucifixion and death on the cross. Don’t get me wrong. My grandmother was all for a a solemn Catholic ritual, but even she thought Wilma’s behavior was excessive. She learned about Wilma’s piousness the hard way when she stayed with her once over Easter weekend at her home in Woodside, Queens. My grandmother was expecting a good old-fashioned recitation of Hail Marys and Sorrowful Mysteries for an hour or so, but damned if she wasn’t going to put the kettle on for a cup of Sanka and dunk a Stella D’Oro Breakfast Treat in it for good measure. Besides, she had arthritis. What self-respecting Brooklyn Irish widow gets on her knees in L’Eggs pantyhose for three hours? Even if she could get back up, her hose would be saggy all day. Not a good look. You’d think that would have been the kicker for my grandmother and sent her packing—or even when Wilma yelled at her for putting the lids back on her garbage cans too loudly out in the alley while she was kneeling and keening. No. The thing that sent my grandmother over the edge was when Wilma refused to let my grandmother turn on the News at Noon, so she could watch her boyfriend—Mr. G the Weatherman. If she didn’t watch Mr. G and get the weekend forecast, how would she know which Chaus pantsuit or Easy Spirit heels to wear for Easter?

Suffice it to say that she never visited Wilma again on Good Friday.

Of course, I should be considering the Passion of Christ and all the worries in the world on a day such as this—but whenever the day arrives on the calendar, I think first of Wilma and Woodside, my grandmother and Stella D’Oro Breakfast Treats, and Mr. G. Not exactly what Jesus had in mind—but there’s a parable in all of this, just the same.

Kathleen McKitty Harris is a fifth-generation native New Yorker who has called northern New Jersey her home for nearly twenty-five years. Some of her work has appeared in The New York Times, Longreads, Creative Nonfiction, McSweeney’s, and The Rumpus. Kathleen is also a storyteller who has performed on The Moth Podcast, at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in Manhattan, and at many other storyslams throughout the northeast. She is currently at work on a memoir about her Irish-American lineage in New York City, and how the energy of her ancestors’ existence—as well as the city itself—inexorably fuels her own. For more of her work, visit http://www.instagram.com/kmckharris; http://www.twitter.com/kmckharris; and http://www.kathleenmckittyharris.com.