Thanks For Being Here - Mary Pat's Christmas Stockings

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Colleen Gilroy tells the story of her mother, Mary Pat—a woman who stayed up deep into the night knitting Christmas stockings, thinking about each recipient as her needles clicked in the stillness while everyone else slept. Mary Pat was a night shift NICU nurse who cared for thousands of fragile babies and their frightened parents, a leprechaun of a woman who never let the truth interfere with a good tale, someone who poured 30 hours of attention into every stocking she made—holding each person in her heart as she worked. Colleen shares what unfolded at the funeral when the family lined the church pews with their stockings, then processed out to the sound of thousands of tiny bells ringing at once, each one marking a life Mary Pat had touched. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone. Welcome to Thanks for being here, a short weekly pod to remind us of the many
0:05.4	essential and beautiful ways we affect one another. Every Sunday, I'll read a submission from a
0:12.1	listener of Kelly Corrigan Wonders. Could be wedding vows or a bat mitzvah toast, a eulogy, or
0:17.3	retirement speech. We believe this is probably the loveliest way to tap into our better
0:22.8	selves and remember our highest values. We encourage you to share this podcast each week with one
0:29.1	person you love. Maybe someone you miss and need to bring closer, someone you want to feel
0:34.5	your appreciation or admiration or both. This is thanks for being here.
0:47.5	This week's thanks for being here is from a listener named Colleen Gilroy. She writes,
0:52.3	Kelly and Team, I am an OG listener of the podcast and I've shared
0:56.0	multiple episodes, multiple times with people I thought needed to hear them. I too have a very
1:01.7	large Catholic family and ended up with my husband on the West Coast. Our lives were also
1:08.1	upended by cancer when I was 18 weeks pregnant with our fourth child.
1:13.3	So after reading the middle place, I told a friend, the only thing keeping me from being good
1:18.2	friends with Kelly Corrigan is that we have, unfortunately, not yet met.
1:23.2	Here is the eulogy I gave from my mom on November 15, 2025.
1:29.5	It was a true celebration.
1:32.9	My heart is full of the love showered on our family that day.
1:35.9	And pride in knowing we did my mom honor.
1:43.8	As you will read, Mom knitted a Christmas stocking for every single member of our family on her side and my dad's.
1:48.4	When she knitted for the first great grandchild, we thought she was crazy.
1:51.8	We think we are close at around 300.
1:58.3	We asked everyone attending to bring their stocking to the church and line the pews with them.
	...

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