Treasuring Her Family History

The dresser in Kim and Gerard’s bedroom displays family photographs in (mostly) thrift-store frames. (“One is from Marshalls,” she admits.) Here’s her father, a World War II veteran. Here’s her mother, “a small-town Marilyn Monroe.” Here’s Gerard as a boy, holding up a fish that he had just caught, in a hinged frame beside Declan doing the same. While Kim is relentless about giving away clothes, books, and housewares, pictures and family memorabilia are not going anywhere. In an old wooden box from a horseshoe-nail company, she keeps her kids’ toothfairy letters and the eulogy that she wrote for her dad three years ago. His pocketknife is in the kitchen drawer.