Lillian Josephine Robertson

On January 14, 1924, Joseph Robertson died of a cerebral hemorrhage at their new home. He was thirty-nine years old — the same type of stroke that had killed his mother, Elizabeth Gray Robertson, in Brooklyn twenty-two years earlier.

Mary Agnes was already fighting tuberculosis. Whether the grief accelerated her decline or whether her body simply gave out, we cannot know. She died on January 26, 1924 — twelve days after her husband. She was forty years old.

In less than two weeks, Lillian and her siblings had lost both parents. Lillian was eighteen, Helen was sixteen, and Joseph Jay was four. The orphaned children faced an uncertain future in a house that had been their home for only three months.

The religious divide that had marked their parents' lives continued in death: Joseph was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery (Protestant) in Brooklyn, while Mary Agnes was laid to rest at Immaculate Conception Cemetery (Catholic) in Montclair, New Jersey. Even in death, the couple could not lie together.

In 1940, Lillian gave birth to her fourth child — a daughter she named Helen Grace. Though not identical to her sister's name, the choice was unmistakable: a tribute to Helen Gladys Robertson, the sister who had stood beside her through the tragedy of 1924, who had witnessed her marriage, who shared the burden of raising their orphaned brother.

But tragedy, it seemed, followed the name Helen in this family.

On July 21, 1942, Lillian's sister Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek died in North Caldwell, New Jersey. The cause: tuberculosis — the same disease that had killed their mother eighteen years earlier. She was thirty-four years old.

The "little Misses Robertson" who had once posed together in matching dresses were now separated forever. Lillian had lost her parents at eighteen; now, at thirty-seven, she lost the sister who had shared that orphan's journey with her.

Six years later, in 1948, tragedy struck again. Eight-year-old Helen Grace O'Brien died. The family had now lost two Helens — the aunt in 1942, the daughter in 1948.

Lillian had now lost both parents before she was nineteen, her only sister at thirty-seven, and her own daughter before she was fifty. Yet she persevered.

Miles Murtha O'Brien died on January 16, 1984, at age seventy-nine. He and Lillian had been married for nearly fifty-six years.

Lillian outlived him by seven years. In the summer of 1991, her brother Joseph Jay Robertson died on August 22. Three weeks later, on September 13, 1991, Lillian Josephine O'Brien followed him. She was eighty-six years old.

The Robertson siblings entered and exited life together:

January 1924: Both parents die twelve days apart, orphaning three children.

August–September 1991: The two surviving siblings die three weeks apart — Joseph Jay on August 22, Lillian on September 13.

The three orphans of January 1924 had stayed connected for sixty-seven years. In the end, they left this world together, just as their parents had — within weeks of each other.

Both Miles and Lillian are buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover, New Jersey — together at last, unlike her parents who rest in separate cemeteries divided by faith.