Doing Morning Prayer this morning got me reflecting a bit about people I've lost, especially over the past year. There was a mom, elderly, and her daughter, maybe my age or a bit younger, who were at mass every week, always in the front pew. Both were on walkers. They lived together, and were each other's caretaker - a fairly common arrangement among the elderly and infirm around here. The mom had this thing about postcards - she would mail me a greeting on a postcard for every holiday, even St. Patrick's Day and Veteran's Day. Kind of different, but sweet. They stopped coming to mass about a year ago, because the mom could no longer walk, needed a wheelchair, and the daughter, because of her own disability, couldn't manage the chair. The mom died sometime within the last year - before the pandemic was really a thing in the US. Now we've just learned that the daughter has passed away, too. As we're all separated from one another now, I'm not sure what those circumstances were. But Mary and Theresa, praying for you today.
Tom was the parish's head maintenance man for years. It was a second career for him; he took the job after retiring from being a maintenance engineer at a high-rise building in downtown Chicago. After he retired from the parish, he got involved in our Community Table ministry - it's kind of like a soup kitchen, except instead of serving soup, we serve fried chicken twice a month. We put out a big buffet - parishioners prepare all sorts of homemade side dishes - and the hungry people come through the line as often as they want. The chicken always is the last item in the buffet, and Tom was the Chicken Man - no matter who was serving elsewhere on the buffet, everyone understood that serving the chicken was his job. We asked him if he'd like to get involved in planning the events, but no - he just wanted to serve the chicken. And he was great with the guests. We had to shut down the in-person buffet service because of COVID - couldn't have crowds of people in our building. it became a drive-through service this year, in which we packed up simple meals in styrofoam to-go containers and handed them through the drivers-side window to hungry people who pulled up in the parking lot. We needed many fewer volunteers for the to-go service, so hadn't seen Tom this year. He passed away this summer - had a stroke at mass, then held on for the better part of a month before letting go. According to his widow, it was all very hard on him, and also on her. Tom, praying for you today, too.
Anyone you're remembering today?
There are many good people, in my family, or those I knew, whom I think of a lot on All Saints Day. Maybe this is a mistaken way of thinking, but I tend to believe if they needed a bit of purification, that it happened quickly.
ReplyDeleteOn All Souls I tend to think of some people who left this life in rather troubled circumstances. There have been some suicides in our community. In this morning's paper there were four deaths from separate auto accidents on Saturday, which is unusual. One of my friends spoke of someone in her family who died after refusing last rites or anything to do with God. Of course only God knows the state of their souls, but it seems like praying for them is a gpod thing to do.
We lost a great one from our Wednesday men's group in October. He knew 5 years and 8 months ago that he had only 5 to 5 1/2 years to live, so he beat the odds by two months. And never once complained about the fate he had been dealt.
ReplyDeleteBill had become a Catholic when he was 30, and when we would get going on Catholic culture in the group, he'd throw up both arms and say, "Geeze, I never had to know that stuff when I was a pagan." The group was a big part of his life, as it is of mine. One of our deacons preached the homily, the coffee meister delivered the eulogy, and I, at his wife's request, produced some "eloquence." I was going to tell you the donut story I led with, but you had to know Bill, and the story has to be told, not read. I can tell you that he worked 30 years in the Town of Palm Beach, and when he retired he complained that he had forgotten how to put on socks. He bought an industrial class iron, took up ironing and wondered why the creases in men's pants can't be horizontal. He also was first to arrive and last to leave when there was work to be done. Anywhere. There are classrooms at a Catholic school in Haiti named for him and his wife, who, by the way, is another one.
A thought provoking article in America for All Souls’ Day.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/11/02/all-souls-day-belize-death-catholic-covid-19