“Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us every day. Unseen, unheard but always near,
still loved, still missed and very dear.” —Author Unknown
It was on December 18, 2017, eight days before Christmas that my dad died while we were vacationing in Maui. Cecile and I had taken him and my late mom, Marie—who passed away four years prior—to Maui in years past with our son Jason and daughter Michelle as seen in a couple of the photos included with this post. My siblings and I were blessed to have dad in our lives just short of reaching a 101. He was a gentle soul who loved wine making, gardening, reading about history, and hiking while being a scout leader for 25 years.
Whenever my mother announced that someone they knew passed away, my father would often say, “We all gotta go sometime.” It sounded so fatalistic, but the truth is, dad was a devout Catholic. He was a lay brother in the Maryknoll seminary in upstate New York, falling short of becoming a priest. Lucky for me, for had he gone on to take his priestly vow of celibacy, I wouldn’t be telling this story. However, he practiced his faith in other ways like volunteering to pass the long handled collection basket in the pews to parishioners at Our Lady of Grace Church in Hoboken, NJ, where I grew up. He was also a chaplain’s aide in the US Army in Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and again at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, working under Capt. William Walsh, who was his friend and mentor. After retiring he became the Grand Knight of the Knight of Columbus, a fraternal organization, and for many years tended a small shrine in the bay window of a storage room on the first floor of his and mom’s five-unit apartment building. He wasn’t at all preachy about his religious beliefs, but rather lived his faith. This caught the attention of a local pastor who wrote about my dad in his column called “Faith Matters,” in the Jersey Journal.
