Fabulous people

Yesterday (20th April 2015)  I went to the Plymouth Harbour Retirement community in SRQ to share in conversation, coffee, and prayer with  a St. Boniface parishioner "L".

L and her late husband F were regulars at the "early service"  at St. Boniface on Siesta Key, Sarasota FL., (the service which I most frequently attend).

They took a wonderful three week trip to France last August.  Within a few days of their return to SRQ,  F. began to feel unwell.

The un-wellness was serious.  F had a ghastly cancer, which led to his death, just six months later.

I attended his memorial service.   There I learned that F. was a remarkable man (not just a man with whom I shared greetings each Sunday), but a man who'd had a storied career; who was a devoted and beloved father, who had a curious mind; who was a skilled photographer, hunter, boatsman, and fisherman.

At that service I was saddened that I had not known him better, and that I had not been able to drink from his wisdom.

With all that in mind I made the pastoral "post-death" follow up visit with his widow. L.

It was a wonderful visit.  L told me that she and F had been blessed in those six months, because they  had been a time in which they could share their grief,  before F's death.

Of course she is still grieving, but it is a strangely joyous grief,  because she and F had faced and shared  their grief together,  in those all too brief months between his diagnosis and his death.

F was a great man.  L is a great woman whose pathway through grief inspired and blessed me as we met and prayed yesterday.

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