Today I......was able to add the image I wanted to post yesterday. I thought it was thoroughly appropriate for yesterday's post since I was talking about saving dear Brother André's boots and all. I'm sure he was very pleased with our efforts to save his clothing since he was known for caring for his own clothes and therefore keeping them for a very long time. He didn't send his things off to the nuns to be cleaned and mended because as his ability to help people through his prayers to St-Joseph became more widely known, the dear sisters began cutting little pieces out of his cassocks to keep as relics every time he sent them to be tended to. Nothing like having your clothes come back from the cleaners looking like they've been attacked by starving moths to make you want to care for them yourself!
...wrote to my uncle to wish his a happy birthday and initiated a lengthy exchange of e-mails.
...found out that one of my colleagues died suddenly over the weekend. He worked down in the mail and was also in charge of managing out huge stock of envelopes, paper and leaflets of every description. He was very quiet, but very kind, gently and always so wonderful about bringing us things as soon as we called for them. I have been working at the Oratory for nearly eight years now and knew very little about him. I didn't even know that he had been suffering from AIDS for about twenty years. This is a testament to how assiduously he must have been following his treatment because he always looked perfectly healthy. His weight was fine, his cheeks were rosy, he seemed just as healthy as the rest of us. I think very few people actually knew he was sick. It therefore came as quite a shock to a lot of us that he had passed away and what's sadder still is that we found out when the police called the personnel secretary just before lunch, which means that he may not have had any family since if he did, they certainly would have notified us. No one knows what happened to him and we may never know. All we can hope is that he died peacefully in his sleep and that he didn't have any regrets, that he didn't leave anything unaccomplished, because he wasn't very old. He was only in his fifties, he may even have been younger than my father. It's strange, everyone always says that they would like to die in their sleep and I must admit it does seem the best way to go...but it frightens me also. What's to stop it from happening to any of us? It almost makes me afraid to go to sleep, because what if my number's up? I still have so much left to do and what if he felt that he did too?
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