How stuff sometimes works....

So, I was doing next to nothing (which I do well!) and thinking about next to nothing (another talent of mine) when suddenly a though appeared in my mind. This is what it was: "would my parents be proud of me?"

I hadn't had that thought since I was a teenager.

My mother died when I was 25 and my father when I was in my 30's somewhere (always the issue of linear time for me).

Where did that wondering come from?

I pondered it for a while and realized it must be because 'uncle Frankie' died. I've known Frank Pisano for nearly 50 of his 91 years. I started dating his niece, my wife, in 1965, and I've known him ever since. He became, over nearly a half-a-century 'uncle Frankie' to me as well as Bern. I loved him mightily. He is the last of Bern's 'blood' uncles and aunts one the Italian side to die. She has a couple of aunts by marriage left on that side and an uncle on the Hungarian side..

I have only Aunt Elsie Ours. Not even an uncle or aunt by marriage left. Aunt Elsie was my mother's youngest sister. Younger by a lot though she must be in her 80's or more by now. I contact her by letter or phone two or three times a year. She lives in Dunbar, West Virginia, just north of Charleston.

I hereby resolve to contact her more often. She is the last contact I have with the generation before me. And I've always loved her. I used to go from rural MacDowell County to spend a week with her and my uncle Harvey each summer when I was young. It was 'going to the city' in my mind.

With uncle Frankie's death, Bern is the ultimate generation of her blood on one side. Aunt Elsie is the last of my blood on either side still living.

So I wondered, approaching my 67th birthday next month, would my parents be proud of me.

I've been married for 43 years, have two children and three granddaughters and have been a priest since 1975, serving three wondrous parishes full time and now three wondrous congregations part time. I have no felony or misdemeanor charges against me. I am, as far as I know, a person of honor and integrity and openness.

So probably they would be, Virgil and Cleo, 'proud of me'.

My hope that there is a heaven somewhere is driven by hoping my parents could somehow read this post and know I loved them and appreciated them more and more the longer I lived and hoped they were proud of me in the Kingdom.

That would be the best I could hope for.

Which is probably why it's called 'heaven'--that reality we hope for....