Pictures from church. And that concludes this years memorial.
Church of Saint Louis
I need to get this stuff posted because I keep forgetting. And another item – if you haven’t subscribed yet do it now. It’s free and I’ll be giving away a really great prize in May that will only be open to subscribers. No, not used bed sheets. Not fruitcake. But a gift certificate for honey from Walker Farms in Fort Meyers, Florida. A (drumroll please) Hunny-bee’s worth of honey. Yes, $100. Right now that means the field is pretty small. If you read this mess every day you should subscribe and get in line for the contest. I rigged the last one – loser got the sheets. Heh! (good stuff below the fold!) Continue reading
It was five years ago this hour (when the blog is set to post) that my father, Oliver Joseph Courtemanche, Jr., passed away. Dad had been sick for a number of years with emphysema, and was actually in the hospital for a more routine sort of thing, an obstruction. I was getting ready to fly down to Florida to help my mom and sister take care of him 28 hours from the time they called me to let me know that dad was dying. He’d taken a turn for the worse and was bleeding out at the hospital.
There would be no discharge to home for a lengthy convalescence and slow death from lack of oxygen. God had elected to take him now. I was working that night and when the phone rang I knew it wouldn’t be a good thing. I was glad that I had a chance to say goodbye to the man who figured most prominently in my life. Someone held the phone up to him and I got one last chance to say that I loved him.
My father was many things in this life – athlete, construction worker, college student, school administrator, father, owner of dogs, husband, friend, author (his master’s thesis is listed on Google Books) and Christian. Not on that list, but perhaps how he most identified himself was as Staff Sergeant, U.S.M.C., Retired. There’s something about Marines that sticks in a way none of of the rest of us can fully understand. They have earned that and I honor that brotherhood that my father shared with other Marines.
When he left this Earth my father left behind 4 kids, one grandchild, three daughters-in-law, a son-in-law, and a wife who all grieved him. And a dog. A little Boston Terrier named Beau. My father and Beau had a love affair. The dog was practically attached to the man, much like my Maisie was with me. The difference is that Beau didn’t understand what had happened to his friend who was no longer there, and it destroyed him. My mother performed heroic measures to keep the dog up on his feet and engaged. But there was no consoling the little guy over the death of his best friend. Within a short time the dog had passed as well, shorn of the will to live.
The rest of the family fared much better. I know that we all miss him and it still chokes me up a little bit when the thought occurs, “I should call dad and tell him about that…” That call will have to wait. But I know I’ll get to catch up with him down the road because his final words were, “I think I see Jesus.” It doesn’t get better than that for a Christian. I’ll attend Catholic Mass to honor my father this morning. And I’ll light a set of candles in his name. And I’ll miss the man who helped form me into the man I am today. In the meantime, here’s a video I put together at the time of his death. I think he’d like it.
Thanks, Dad. See you soon.
How about a punk-girl-Japanese-band doing Carpenters songs?
I thought so. Have a great Sunday. (by the way, the album this comes from is one of my favorites, “If I were a Carpenter.” I only listen to it about 20 times a year. You have no idea how dark the Carpenters really were until you listen to this album.)
Truly wonderful.
It was one of those dreams that none of us really enjoys: full of remorse and questions about a course of action that is lost to history and can’t be changed.
I dreamed of my last days in the United States Navy. It was partly that “I’m naked in high school” dream that everyone suffers from at times, because I was in trouble and didn’t have a complete uniform to wear. (Confession: I went the last year of my service without updating some of the awards I’d been authorized to wear because I was too lazy and cheap to take the uniforms to the tailor and get them done.) More importantly (to me) it was a reflection time in my slumber of some of the circumstances surrounding my last few months in the service.
I don’t think there’s a veteran around who left the service after one enlistment who doesn’t ponder “what if?” from time to time. This was deeper: it allowed me to examine parts of my personal life that had little to do with the military and more to do with my marriage and my goals in life.
Those same issues still haunt me today. “Haunt” in the sense that they’re unresolved over twenty years later. In my dream I realized that some warning signs of impending issues were there and I just completely missed them through my focus on other things. I could have seen the train coming: the tracks were already laid. But I was looking at the Dairy Queen across the tracks and missed the ominous rumbling that should have served as a warning.
I can’t go back and change any of the things that happened. I can’t sign up for a second enlistment (and it would likely have been a mistake to have done so.) But I can take the things I learned in that dream and use them going forward. Pretty good deal for something that happened in my sleep.
What things in your past did you miss but should have seen? What things about your future are you ignoring now? And how will you change your ways to avoid tragedy?
