Happiness is to have everything, you need;
Not the need to have everything.

Disclaimer: You’ve seen and read this before.
The texts on this page are just my own personal musings.
Since, as I have said before; this is my Website so I am enjoying my own freedoms of speech. Once again I’ll be climbing into my virtual pulpit not so much for public acceptance but merely for my own personal reflections.

Quo Vadis….Sequi Deum    Cardinal Spellman HS words to live by

Quo Vadis, to state it mildly, is the condition I’m currently in. I’m not complaining, not at all. If my position, right now, is that of a home help person, then I’m fortunate to have such a great patient, Carla. At this point Carla is doing well; that will not always be the case. Each day seems an almost carbon copy of the day before, however. If it hadn’t been for our travel escapades I can imagine we’d be experiencing this years before now. For years we’ve always been in a state of planning or , at least, researching possible venues in our future.

 

I drifted a bit above, but I felt it was important to at least give a short update on how Carla is doing.

I’ve been here before, actually on many occasions, but I’ve always thought that, by this age, I would be adrift no more. On many of those times, especially when the future may not have looked so bright, if visible at all, I’ve always relied on a man of the past, St. Jude Thaddaeus. His feast day is on the 28th of this month (Oct.), which is, most likely, why he is in my head these days.

Now the Quo Vadis in the first-paragraph and St. Jude as mentioned above are relative to this dissertation, just hang in there.

The story has been told to me so many times, but I’ve never bothered to seek the nitty gritty facts. So as best I can recall I was around 4-years old living in our newer home on Hunt St. in Brockton. MA. We belonged to the Sacred Heart Parish with Fr. Richard as Pastor. During this time period the parish was having a Retreat for men, and, as always, my father definitely attended. It was the third-night of the retreat and my father left very reluctantly not wanting to leave my mother alone with me that evening. As the story goes for the last 3-days I been suffering from some kind of infection that was inflicting high fevers of 104 and 105 degrees on me almost perpetually. The high fevers had me shaking continuously and severely dehydrated. The last couple of nights my parents were hoping and praying for the fever to break, to no avail. My father returned home that evening from the retreat with the priest giving the retreat. My dad had told him of my symptoms. It is vague, but even after so many years I can still see him speaking to my parents and trying to reassure them that all would be fine. After a while, so I’m told, he stepped fully into my bedroom. I can almost recall seeing him bless me with Holy Water and saying a prayer at the foot of my bed. It really did not help much as I continued to shake and cry for water. The priest, who’s name I don’t know but wish I did, took a couple of minutes and spoke to me personally and then turned to my parents and reassured them that all would be well in the morning and not to worry, and for a change, try to get some rest that evening; Once again he told them all would be back to normal in the morning. It was basically an uneventful occasion but, one thing about my parents, they had Faith. My mom stayed up with me that evening as my father had to work in the morning. She never went into detail on whether she remained awake or got some sleep, but at 7am, our family wake up time, I woke up anxious for some breakfast. Was this a miracle or was it just that time for the fever t0 break during the evening, we all wondered, we’d never know for sure, but the Retreat Priest was extremely confident in his words.

I am considerable older now and I often reflect on that evening. If the Retreat Priest did not show up or did not deliver on his statement, would I be here today. I’m happy it all worked out well for me nevertheless, however, if I had not made it, this is a “It’s a Wonderful Life” paradox moment, what?. I, most likely would have gone to heaven, especially at that age. So by surviving my “free will” was overpowered, I’m not complaining! But as we’ve seen in the old wild west movies with the Native American Indians; if you spare a life you’re responsible for that life. So now is the Good Lord, who spared my life that evening, is He responsible for my life moving forward to some extent?

Let’s see!

At age seven I was in the second grade at Sacred Heart School. We would have, on average, a dozen words words each night to memorize, with the intention of never forgetting them. My mother was so patient. It would take me an hour, in general, to get those words into my head and memorized. 

Now, at seven years, as with all good Catholic boys, I had a desire to be an alter boy. During those early years the congregation merely watched and sometime prayed the rosary during Mass. Prayers the congregation now repeat during the Mass I had to memorize in Latin; Yah, me who could barely memorize a dozen English words. Thanks to mom and many, many hours of recitation I finally made it. Indoctrination was necessary before a newbie alter boy makes it to the main alter in the Church on a Sunday, especially. This indoctrination mandated learning how to serve during a Mass by serving the 6am Mass for the nuns in their convent. My timing was never great, which meant I served the 6am during the months of Dec thru Feb., the coldest and wintriest months in New England. I believe I mentioned before that I did not always pick up on routines that quickly. Mass would be no different. I did not always remember all my duties as a server, but , then again, the temperature in the convert barely made it to 70, on just a cool day. When you combine serving and the early hours were one thing, but at the end of the Mass, as I and Fr. Richard, removed are vestments he would impart  his words of wisdom “tête de pêche.” That only confirmed my assumptions that the “learning road” ahead would be full of bumps. But in no time I made it to#1 server only to leave weeks later.

I finally made it to grade eight and was then hopeful to attend Cardinal Spellman High School, a school my parents were extremely generous with as the diocese begged for financial commitments from all parents in the parish to help construct the school. I was very fortunate, and was accepted into CSHS as the first class to attend the facility. These were four of my most enjoyable learning years. The first commandment, I think, of the center was to do unto others.., you know the rest. If not you would be shown the door. Through all for years I studied, worked and then studied even more. I envied those classmates who found time to join clubs and sports; how could they do it all? It wasn’t until my senior year at Spellman that I was made aware that the Church’s saints were there not only for us to read about but to help us in our lives, supposedly; This is when St. Jude came into my life.

I was so naïve. As I was working and playing my way through the summer months, my classmates were getting into college. College! Isn’t that the whole reason for going to High School. I always seem to come in a day late and a penny short. For a couple of reasons I’d decided to rethink the possibility of going to the priesthood. NO! It really had very little to do with Fr. Richards’  reminders of my learning impairments. It’s now crunch time. I did not attend Spellman to end up a postal worker. Be a teacher…I decided. After five local colleges rejected me for various reasons, none, however, poked reminders to me because I was just a “C” student. My mom suggested St. Jude-patron saint for hopeless cases- she new me better than anyone else! I can accept the truth. Back in those day a novena was once a week for nine weeks, and don’t mess up. So I did it and after a month of waiting… Nothing happened!

My mom had been a retail clerk in a downtown store and eventually became manager of that department. She graduated at the top of her class for office management and stenographer. As she was working through her resignation from the retail business to a position in the Brockton School Dept. as a Stenographer when she met a store employee there called Clayton Shaw. They started talking one afternoon and he told her that he was in his 3rd year at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. He told her the courses were challenging  but as many there say ” if I can make it, you can too.” Mom was excited. She gave me the information and I acted on it. I only had a vague idea of what a Pharmacist was, but then, I was desperate. The school wrote back with an School Application for me to complete and to attach  a copy of my HS grades, I figured that would kill my chances right there. Still no word from St. Jude, I was beginning to think I was beyond hope and maybe there would be a future for me in the postal dept. after all. Ten days later I received a letter with a day for me to appear and take an entrance exam with 400 other applicants. I showed up and took the test that day with 4 Spellman classmates, including  the class President. The others were all much brighter than me, by far. Two-weeks later I received a letter telling me I was one of the three-hundred freshmen for the graduating class of 1967. On my first day of class, in an English Class the president of the school was to speak and welcome us. He did and that was the last time I ever saw him. He also mentioned to us that the 3rd year class (Midler Year of five years) could only support 180 students including drop-backs from previous years. He told us to look at the person to our left and right and conceivable they would not be in that class. In the end, thanks to a slue of novenas and prayers to St. Jude I graduated. Fourteen of us from Brockton were in the Freshman class…only three of us made it to graduation. I was the only one from Spellman to make it, I believe.

I was threading water working for a small family pharmacy and I knew I was going nowhere. Once again I called upon St. Jude, figured this was a great test for his abilities. The request was simple “all I wanted was a decent paying job with a future.” Once again, St. Jude went silent on me. I mean really silent. I followed up with more prayers just as a backup…still nothing. Mary (my wife back then) and I decided to take ourselves to Norwich Ct. for a movie one Saturday night. Traveling 82 to Norwich was not a long ride, distance wise, but emotionally, yes. Our marriage had been marginal for many years and now at almost 20-years was not getting any better. We had just arrived in Norwich on 82 by the then Sheraton when we noticed the early construction of Marcus Plaza which was going to have a Genovese Drug Stores as one of its tenants. I applied, like I’m sure many other Pharmacists did, and 3-months later the store opened and I was head Pharmacist. Little did I know back then that all Genovese Pharmacists were paid at New York hourly rates and there I stayed for about 14-years. Thank you, once again, St. Jude.

 At 40 my marriage had reached a breaking point. There were no winners in this break-up; neither I, Mary or the kids. For the next five years I was busy and broke, with child support, marital payments and the expenses of a new pharmacy ownership. Every day was a delicate balancing trick. Except for a little square dancing, my life was rather boring. Then someone new came into my life. After a year or so I decided it would not work and wanted out. Within a week I felt I made a mistake. A big mistake. My former wife even liked her, which made me give it more thought. Only St. Jude could put this mistake back together again. So it was back to St. Jude, who, in my opinion, could fix everything. So I waited for the fix. Waited for her to forgive me and come back. And waited some more. Then I heard she’d marry one of her colleagues from work; Okay, that was disappointing! Figured St. Jude was tired of helping me. A couple of weeks later my state of the art 286 IBM computer had to be replaced with the state of the art 386 IBM computer with telecommunication abilities. As the new computer was being installed by a friend of mine he mentioned a family friend he knew who had just divorced. It had been four-years of being alone so I called. Within a year we married. We’ve been together since 1990. This time St. Jude answered my request by not granting what I thought I wanted but rather he had a wiser choice. Thank you one more time St. Jude.

It was 2008 and Carla an I were doing well with our Child Care Center in Greenacres, FL. We had a few dollars in the bank. Also 3 rental properties that were mortgage free and one with a mortgage. And just to emphasize how confident we felt we purchased a Log Cabin in Maggie Valley, NC. To my embarrassment just a little bit of over confidence was setting in. The Log had a very big mortgage on it. In 2008 the Real Estate Recession reared its head. Everything except our home would have to go in a lousy market. Banks were not lending for homes especially Log Homes. Every investment we had was in Real Estate. It was hopefully, back to St. Jude. We put the Log on the market and prayed. we were given no chances of a buyer. Within two-months we were presented a “cash-buyer.” The only way this log home would have sold. It wasn’t what we had hoped for, but enough for us to get out from under. I still miss our Log Home; “The Cobbler’s Cabin”, Maggie Valley, NC. Thank you, yet again, St Jude.

Are you catching a redundant theme here?

It makes no difference on your HS alma matter, although Spellman will teach you what you need to know to further your education, but more importantly it will expose you to the help and the powers you and everyone WILL have to call upon when life throughs you a curve ball you’re not expecting, and it will. Arrogance and over-confidence in oneself has its limitations. Entrusting your needs and challenges to HIM and His trusted Saints will always bring about a better outcome, even if it may not appear to be quite as you had envisioned even for “C” students.

 “Quo Vadis” is the question you’ll face from time to time and “Sequi Deum” is the answer. 

 

This is not over, more to come!

Thank you St. Jude