A Good Day

Posted 10:30 PM by Gerald So

At 1:00 AM, I shoveled most of 3-4 inches of snow off our driveway so my brother would be able to get out for an 11:30 AM doctor's appointment. I blissfully ignored Trump's inauguration doing some touch-up shoveling and salt-spreading. I recommend the Snow Joe Shovelution, by the way.

My brother was back by noon, and we drove an hour to St. Louis de Montfort in Sound Beach to attend the visitation for Rev. Msgr. Don Hanson, who served as second pastor of our parish, Our Lady of Hope, 1999-2007.

I remember Fr. Hanson for his professorial demeanor, which I appreciated as a teacher myself, and for his tech savvy. In the days of eGroups/Yahoo! Groups, he had a mailing list of his homilies. He hired a similarly scholarly music director, Raymond Henderson, who stayed through the next pastor's term.

Fr. Hanson also visited my father and celebrated his funeral mass in 2001. In 2005, he helped my cousin's fiancee convert to Catholicism and marry.

It's not lost on me that several friends around my mother's age have died recently, that that part of my life is over. I'm glad to have recognized how special it was as I lived it.