Today, on the feast day of St. Joseph, my Joe was honored by his celebration of life 3 years ago. We had the service as quickly as we could with COVID still kind of lingering and Joe having died out of state, away from home. That complicates things more than you would realize. Luckily, the fact that he was a veteran and a first responder, that allowed him to be put to the top of the list for many services needed to get him home to Michelle. So many at that time had to have services without the person being honored even present, and we didn’t want an empty casket or an empty urn. We wanted Joe to actually be present…so we had to wait a bit. When I think back on that place and time, I think of the hundreds and hundreds of people who came from all walks of Joe’s life to honor him. I was so overwhelmed at the sheer numbers of people. In his short life, he had touched so many. If people were there to support the family and maybe didn’t know Joe as well, they did after hearing Zac (his best friend), Rich (his dad), and Michelle (his wife) speak about him. He was able to touch so many people through their words. He was such a good man….a total goofball, but a good man. He is still loved and missed dearly today.
Messina Musings 