A Long List

 As a well spent day brings happy sleep,

so life well used brings happy death.

Leonardo DaVinci

Yesterday I attended a funeral. I did not know the woman well, had met her once, but she happened to be the mother of my nephew's wife and I was there to support the family.  It was a beautiful ceremony with very few tears shed and the feeling that the deceased was in a better place.  When the priest said, "After reaching what we are all are searching for, you couldn't drag her back, no matter how hard you tried," I got a glimpse of death as just another path we take to get to God.

Death is nothing else but going

home to God, the band of love

will be unbroken for all eternity.

Mother Teresa

When I arrived home I put away the memorial card and noticed all the other ones in the folder.  Had I really attended so many funerals? Did I really know, what seemed, more persons who had died than I knew living?
I looked at all the memorial cards and had a feeling of happiness that those persons mentioned on each card had crossed over to that "better place." My father liked to say: "Live your life as if there is a heaven, be good, be kind, follow the commandments, and when you die you will go to heaven.  If there is no heaven or a better place, you have lived a good life here on earth."

Friend or Friend of Family
Eleanor L. Atencio 1925-2013
Lalo Delgado          1930-2004
Rev. Arthur O. Verdieck, S.J.  1918 - 1980
Consuela (Connie) Mirelez (Carbajal) 1938-2001
Josie Romero 1935-2002
Rachel C. Wilde (Lucero) 1938-1999
Senor Soto (Luis' Dad)
Joe Macias Gomez 1928-2005
Charles Espinoza 1930-2005
Clifford Terry Mayfield 1936-2006
Edna Conner 1915-2001
Esther Campbell 1916-1992
Jerome Paul Abeyta 1935-2006
Christine Andasola 1932-2007
Paul (Tony) Harris 1937-1992
Edna L. Lujan (Montoya) 1920-2003
Jean DiGiacomo Died 2012
Judy Anselmo (Neighbor)
Ray McHugh 1929-1998
Sister Magdelena 

Family
Ramona Rodriguez 1915-1974
David Rodriguez 1946-2009
Mary Antonia Aragon 1882-1951
Silvio B. Rodriguez 1904 - 2001
Julio Aragon 1936-2003
Anastasia (Anna) Aragon 1899-2002
Anastacio Avina Baca  1895 -1985
Don R. Gonzales 1904- 1962
Benino Aragon 1895-1974
Aurelia Aragon 1899 - 1981
Francis B. Rodriguez 1892-1967
Maria R. Montoya 1894-1979
Antonio O. Aragon 1906 -1978
Monserate B.Rodriguez 1869-1963
Nicolas Charles Moscoso 1976-1999
Rosenell Perry Moscoso
Brian Moscoso
Guadalupe (Lupe) Rios
Cipriano (John) Aragon
Rosenda Moscoso


I am sure that there are more that I do not have a memorial card to remind me or I do not remember attending a funeral. A few names come to mind: Dottie Baird (2012), Alice Aragon Johnson (2011), Tom DiGiacomo (2012), Bob Tallmadge, Bill Shannon, Ellie McNulty, and so on.

Death is one of two things....

Either it is annihilation 

and the dead have no consciousness of anything; 

or, as we are told, it is really

a change, a migration of the soul 

from one place to another.

Socrates