"A friend to all...big and small"

When we walked into the church this morning to celebrate Gus' life, this was the card that some kind person placed into our hands, and the tears began to fall and continued to fall, off and on throughout the entire mass. Gus' graceful parents told the hundreds of bereft people in the church that even when they lost their composure around their son as he lay sick, he would always reassure them, Smile, I'm fine, he'd say.  I sat with Henry in the church for the first time in a few years, and despite my own disconnection to it, to that symbolic Catholic faith that so many present felt, I am sure, in the most authentic of ways, I felt the presence of Love. Through twinges of anger, of loneliness, of even boredom (the kind that comes when words are said over and over, years upon years, signifying nothing), I felt the presence of Love pushing up against me. My shoulders hunched against it, this Love, at first and then they dropped as love bent its way around and over and under, Love that guides and comforts and sustains despite everything.

May we feel grateful to have shared a bit of that Love through Gus. May beautiful Gus rest in peace. May his dear parents feel Love every day for the rest of their lives.