Please Pray for..

...the repose of the soul of Aaron, who passed away Saturday night from complications of juvenile diabetes. Aaron would have been 26 years old next month.

And pray for his family. Their life has been full of challenges lately; Aaron's death is just the latest one.

Aaron is the same age as DS#1; in fact, they went through First Communion classes together, Confirmation, and high school. One of my earliest, and favorite, memories of Aaron is from that First Communion class. Our parish had decided that parents needed to be more involved in the religious education of their children, so all First Communion families had to participate in classes held on Sundays after 9:00 a.m. Mass. You can imagine how well-behaved the boys were during the 90 minute class (taught by their parents) after an hour in Church!

The "activities" in the program consisted mostly of punching out paper figures and re-enacting the lesson. One of the early lessons was the parable of the Good Shepherd. There were three boys in the class: Aaron, DS#1, and one other. They punched out their paper dolls of Jesus and the Lost Sheep and then gave one of the more sacrilegious renditions of the parable I have ever seen: three paper Jesus figures "fighting" over the three identical lost sheep.

We broke it up, trying hard not to laugh.

Aaron was always polite to me and hugged me whenever we saw each other at Mass. He always had a smile and a laugh--and he usually made me laugh, too, when I wasn't shaking my head. I'm going to miss seeing him around.