SO MANY ANGELS!!!

a PS blog:

i had just completed a blog…about what torture a doctor’s waiting room can be, when suddenly i was reminded……

Hey! Today is NANCY KUSMISS DAY, super-survivor of several attempts on her life by “the Tougher Side of Mother Nature.” My dear Birthday Lady reminded me of something very important! When she read my blog about my hideous experiences in medical waiting-rooms, Nancy quickly and gently reminded me of something i know so well. REMEMBER WHO IS IN THE WAITING ROOMS! There you will rub many an elbow with an angel or saint; let me NEVER FORGET those holiest of holy places. Everything has another side.

Take for example the VIP of VIPs, my brother-in-law, Paul Stella. Why, his very name means “STAR!” Big strappin muscleman, movie-star quality, very successful attorney and entrepreneur, long distance runner, football player, skier, and, most of all, dandy dancer who’d leave his leading ladies worn out at the dance floor. What a man!

Then suddenly just into the “age for retirement,” the 6th Plateau, his floor collapsed. Paul and i found ourselves living in waiting rooms. Yet, through all of the tortures he just kept a-grinnin, kept a-charmin, and absolutely kept a-dancin! With triple cancer.

We are coming to the end now of another Advent, the word meaning Waiting-for-the-One-to-Come – on Christmas. My mother always says, and at 88 she’s lived on enough lines to know it, that “Life is mostly about Waiting.” But, she and i often talk about the SECRET TO THE WAITING. We have found that the best way, the ONLY WAY, to wait FOR (be it the doc, the test, the rest from pain, or the God Who Comes) is to Wait ON, to spend our waiting-hours CARING for our fellow waiters. If i focus on one who is worse off than me, i suddenly find strength i never knew i had. It’s the old proverb, “Help your brother get his boat across the stormy sea, and SEE! Your own has reached the other shore!”

Paul was just about there, to the other side. We weren’t sure, but as it turned out only a few weeks were left, when Cardinal Timothy Dolan came to our church to visit, yes even in a snowstorm. And Paul, though he could barely walk, was determined to meet the shepherd. We managed to get him there for the Mass, and afterwards this Superman somehow – as if with his last burst of power – got to the reception hall. Music was playing, and for Paul that translated into only one thing, the dance. When the Cardinal entered the gymnasium, it was incredible, how something was directing him straight through this vast crowd to this SUPER-LAMB. As he found Paul doing the very best he could in his condition to move with the melody, the Cardinal asked, “And who is this man? Is it Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire?” i answered, “Neither. This is the best of them all, Paul Stella, DANCING WITH CANCER.” 

Even the Lady Cancer has her other side. She danced him right into Paradise. She found that she could take his shell of a body, handsome as it was, but she could not touch the REAL Paul. So, let’s always REMEMBER just WHO is WAITING in the waiting rooms!!! SO SO MANY ANGELS surround us!

Hey, Happy Birthday, Nancy. To many many more…keep kickin’ and DANCIN’, my Dear.

Author: friardad

what's it like having a wife and six kids after having been a friar for many years and being still married to St. Francis' Lady Poverty? View all posts by friardad