They are a type of people common to Western Civilization, people whom you are glad you knew when it’s all over. When Freddy was about five years old, he went across the street where the neighbor and his family were in their driveway, celebrating a family event. He was welcomed and offered a piece of candy known in those days as a lifesaver. He accepted it and put it in his mouth.

Now Freddy was not accustomed to hard candy; he had frugal parents. What do you know, but the lifesaver became lodged in his throat, and he began to choke? Slaps on his back were to no avail. The neighbor was a man of action. He seated Freddy on the driveway, grabbed him by his ankles and picked him up and shook him like emptying a coal sack. The lifesaver popped out of Freddy’s mouth.

I had been out in my backyard taking pictures with a camera when Freddy came home, told me the story, and showed my the cherry red lifesaver cupped in his hand. I was so relieved at the outcome of what could have been for us a catastrophic moment. Thank God for that neighbor.

We located the spot, a clear patch along the bicycle path above the South Platte River that runs through Denver, Colorado. My youngest son and I laid a bouquet of sunflowers where Gregory had watched the baby ducks in the pool below, taken a deep breath, and swallowed the vial of cyanide picked up at his lab (he was a research chemist).

We had returned on the anniversary of his death, when Catholics celebrate St. Monica, the mother who prayed so long for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine. But Gregory suffered from an affliction that was part mental, and the rays of reason no longer reached him. He died valiant, as a true son of our family.

Human reason is not the highest reaches of our minds, but it is sometimes all that we have. We strive, and sometimes we reach, the higher realms. I turned to my youngest son. He showed, in his countenance, the confidence of a resolute mind.

That word signifies a law of the universe — the tendency of all things to decompose, to fall apart, to decay. Eventually, of course, it means the end of the universe itself. We get a glimpse of it in the fall (this is not just physics, it’s biology as well) amid the splendor of the dying maple leaves. It poses a question.

That question was articulated by Leonard Mlodinow, the physicist and screenwriter: “…if the natural tendency of the universe is disorder, then where does the order of life come from?” Einstein loved simple answers to complicated questions, and this one comes from a seven-year-old — “Isn’t God the author of life?” He designed life’s questions to be understandable to the simple. Why not everybody?

Sometimes when we consider the complexities of life, we wonder, what can the uneducated make of it? That may be why Einstein looked for the simplest answer.

Saturday morning I get the weekend newspapers, and was surprised after reading some of them that I was depressed. I’ve had enough of that in life, and so immediately I turned my mind to other things: prayer, writing, lunch. It worked. I realized that fortunately my world was not all COVID 19, and since I’ve been spared, I’ll tend to the joyful things of life.

That’s not easy. My wife automatically objects to my instinctive charity giving; and naturally she would. After all I’m on a limited pension and I act as though I’m still the son of a wealthy family. Loretta has first-hand knowledge of the realities of life, and happily for me, I listen to her.

Lenten giving is over, and I am content with what the good Lord has allotted to us. I have had three beautiful human beings in my charge, beside my wife, and one has been blessed by God with a perceptive mind and a wonderful wife and daughter. I have had over a thousand children in my care, and I love them all — even the ones in Sing-Sing (a penitentiary).

I have an acquaintance who speaks as young men do in Queensborough, New York, so some of my friends call him a liar.  Now, hyperbole (exaggeration) is a recognized tool of rhetoric (speechifying) and is easily forgiven by Christians who encounter it in the Old Testament.  Know, exaggeration is not lying, but it is disconcerting.

He gives frequent speeches, and if you want to keep a man like that your friend, you tolerate his faults (also known as sins) as Christians do.  He was elected to office with the help of Christians and does some good things, which are never acknowledged because of his many faults.

I’d prefer him to be sinless, but I don’t want to be accused of being self-righteous.  That’s a big fault, too.