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Life and death on Veterans Day
Paul McMullen
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It was an interesting Veteran’s Day at the Marriott Waterfront Hotel, where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held its fall general assembly. It was a pleasure, putting faces with names from other archdiocesan papers and the Catholic News Service, the wire service that supplies national and international news and commentary to The Catholic Review and this website. Things got intense on the afternoon of Nov. 11, when the bishops addressed how best to deliver a straight-forward message about the sanctity of life to President-elect Obama.
If you ever want to feel like the dumbest guy in the room, listen to a line of bishops making their point.
Life, death and rememberance were never far from mind Monday, as any mention of Veterans Day had me thinking of my parents. Standard-issue members of the Greatest Generation, The Colonel was in the Second Army and Mim was in the Women’s Army Corps when they had a chance meeting in Paris shortly after VE Day. The rest is history, as they raised seven children born between 1947 and ’64.
Both of my parents have been gone too long. A few weeks ago, missing my father’s counsel, I found myself angrily cursing his absence – albeit apologizing immediately. I haven’t always located it, but I know inherited his patience.
I learned how to read on my father’s knee, as he pointed to the words in the comics in one of the seven newspapers that were delivered to the home on Church Street. At Mom’s death, we read aloud from her journal, discovering a lyrical touch.
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