What a long, strange trip it's been - Krista & Brian's Wedding Ceremony

I was honored to be able to perform this beautiful couple's ceremony.
My nephew Brian and his lovely wife, Krista.

Good afternoon and welcome as we gather to celebrate the union of Krista and Brian. Please turn off your cell phones, personal gaming devices, smart watches, GPS’s, pagers, etc., etc.

Before we begin today, we would like to take a moment of silence to remember those loved ones and friends who have gone before us that we wish were here today to join in this celebration. Please join hands and let us take a few seconds to recall those we have loved and lost and remember that love never dies, it lives on within all of us.

Krista. Brian. The only way I can think to start today is to quote the great prophet, Jerry Garcia…”what a long strange trip it’s been”.

Your love story has been 12 years in the making since your first date at Michael Timothy’s in 2004. You have endured many hurdles along the way and today you are standing before one another to say to the world this is the person I have chosen to spend the rest of my days on earth with.

When you left for San Francisco, I recall saying to the two of you that you should not leave your hearts there, but find your collective heart. And you did just that. 2,943.9 miles, one big house and 3 dogs later, here you are. It is that collective heart that will carry you through the next hurdles in your life together and allow you to forgive one another when perhaps someone leaves too many empty, corked wine bottles around the house or when someone rips all the doorknobs off the doors without knowing how to put the new ones on or leaves the tags on everything in the house, just in case you need to take it back. It is that collective heart that has created a warm and loving home, open to family and friends for backyard barbeques and pool parties. It is that collective heart that will continue to share its love for great wine, good cheese and pizza. It is that collective heart that will create new life in the form of two-legged children that will hopefully be easier to housebreak.

With this in mind, I would like to ask Krista’s aunts, Linda Baxter and Debbie Beetz, to come up for today’s first reading, “I carry your heart with me” by e.e. cummings.

I would now like to call up Doris Harmon for our second reading, which is an excerpt from Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne.

Each of us has our own definition of love and marriage…and it is hard to put a definition on either of these words. Instead of trying to stand up here and talk about what they mean, I would like to share a little story.

This past spring, Rich and I were in a little seafood shack having dinner. The door opened up and in came an older woman in a wheelchair with an older gentleman behind her, pushing her in. They ended up sitting down at the table right next to us and we struck up a conversation with them. We had just finished up our meal and they were just beginning theirs. In just 30 minutes, we learned their life story. How they met and got married, how they struggled to make ends meet in the beginning, how he left a job with a good company to start his own business and although she was scared and did not agree with his decision, she supported him every step of the way, how they grew that business into a success together, how they built their family together and now, how they are dealing with her degenerative muscular disease that has limited her mobility and will continue to do so. It was apparent they loved each other. When we asked them how long they have been married, they replied 57 years. Which prompted us to ask, “What’s your secret?” They took a few seconds to think and he replied, “Take care of each other.” And she agreed. She added that they did not always agree with each other, but they knew the other would always be there no matter what. He went on to talk about how much they were struggling in their home with her in a wheelchair and he said, “If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would tear down our house and rebuild it to be more comfortable for her.”

And that, my brothers and sisters, is love. That is marriage. Krista and Brian, today you are standing before one another to say, I will take care of you. I will be your eyes when you can’t see. I will be your ears when you can’t hear. I will be your voice when you can’t speak. I will be your legs when you can’t walk. I will take care of you to the end.

Before we begin your vows, I would like to challenge the two of you to continue to show your love, respect and care for one another so that 57 years from now, a younger couple looks at you and asks, “What’s your secret?”

Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, boyfriend and girlfriend, ex, fiancé…and you have learned much from one another the past 12 years. Shortly, you shall say a few words that will take you across the threshold of life, and things between you will never be quite the same. For after today, you shall say to the world – This is my husband. This is my wife.

Vows:

Krista/Brian, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

I vow to love and serve you as long as we both shall live.

I take you with all my faults and strengths as I offer myself to you – with all my faults and strengths.

I vow to help you when you need help and turn to you when I need help.

And with this ring, I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife/husband, my constant friend, and my love from this day forward.

Now that you have given yourselves to each other with solemn vows, the giving and receiving of rings, in front of all who have assembled here today…it is with great joy and the power vested in me through the interwebs that I pronounce you finally married. You may kiss.

Please raise your glass and toast the bride and groom! 

Come Safely Home Until We Meet Again - My Mother's Eulogy

Millie - May 2015, in her favorite place. Beautiful woman.

We are here today to celebrate the life of our dear sweet Millie, also known as The Milster, Grand Master Millie Mill, The Milverine…but mostly known as Nana and Mom.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about a woman like Millie, so I’ll start from the beginning. She was the daughter of Polish immigrants who came to this country looking for a better life. They settled in Baltimore, where Millie grew up in a typical post-depression cold water flat. Millie had a tough life growing up. When she was only 17 years old, her mother passed away, leaving her with a hole in her heart and feeling lost. A couple years later, she met my father. Their love story is that out of a Hollywood movie. He had been dating her best friend’s sister and Millie and that friend used to sneak into her bedroom when she was gone and read the love letters he wrote to her. When I asked her what she thought of him from the letters, she replied, “He sounded like a real Romeo.” One night, my dad was at one of the local dance halls with some of his Air Force buddies when Millie walked in. He was captivated by her and went over to the table where she was sitting and asked her to dance. They danced and talked all night, and he asked if he could come by her house the next day. She said that he could and he did just that. Three weeks later, she found herself packing up her life in Baltimore to meet him at the base in West Palm Beach, FL to marry him. Millie said she just knew he was good – that he was going to be a good husband, a good provider and a good father. And she was right. It took a great deal of courage on her part to jump into such an unknown territory, but she was one brave and incredibly strong woman.

My dad took a job with the railroad and they moved all over the mid-Atlantic each time he took a new job. Millie was never adverse to up and moving to a new place – she said it was great because she always got new curtains. She worked so hard to make each new house a home, even if we were only going to be there for a short time. Family gatherings with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were frequent and fun. Millie was magical in the kitchen and could whip up a meal or a dozen sandwiches in no time and no one ever left her house hungry. Sunday dinners at her house were always full of laughter and very colorful conversation.

She was the best mom a kid could ask for and loved nothing more than having us around. A lot of mom’s would be happy when September rolled around, but she got depressed. All you had to do is sneeze and she would say, “You should stay home sick today.”

Millie loved my father with all her heart and they celebrated 43 years of marriage together before he passed away. They always called each other ‘hon’ in their Baltimore accent and were never afraid to show their affection for one another – holding hands, hugging and kissing when he came home from work each day or throwing an arm around the other. She was such a devoted wife and worked so hard around the house keeping everything immaculately clean and making sure our every need was looked after – she was selfless. She brought us into this world and gave us our values, our faith and our moral compass and wanted nothing more than for all of us to be happy.

Millie always said her greatest accomplishment were her grandchildren and loved being a Nana. Sean, Brian, Katelyn, Joey, Casey, Allie and Sammy – you were the light of her life and she bragged about all of you to everyone she met. And there really is no place on earth like Nana’s house – so warm and welcoming with a smell that just brings a sense of comfort over you the minute you walk in the door.

Millie had a global following and the outpouring of love for her has come from all ends of the earth this week – Australia, Ireland, Honduras, Hong Kong, to name a few. Everyone fell in love with her the minute they met her and she took so many of our friends under her wing, a testament to the woman that she was…a true universal mother in every sense of the word. Millie was a force of nature yet she was so humble. She was kind and gentle, yet not afraid to speak her mind.

She had so many little quirks, but one of my favorites was how she took straw from the manger at church every year at Christmas. She said if you kept that straw in your wallet or in your purse, you would never go broke. And her purse is a story upon itself. Weighing in at roughly 30 lbs., it doubles as a weapon, a pharmacy, an ATM machine and a filing cabinet. Just yesterday, I had to go into that purse for something and found a Ziploc bag full of manger straw – don’t worry Fr. Dan, we’ll settle up with the church on this. This year, the manger was in a spot where she couldn’t reach the straw and she said, “Diane, get up there on that alter and get me some straw.” I had to explain I was not going up on the alter in a church full of people to take straw from the baby Jesus.

Millie loved her Sunday shopping excursions to Market Basket, where she could often be found harassing the butcher for the best cut of meat, the hot food guy for the best chicken fingers or the bakery woman for a cookie…because cookies shouldn’t be just for kids, seniors should get them, too.

She had such a wonderful sense of humor and made us all laugh out loud so many times without even trying. The stories we all have about her seem to be endless and picking just a few to tell in a short amount of time up here is impossible. We hope that many of you will choose to share some of those stories this afternoon. Instead, I would rather finish out talking about the woman she was and will continue to be in our hearts and minds. If I could sum her up in one word, it would be LOVE. Her favorite words were “I love you” and she loved everything and everyone with all her heart and soul. And it is that love that we will carry forward as we go on trying to find a way to exist without her here on this earth. It is that love that will sustain us in this next phase of our journey because it is a mother’s love and a mother’s love never dies. If everyone loved as deep and hard as Millie did, the world would be a completely different place. Millie is LOVE. Pure, unconditional, honest LOVE.

As I sat with her on Tuesday night, I had a beautiful vision. Millie was in the kitchen in our old house in Maryland, cooking one of her legendary dinners. Seated at the table in the dining room were all of those who have gone before us – Joe and Elizabeth (her mother and father), Joe and Concetta (my dad’s parents) and her brother and his wife, Norman and Edwina. My father is seated at the head of the table and there is an empty chair at the other end. They are all young, vibrant and free from sickness. As she comes through the saloon doors to put dinner on the table, my father gets up and goes over to pull out her chair. She sits down and they toast her arrival. She is safely home…until we all meet again.