A long time ago, a friend of mine, Peter, who I knew from my days at a major direct mail firm called to tell me about a friend he had found. The new friend was unique for Peter since the friend was a woman, nothing unusual about that, but she was also a nun! The neighbor who was an older woman in her 80s and she introduced her daughter the nun, Sister Mary Ellen to my photographer friend Peter.
Sister happened to be living in a convent in San Francisco so Peter was communicating with her long distance. Peter had mentioned me to her for some reason and mentioned my daughter and her struggle for survival with colon cancer. Sister Mary Ellen said she would get the whole convent to pray for Ellen my daughter.
Needless to say, as you can imagine, Ellen beat cancer without any residual cancer anywhere else or need chemotherapy. This was a miracle that happened to be on my mom’s birthday, another religious person that truly loved God, how could we lose?
Finally, on Wednesday past I got the pleasure to meet Sister Mary Ellen as she joined Peter and me for lunch in East Meadow at the wonderful Stage Diner. It was a perfect day weather-wise and friendship wise. She was on leave to care for her ailing and aging 85-year old mother.
Peter is a guy who looks like he works for the mob, but under that look is a sweet man, truly humane and even comforting in his friendship. A mutual friend of ours named Bruce had died as had his wife. There was a memorial service for the two as their ashes were in an urn on the church altar at St. Lawrence the Martyr in Sayville. As I was standing in front of the church with some colleagues, Peter pulls up with his 90 something-year-old mothers in the front seat and flips us the bird! This, of course, had us hysterical that one it was a church parking lot and two, his mother was sitting next to him. That’s Peter, that’s life. I love life, I love Peter and he added something memorable to my life to look back on both with the incident and my new friendship!
Thank you, Peter.
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