SAD, BUT TRUE (A true story)

Many years ago, there was a relative of mine who I never met, yet he was the most famous of them all. The reason he became famous was that he died.  There are no records of bravery, valor, Nobel Prizes, or Emmy Award, no great scholarly papers were submitted nor great strides or legacy built in the field of medicine that I know of that he submitted. Yet he died famous that is to all who were related to him, married into his family, or close near-by friends.

It began a few days before his death, actually, and as he lay dying on his bed he summoned up the energy to whisper into his wife’s ear that he needed her to do something for him before he passed. Looking up at a picture, a large print actually, framed and hanging over the bed, of the Virgin Mary, instructed his wife, a threadbare old girl who sacrificed all her married life for her husband. He was an immigrant worker who survived like all immigrants did in the late 40s to the middle 50s, believing in God, food, work, and money, but not necessarily in that order.

As his wife leaned over him sadly, he requested that the picture of the Virgin Mary be taken down and included with his body in the casket. To the amazement of not only his wife but also his two sons, they marveled that in his last hours he had this in his heart for the picture, or was it for the Blessed Mother?

The final hour arrived and he slipped away peacefully as any man should. His sobbing wife told her two sons to take down the picture as their father had requested and put it into the casket along with their Poppa.

The sons by now, willing to do anything for their grieving mother reached for the picture and took it down. As they attempted to include the picture that leaned next to the coffin at the funeral parlor, the priest came to say some customary prayers and to close the lid of the casket and bury the old man. The boys instructed the undertaker to put the picture into the coffin. As the framed picture was placed in the coffin they realized the frame was too large, so they decided to take the frame off and roll the picture up before including it upon the old man‘s last request.

As the undertaker was busily and respectfully liberating the picture from the frame as Mamma and her two boys waited, they discovered the source of what made him so famous, $50,000 (Fifty-Thousand Dollars) U.S.!

Since that fate-filled day, the old girl went on two trips to Italy and a few cruises, and the old man got his picture.