99 YEARS AGO SOMETHING HAPPENED

EFR Dion and friend, Art Thibault

I don't think I ever introduced you to my father.  It is he on the left.  I don't know when this picture was taken.  I am absolutely sure that it was not on his birthday.  He was not born in picnic season.   This looks like one of those lazy Sunday afternoon pictures, sitting around in the back yard having a sip of  what appears to be milk.  This would therefore have to be somewhere in the early 50's when I think the glass milk bottle had about crashed and the square carton had become just about the norm.  At first we had a hard time getting used to the fact that there was no cream on top of the milk.  We soon got over that and got on with out lives.
I got to thinking about writing something concerning EFR Dion because it is nearing what would be his 99th birthday and it is also coincidental with preparations that Belle and I are seriously occupied with at this time.  We are preparing a Lenten retreat based on the psalms.  The first parish engaged has a three day event with one 90 minute session in the morning and one 90 minute session in the evening.  The retreat will end with a night time ceremony of confessions.  We know what psalms we are going to use as the spiritual foundation for the retreat.  We also have decided that we would use EFR's favorite psalm for the last major meditation of the retreat, to wit, Psalm 51 (50, in some Bibles).  It is [or was] generally known as the "Miserere."  Not a day went by that EFR did not pray this psalm.  He said that he used it as his basis for his relationship with God because he so deeply respected people who were great sinners and great saints.  So it was that his two favorite Biblical Characters were David and Paul.  He gave me the name "Paul" because he admired the intellectual power of Paul as well as his spiritual convictions.  I know all this because I asked him.  He was a firm believer that the name that he gave his offspring was a religious rite and one with real life consequences.  I know that because I asked him that too.  Why did I ask him all this stuff?  Because my surrogate father, Joseph Thibault, [Paternal Grand Father] urged me to do it.  He would tell me, "Your father knows all that stuff."  I don't know if he knew it, up in his coconut, but he sure knew it in his heart.  So, I am going to cut this short and leave you with two things:
A repeat request for prayers for the success of our retreat effort,
3/12, 13 & 14, and a beautiful YouTube.com rendition of psalm 51 sung in English.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l84A2HGdvY&feature=related

MEET EFR DION -- HE'D BE GOING ON 99

MJT Dion, Dion, EFR Dion

Look at that guy.  Must not have been a very good day. He would never tell you though.  You'd see it 60 years later like we are now. I've told you before that he had constant pain from a very young age.  It's a long story and not the one I want to tell this time.  I have been thinking of him for a couple days now. I thought that it would go away.  Ha!  When he grabs me he doesn't let go.  He probably thinks that I should stop talking about him in the past tense.  That would be like him.  Without scolding me, he would make the point that if I really believed I would know to talk about him in the present tense.   So, anyway, here I am trying to solve the problem about why the presence of the One and Only is constantly on my mind.  It happened when out of the blue I started to get pangs of guilt and regret for something I did that was really stupid when I was about 13 or 14...I'm not even sure about that.  I think back on it now and I remember all the times that I had bragged about him about this one accomplishment of his.  But never to him...and in fact worse than that.  I remember it like it was five minutes ago.
EFR Dion never graduated from high school.  There was no chance for equivalency tests to challenge in those days.  He was of high school age when his father, also Eugene died.  EFR Dion was now the "head of household" of nine people.  He was in the seminary, preparing for the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.  He was now the head of the Dion Domestic Church.  I don't know the whole story, but I do know that he did get work as he got to be of age.  Somewhere we have a picture of him in front of the Chapman Valve Company which in those days was in Chicopee, Massachusetts somewhere.  I never heard the full story of how he broke into the machine shops.  I do know that he had to be one smart dude.  So good that at the ripe old age of 22 or so he was a foreman at the Worthington Pump company.  So good that they entrusted him to be a general foreman at their plant in Hackensack, New Jersey.  When he got married after sparking MJT for four years, the company did him the favor of transferring him back to Holyoke, Massachusetts.  Superintendent of the airplane engine division on Bridge Street in Holyoke.  Don't ask me how he did it.  I could go on for a long time, but I want to get to the point of my insult to him.  I found out that he was planning to challenge the Massachusetts state accreditation exam for the licensing of tool engineers.  He talked about it a bit, and I was polite and nice, but I couldn't even master long division, what did I care about engineers and slide rules?  To make a long story not quite so long, he took the test, waited for the results and found out that he had knocked it out of the ball-park.  He was flying high, he could not stop trying to find words to explain his joy and his triumphant sense of accomplishment.  I was bored and I didn't take the time to try to dig into his heart to see why he was so totally consumed with his victory.  I was so stupid!  He must have realized that I was to ignorant to understand what he was going through.  He never changed his attitude toward me and never once made me feel that he had been offended by my behavior.
It took me years, literally years, before I came to the full understanding of the feat that he had pulled off.  Part of my understanding was driven into me because as a recruiter of technical and professional people, I came to interview a host of  bozos who could never have been given the time of day by ole EFR Dion.  And they had diplomas backing up their engineering inability.  So, there you go.  We all have to be guilty of at least one thing that we can talk about.  This is the biggest one that I can talk about.  No, the other one you may be thinking of is not even close to being a slice of guilt.
So, now it is off to lala land.
The weather is cooling off.  If this keeps up you'd think that it's threatening to be Winter in these parts.  It might be time to start thinking of moving to New Zealand for a few months.

PAIN

I have written a lot about pain.  Well, here's more.  It is a never ending, always interesting topic because it is so mysterious, and also, so omnipresent.  Today, I was asked about my father (EFR Dion in this blog).  I found it impossible to define him to the interlocutor without mentioning his daily companion, Pain.  For years the man hardly ever had a pain-free moment.  It is amazing that he even managed to have a sense of others with the constant heat of the devil's fire that he had in his leg and lower back.  Yet, he had his light hearted moments.  It has crossed my mind very often that it was not the physical pain that kept him serious.  I have always been convinced that the fact that he had a rather short life free of true responsibility made him a real serious dude.  I also came to know that if we thought  that he was tough at home, we were lucky that we didn't have to work for him.  All reports have it that he didn't suffer fools lightly.  My closeness to him showed me that in his life there were many more fools than in the lives of less tightly wound managers.  I have to confess that I have a similar perception of the world's population.  I think that I am going to get sent behind St. Peter's shed because of it too.
One of the interesting aspects of this conversation is that it is happening, not by design, mind you, at the very threshold of what would be his 98th birthday.  Here I sit at nearly three quarters to a buck, and he didn't even make it halfway to 98.  But you know, in his condition, it was better.
I also think of the way the world has developed and I wonder if he would have survived under similar circumstances just a mere ten years farther along, say, mid '70's.  Despite my many reminiscences of him, I always come back to the deliverance from the pain and I thank God for letting me understand life in that light.
Also, I have to say that I think that tolerance to pain is a part of our lives.  We have two sons who are tough as nails when it comes to pain.  One of them has the gout very badly, but despite the slower movement that it imposes on him, I have never seen it stop him.  I have seen "The Voice from the Kitchen" endure pain for rather long stretches without "sitting it out", so to speak.
I have had some pain in my short life, but nothing compared to the daily suffering of my father.  The deepest thought I have about him, in the depths of my being, is that he knew that the pain was not his to keep.  It was his to convert into spiritual energy for those about whom he felt responsible, many of whom he loved, but couldn't reach except through the sublimation of his pain.  This thought started to grow in me some years ago, sprouting from compost too complicated to describe in this space.  I am convinced that this sublimation continues to touch us to this day.  Hey, it has to be us, we're all that's left.
The first stirring of the thought began on the way home from Enfield on the day that I left the seminary and he drove me home.  We didn't talk much, but there was a lot of communication going on.
You know, if I let myself go, I could write a book about this.  Gouty fingers and all ... :-)!

THE ORACLE -- "OUR DAD" -- TRIBUTE TO EMÉLIE DION MORIARTY

EMÉLIE 50 YEARS LATER -- 

This is a rather crazy day.  There are many of those in my life.  Just ask anyone who knows me, even just a little bit.  This one is a little over the 50% bar though, so I'll tell you why.  We came to San Diego from where we live, 90 miles away.  We do this often.  About once a week.  I had worked rather steadily at my home-based job so I had a mess on and around my work desk.  So before I left our humble abode, I grabbed all the paper that would fit into a shallow box and decided that I was going to "clean up, tear up and burn up."  Into the trunk it all went.  We got to San Diego and soon after, out of the trunk it all came and I started in on doing what it would take to reach my goal.  NOW, you've all heard the axiom, "Anyone who knows how to read never succeeds in cleaning out the attic."  That's right.  Since I know how to read, yeah, x 7, you know that I am in trouble.  So today, I was only confronted with 3x.  It should have been easy, right?  HA!  The good news is that I really did not have that much.  But it has been enough.  The other part of the good news is that it is mostly dog-eared poetry, English, mostly.  I do have my wonderful description of Springtime, 100 lines of classic French Alexandrine verse.  Oh, I read it, of course, and I have to say that it is still as good now as it was when I wrote it.  But, it will have to be for another time.  I also found a bunch of stuff by Denis and by Emélie.  Some good, some better left lying in the box.  No offense.  We all have a bunch of that stuff.  Why we don't burn it is beyond me, but we don't.  I also found a whole season's worth of a rag that was titled "THE SHAKER GAZETTE"  published and edited by one, pseudonomistically known as "B Z B".  It was a bulletin board fish-wrapper that appeared now and then pinned to the porch wall and purported to report on the "doings" of the seminary student body in Enfield, NH.  [In those days it was N.H.]  Man, it is soooo puerile, sophomoric and many other negative words.  But, it too maintains its place in my life.  YUK! but don't you dare try to burn it.


NOW, THE GOOD PART, ACCORDING TO THE TITLE -- THIS ONE BY THE POET LAUREATE OF 1 HARTFORD STREET, SOUTH HADLEY FALLS, MASS.
Published nearly 50 years ago in the local Holyoke Transcript Telegram, March 4, 1961, nearly 3 months after the expiration of EFR Dion.


Our dad is up in heaven,
   That we know for sure.
For heartaches and loneliness
    We wish there was a cure.


Our dad is up in heaven,
    Let's all go tonight.
    we're sure that we'd see daddy
    and he'd be a welcomed sight.


For daddy now there'll no pain;
    His life on earth is done.
He's waiting there in heaven
    for all of us to come.


We think sometimes that God is wrong
    And we are always right,
But God is much bigger than we
    And not only in height.


Sure we'd like to have our daddy
    But he has eternal rest.
Who are we to say
    That God did not do best.


Our dad is up in heaven;
    We can't see him anywhere.
But someday it will be our turn
    To go and meet him there.
Emélie M. Dion
South Hadley Falls


I have the original clipping for anyone who wants a scanned file.