05/13/2005: "Please pray for my Grandpa Joe"

My grandpa Joe died on this day in 1987. I didn't know him very well. He was an alcoholic and left my grandmother when my mom was a child. He stayed and lived with my family when I was a child for a few months. I saw him a couple times in the weeks preceeding his death from cancer. That was my entire contact with him during his life.

Grandpa Joe lived a life that was full of sin. Not only did he abandon the bonds of his marriage ot my grandmother, who he had married in the Catholic Church, but remarried outside of the Church. He lived the majority of his life addicted to alcohol and tabacco. But in his final weeks he seeked reconciliation with God. I pray that God may have mercy on his soul and speed his assumably very long journey through purgatory!

If by God's mercy you have made you way to heaven Grandpa Joe, pray for me, that I may have the strength to avoid sin, especially those that so dominated your life.