The Passing

The Good Sister - my wife's sister - passed on January 31 about midnight.
We came back to Canada on the 2nd, and have been here ever since.

The funeral service was yesterday at St. Bonaventure Church in Toronto, on Leslie just south of Lawrence. It is a Franciscan parish, and Friar David presided over the ceremony.
It was a very good and thoughtful service.

I read what is the the "Intercession", and did quite well, except for the fact that I read from a template, and the deceased name was indicated by  "N." - I assume "N" for "name" - and all the pronouns were "his/her" and "he/she".
This caused me a microsecond of pause.

We had tried to have her favorite hymns "Ave, Verum Corpus" and "Panis Angelicus" sung, but Friar David laughed and said that no one knows Latin anymore, except for the "Ave, Maria".

I found it disconcerting that we have lost so many of our ancient traditions.
(The Good Sister and I were both Latin scholars.)

On the news one morning, the reader said that a Mr. MacNamara won the Lotto in Windsor, and he pronounced the name "mack-NAM-ara".
Then we were watching NBC Today and there was a piece on the young lady from Prescott, Arizona who is being held by ISIS. There was something about her and the local Kiwanis Club, which name was pronounced "kee-WAH-nees", instead of "ki-WAH-nis".

Has the past been forgot?

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