Time: Thu Apr 17 21:18:21 1997
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Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 21:09:35 -0700
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: "A Saint Among Us" (fwd)
<snip>
>
>By Phil Brennan
>A SAINT AMONG US
>
> I never knew Joseph Bruno.
> Until I assisted at his funeral last week I didn't even know he
>existed.
>And even now I know precious little about him.
> But what I do know made a very deep impression on me.
>Joe Bruno was a U.S. Army paratrooper in World War II. In 1943 he was
>injured in the line of duty, damaging his spinal cord so severely that
>by 1947, after a series of operations, he ended up in a wheel chair,
>paralyzed and helpless.
> Joe was married to a lovely young lady who, like all her sisters in
>those days, had looked forward to a long and happy married life as a
>wife and mother.
> Instead, she became Joe's caregiver, devoting every minute of her life
>to looking after him. Helpless, unable to perform the most rudimentary
>tasks, Joe needed constant attention.
> For the next 50 years his wife provided it.
> I know a little bit about what caring for an invalided loved one -- a
>very little bit. In the last six months of her life my wife was all but
>totally paralyzed and I remember just how much caring for her took out
>of me. Seeing someone you love in such a condition tears the very heart
>out of you. Day after day you watch helplessly as the life slowly drains
>away from her. And the burden of constantly caring for her slowly wears
>you down, in both mind and body.
> And that was only for six months.
> For Providence Bruno, Joe's wife, it was long 50 years ... half a
>century. She saw her youth and all the hopes and dreams any young wife
>would cherish vanish into thin air. The children she dreamed of having
>would never be born. She and Joe would never take trips, or enjoy
>vacations together.
> There's a gut-wrenching line in a song in the musical version of Les
>Miserables that must have resonated for her: "Life has killed the dreams
>I dreamed."
> In the final months of his life Joe was taken to a V.A. hospital.
>Every
>day -- every single day -- his wife took a taxi to the hospital and
>spent the entire day doing what she had spent most of her life doing:
>looking after her beloved Joe.
> During the funeral I watched her from the altar. She was wracked by
>sobs, and kept reaching out and gently touching the casket that held the
>remains of the man she loved and served for so very long, and at such
>great cost.
> I wonder how many men or women faced with a similar challenge would
>accept it the way Providence Bruno accepted her cross -- readily and
>without complaint. It was her cross, nobody else's, and she carried it
>courageously.
> No calls for Dr. Kavorkian, no demands for euthanasia, no attempts to
>shift her burden to the government or some other distant entity, and
>finally, no great sigh of relief when the Lord lifted her life-long
>burden and called Joe home. Just grief -- heart-rending grief.
> Last week I finished writing a small book about saints. In researching
>it I was struck by the common thread that ran through the lives of all
>of the saints I wrote about: totally selfless devotion to serving God by
>serving their fellow humans -- sometimes at great cost, physically and
>mentally.
> And up there on the altar, I realized I was looking at one of their
>number.
> Providence Bruno will never be canonized. Her name will never be
>invoked
>during the canon of the mass, and no church will every bear her name.
>But she is a saint, nonetheless, and like all the canonized saints, she
>gave us an example of how to live, no matter what our lives are like, or
>where the will of God takes us.
<snip>
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Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S. : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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