Antoinette Juliano, Requiescat in Pace

A friend of our family passed away this morning. Antoinette was a member of our parish. I met her about two years ago through a parish program to match visitors with those elderly in need visitors. I admit I was a bit nervous about it, seeing as how I'm not one to easily be chatty with strangers. But I needn't have worried; Antoinette did enough chatting for both of us. She was a relatively healthy 90 year old when we met, who needed the social environment of the nursing home. Over the last two years I (and sometimes my children) visited with her each week (including the time the above photo was taken, on Halloween of 2006).

Antoinette gave me so much. She immediately put me at ease about my children's active, or sometimes impatient behavior. She constantly demonstrated gratitude and a desire to offer something to make others happy, even when in her last months she was in a lot of pain after a fall and some broken bones. She had compassion for and did what she could to comfort other residents. Oh, she got ticked at people when she felt disrespected by them, but I never saw her act with the slightest bit of nastiness in return.

I will miss her, but she told me often in the last several months that death was what she longed for. She couldn't understand why God was putting her off.

The last time we talked, I felt compelled to tell her every happy detail of my life that I could come up with; how we would celebrate my son's birthday, how my husband brought me flowers on the anniversary of our engagement and how there had been fireworks that night ten years ago in Pittsburgh, little details of our lunch with my in-laws. She smiled at this connection with a world she had left behind, confined as she was to her bed or her wheelchair. She told me repeatedly, "I love you."

May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.