Therese Marie Galvez-Carrera - Online Memorial Website

-Father Jeff Finley’s reflection on Therese’s life and how it ties in to what she’s experiencing and what she’s been for us – July 26th Vigil Service

Since her death, I pass the ICU four days a week.  I still peek in looking for her and she is not there.  I still look for the family, as big as it is, in the lobby, in the ICU waiting area, in the cafeteria, and the meditation room, and they are not there.  Unfortunately in my job as hospital chaplain and 14 years as a parish priest, I had to do a lot of funerals.  They’re actually something I like to do.  Weddings have never been my favorite thing because brides are not really what you think they are until the day of the wedding – funerals, people don’t talk back.  But I have to say, this is a very difficult moment, even for me.  Yet, I’ve realized something.  First of all, she’s only a year younger than me – yes I’m 49.  The other thing is that even as a person of faith, as clergy, as one who I hope is faith filled, I learned a lot from this very short journey with Therese.  And I’ve come to understand something that I’ve struggled with in dealing with people.  If there’s one thing that Therese has taught me through her family, is that church or ritual is not just something we go through, it’s a lived experience.  So many times dealing with the sick and the dying, as a priest you perform the sacrament of the sick, as many of you know them as the last rites, it becomes something you do.  But, it’s a ritual.  When you do funerals, it’s something you’re supposed to do as Catholics.  The funeral mass, the vigil service, the rosary, accommodation, the final committal – and then we go on with our lives.  But the ritual becomes something we do because it’s a tradition of doing.   But for me in walking this very short journey with Therese and the family, it has become very real, as it should be.   And as a priest sometimes, we just go through the process of the ritual because people want it.  I don’t really know the depth of where people are at.  They just call the priest because the priest should be called.  Even though those who are Catholics that go to church every Sunday, when the moment comes to letting go, it’s not where they’re at.  We pray for miracles that people will live even though they are beyond life when really the ultimate miracle is heaven.  See, that’s where this is real for me.  Because Therese lived it, her family lived it, Art lived it, and I realized it isn’t just ritual – that there are still a few people out there that believe.  Ritual is more than ritual, it is a way that helps us to realize, that faith is real, that God isn’t just some ritual, God is real to us.  That Heaven is not some far-away place that we’re going to reach maybe when we’re old; it becomes very real to the young and old alike.  Therese has lived her life preparing for this day.  We don’t look at it that way, do we?  Nobody prepares their life for this day.  We get caught up in so many things that are not important.  When you have a couple of weeks to realize that maybe it’s going to be over, you start to realize the life you have, the things you’ve done, the people that have been involved.  That’s when faith is real.  This could have been anything different than what is was.  It could have been a massive heart attack that would have taken her life quickly, but it wasn’t.  It gave a lot of us an opportunity, in a sense to almost test our faith.  And in the end, faith became real.   I don’t doubt it anymore.  And she wouldn’t want us to doubt it.  Because like I said, she prepared her life for this moment.  I said to Art one day when it was just the two of us were talking, you can look at this two ways: you can look at the fact that you had her an extra 16 years, or you could look at the fact that she survived one disease, she could survive another.  I looked at Art and I said, I think I know where you’re coming from.   I think you see it as someone who had her for an extra 16 years – he agreed.  Life is a gift, age is an illusion.  It seemed to me as I heard the stories, as I myself was sometimes with her alone, when she couldn’t talk anymore, and probably wasn’t really with us anymore, that I was in the midst of Holiness.  Maybe, that’s why she was taken from us so quickly.  She had already achieved what many of us take a lifetime to achieve.  When you look at the lives she touched, the life she lived, the things she did, the mom she was, the spouse she was, the daughter she was, the sister she was, how can anyone ask for anything more?   It makes you stop and think, doesn’t it – that this is what it’s all about.  It’s not about the car, the house, the places we got to travel to, it’s about family and friendship, it’s about faith.  I’ve come to understand something as I was reflecting in her dying process, I’m still growing and learning .  Three things are important: Faith, Family and Friendship, in that order.   And she had all of that, and more because she lived it.  In many ways, her life – the words she spoke, the example she set, the things she did, made her a prophet of our time.  The longer she lie there, the longer I realized she had a connection with so many people.  But it was hard for us to see, hard for us to be present, hard for us to minister, because we were personally involved.  And if you didn’t know her before, and you were taking care of her to some extend or another, you realized that you got drawn in too.  Father Johnson, the other Chaplain at the hospital was called a few times as well.  He didn’t really know the family very well, but we’ve spoken about her life much since she died.  How many of us are going to come to this point in our lives, where people are going to say the things they said about Therese and are still saying.  Many of us are going to get to a point in our lives saying I drove this, I lived there, I have this much money, I got to go to a lot of places and do a lot of things.  But how many lives did we touch?  And how many of us are really going to be remembered because we owned, or been, or did.  Where I think many people will remember Therese for what she was and will continue to be in us.  And that’s a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  And that’s what makes it hard, because nobody’s going to replace her.  Nobody else is going to step up to the plate and be her.  First of all, it can’t be.  We’re all unique, we’re all different.  But most of us aren’t even going to try to fill her shoes, even though we’ve been touched and maybe even changed a little bit – maybe changed for the better.  This Saint who has touched our lives has gone to the mansion the Lord has prepared for her because she accomplished so much in such a short period of time.  Some of us could say it’s unfair, it’s not right.  It’s not our life – Therese realized that.  That’s why she lived it the way that she did.  God created her, made her, and she realized why God put her here, and she lived that fully.  Anyone of you who knows her knows that.  In a time that many people claim that they’re not religious, in a time in which money becomes more important than human life, in a time when this society has become all about me, in a time we don’t see the person in front of us because we care more about ourselves, in a time in which we step over people to get ahead, this is a moment that we need to reflect this is a life that changed us or should have changed us to make us realize what truly is important.  This by no means is a sermon, it’s a reflection.  It’s something we all need to think about, not just now, but forever.  The question we have to ask ourselves tonight is where am I lacking?  Where do I still need to love?  Where’s my Faith?  Where is my family?  Who are my friends?  If any of the three are lacking, then we are lacking.  Sometimes, the very people who are called to serve are in that circle.  Few times are they strangers.  The people that need us the most are in that circle of Faith, family and friends.  We can have our own bitterness, we can carry our own anger, we can be confused, we can let things eat us alive.  We can search to understand but never understand – all those things will keep us from one another.  But if we have Faith, we know that God is in control, we have faith to know that God wants to use us to make this a better world.  Sometimes the very people he created is what’s causing division in this world.  I think that this moment as we gather tonight is a moment in which we need to think about Therese and how she touched ours lives and how she brought us together, and how she helped us to realize what’s important.  If we don’t change where change is needed, then her life and death has been in vain.  If we change even just a little bit, and realize what our priorities are in life, then she’s accomplished what God put her here for – what she realized what she was put here for.  I think we owe her that much.  At least to reflect on our lives – look at her and to say, what has she taught me and how am I going to live it, even if it means a massive conversion in my life.  Because you know something,  as we sit here tonight and I stand here, that could be me or you, or it could be your son or daughter, or your parent, or your sibling or your friend, and will the minister who stands up here have to search to find out  what to say or will it be obvious.  When I talked to Art the other day, there’s no need to meet with the family, I’ve met enough.  I know her well enough, I’ve experienced enough to know that I can get up here confidently and speak about her.  She is no stranger to me.  You know how many funerals I do where I have to sit down and talk to the family because I never knew that person and then get up and pretend that I knew you?  You have to tell me about them?  Two weeks.  Although I knew her from past life, I knew her for two weeks, intimately, through her, through family, through friends, but most of all through Faith.  There was no need to meet – there was a connection.  That’s why I’m here.  To share that with you, to challenge us to live the way God wanted us to live.  And even the best of us need to be challenged.  I want to say in closing before the final prayers, I believe very much that anyone who knew her who was not family was drawn to her because of her goodness.  Even though those of you who know her might not have changed, something drew you to her because there was something you loved in her, something you envied about her; something you wanted to be that was in her.  For many of you, she was patient and she waited.  For some of you, she’s still waiting.  Because, she’s gone from this world to the next, she’s still waiting; I want you to know that.  Her work still isn’t done.  I still think she’s with us in a very special way.  With all the funerals I’ve done and I say this rarely, sometimes when you do funerals, you do the best you can to touch people, and then you move on.  Therese is one of those few in my life that I’m not going to forget.  That’s the kind of impact she had on me.  How much more of an impact she had on you or family, friends, and part of her faith community, how much you shouldn’t forget either.  How much she should haunt you sometimes when you’re not doing the right thing or how much she should inspire you when you are.  She loved you all very much or you wouldn’t be here.  You loved her very much or you wouldn’t be here.  It’s seldom that I have a funeral or mortuary that is this packed.  That says a lot about your love for her and her love for you.  And I hope, I hope and I pray, that you know that.  And that that love will help you get through it, cope with it, that that love will help you build your faith and your relationships and your friendships.  If it does, then she truly continues to live in you.