Sunday, March 23, 2025
My “Aunt Rae” was the last remaining of my large Pescatore family of twelve aunts and uncles, along with each of their spouses. She told me she hoped to live to 100, and at age 97, she almost made it. In one of our occasional but always enjoyable “visits” by phone in these past few years, Aunt Rae noted with a bit of amusement that she and my mother’s sister, Anna Pescatore Bradle, were the only two who had quite serious health problems as young married adults, yet they were the last two still living among the dozen siblings and their spouses. Until only recently, she was as alert as she always was.
I would like to leave here the words on my February 20, 2012 memorial card for Uncle Ben, which Aunt Rae must have selected or approved of for her beloved husband. She missed him dearly and spoke of him often, always with deep love. I feel she would appreciate that these same words are being shared as part of her own memorial booklet.
On the front of the Festa Memorial Funeral Home card are the words, “In His Will is Our Peace.” There are no credits given for the verse.
My prayers will continue for her kind and loving family. Nancy Trifari Dowden, 87-year-old niece to Aunt (Theresa) Rae.
“I’d like the memory of me
to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow
of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo
whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and laughing
times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those
who grieve, to dry before the sun.
Of happy memories that I leave
When life is done.”
