They don’t call this a funeral anymore. They call it a Memorial, or better still, a “Celebration of Life“ I like that, but I would add “A Celebration of Death“, too.

I think we love Jesus because He taught us how to live, but even more, He taught us how to die. Jesus taught us by His words, but much more by His life, and by the way He died.

I would say the same about Fred Weigel. He taught us by the way he lived, and especially by the way he died.

    We are all blessed for having known Fred Weigel. And we will continue to be blessed if we allow Fred’s gentle memory to remain in our hearts.

    I have known Fred for 81 years. I first met him when he got off a bus at St. Mary’s College, North East, PA., on August 29, 1943. Fred had boarded a train in Hoboken, NJ., and was hurtling at high speed through NY state, heading for Buffalo, when his train crashed. The NY seminarians were in the second car, and ended up sideways next to the 1st and 3rd cars where many passengers were killed. But none of the seminarians was killed. This changed Fred’s attitude toward life—and death. They say “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

    The second time Fred faced imminent death was 20 years later, when he was a missionary in Santo Domingo, on the same island with Haiti. Haiti has many revolutions, but so does Santo Domingo. Fred was sent to protect his Bishop, Raimond McLaughlin, a fellow Redemptorist, who was threatened by the Dictator, General Trujillo.Fred stood at the top of the stairs where the Bishop’s room was. ( I saw the same spot about 10 years later.) The soldiers rushed up the stairs and struck Fred on the head with their rifle butts and he fell down the stairs. But he survived, thanks be to God, and we enjoyed him for another 60 years. (By the way, the Bishop survived, but the Dictator didn’t.)

    Fred seems to have developed a certain, je ne sai quoi, friendship(?) with death. 20 years after the near death experience, he left the Caribbean and came to Tampa and immediately enrolled at USF for a Master’s Degree in Gerontology which includes a good deal about death and dying, because old people have this funny quirk of insisting on dying on us.

    Then, as Fred writes in his own Obituary, he became one of the leaders of Hospice Care in Tampa Bay. Wow ! He spent the next 50 years helping people die, and eventually, learning how to die, himself. When Fred’s brother Richard died, (he was found homeless in NY), Fred called me from Tampa when I was living in Long Island. I went to the wake, funeral, and burial with him. Later, his brother Jack died, who was a very popular Deacon in Massapequa, Long Island. We attended that wake, funeral, and burial together. Then a few years ago, I spent some days with Fred as his wife Jeanne lay dying. Fred was reading a popular new book on dying. We prepared the memorial service for Jeanne together.  

    This was just before the covid lockdown, when I went on to write my book about joyful dying called “Entering Eternity With Ease.” Fred was a big help to me in writing that book. 

    I learned a lot about dying from Fred. Fred didn’t teach me. He did it the best way: by showing me. He modelled dying for me.

    Fred would not like it if I said he was a Christ figure. But Fred was a Christ figure. He still is now, as Christ was and is. Jesus was the greatest teacher ever, but he taught mostly by being the perfect model or example of what he taught. The way Jesus was born, in a stable. The way he lived and worked as a laborer and carpenter. The way Jesus died. The way He talked constantly about dying. The way he kept saying we had to take up our cross DAILY, yes, DAILY. But especially the way He died on a cross.

    Fred Weigel had his own cross. He was disabled for a good four years. It can be a cross to be disabled, to depend almost completely on others. To call an ambulance every time you fall down. I watched Fred do that many times.

    Yes, Fred, you are a Christ figure for me. I need you in my life in your resurrected presence now. Fred would be angry if I called him a saint – but he is definitely a member of the “Communion of Saints”, that Catholics believe in.

    I won’t say: “Rest in Peace” I won’t say: “You are now in Peace”.

I will say: “Stay with us Fred Weigel, we need you to teach us how to enter eternity with ease.”