Jelisava

Detail of the Brother Sun stained glass window by Benoit Gilsoul gracing the walls of St. Casimir / Nov. 2011

This was the day of Mary who lived 103 years (that's over 37,595 days). A woman who traveled from a small island in the Adriatic where gypsy's taught her how to embroider to Philadelphia where she worked as a seamstress and sewed men's silk shirts to the wilds along the Delaware River where she and Captain Lou built thriving businesses. A woman who was friends with my grandmother when both were members of the Croatian Singing Society. A woman who was devoted to the Blessed Mother and said the rosary every day. Her daughter told my mother I have a picture of you holding my hand when I was a girl and you are as beautiful now as you were then. Her son told my mother that he was 80 years old and yet remembered her father and the way he liked to talk politics.

"... Especially Sir Brother Sun, By whom You give us the light of day! And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor..." ~ St. Francis