On this day in the year 1993, our paternal grandfather, Harold E. Vayo Sr., was laid to rest in Saint Mary Cemetery in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

Grandpa had lived to be 94 years old.

With her permission, here’s the Memorial Tribute my cousin Jean Marie (known to friends and family as “Muff”) presented during Grandpa’s funeral Mass at St. Joseph’s Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church on Rogers Street in Lowell:

As we prepared for Christmas this year, God was busy preparing a place for my grandfather, to welcome him home at this glorious season. A time when we recall the depth of God’s great love for all of us – the gift He gave to us – His son, Jesus Christ.

Surely we all loved Harold Vayo – as a husband for 67 years – as a father, grandfather, a great grandfather, or friend – our love for him will live on forever in our hearts and his spirit will live on in our memories.

It is a few such memories I wish to share with you now, perhaps to help all of us understand why this was the right time to return to God a life with which He blessed us for 94 years.

Christmas was perhaps the most favorite time of year for my grandfather.

Much of his life was spent in the field of advertising for department stores. Christmas was no doubt an especially busy time for him.

I recall trips he and my grandmother made annually into Boston for a few days – to shop, enjoy the festively decorated windows and lights on the Common and most importantly to return with shopping bags filled with gifts. The “shopping bag” was a sure sign of a successful trip.

A great walker (fast paced at that), he enjoyed a walk downtown to the 5&10 or to “The Capitol” just to see what was new and to talk with people he met along the way.

God gives each of us talents and gifts to share here on earth with each other. God’s love works through us – it surely worked through my grandfather.

He lived a life of faith and caring – for his family, his friends, and people in need. He was a channel of God’s peace and love to others in his work at Tewksbury State Hospital. There, he brightened the lives of the men with activities and events. Even after he retired, he would return to visit – bringing magazines for them to read and reminding them that he still cared and thought about them.

That concern and love was shown one winter to the smallest of God’s creatures, a sick cardinal. He and my grandmother nursed the bird back to health. It returned to sing a song of thanks for a few years.

Other talents included his ability to play the piano by ear, his green thumb in the garden (especially with roses), and his greatest talent of painting and sketching. We are fortunate to have such great pictures in our homes. His favorite subjects were roses, seascapes, and the villages and towns of Maine (such as Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine, a place where he vacationed for over 20 years). Whenever possible, he would paint people into the scenes.

I will never smell bread baking or toast burning or taste chocolate or see mixed nuts or sugar crullers that I won’t think of my grandfather and smile.

In the last few years when he needed to sit and rest more often, he still enjoyed his great love of reading. Mysteries by Agatha Christie, historical events of the 20th century, and stories by Charles Dickens.

He was a man of great faith which carried him through the many challenges he faced in life – changes in jobs, moving, the loss of a job, and the sorrow of losing his daughter (my mother) six years ago. Difficult as today is, I feel a sense of great happiness knowing they are together in God’s presence.

I will now read a prayer that he found to be a source of inspiration – one which he shared with his family:

The Prayer of St. Francis de Sales

Do not look forward to what might happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cared for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.

It shows the depth of faith he had in God. A faith he prayed we all would have. May our memories be a source of strength in the days ahead.

As we give gifts to one another in the years to come at Christmas, may we remember the great gift God gave to Harold Vayo this year – the gift of peace and life eternal.

“May God bless us. God bless us, every one.”

Jean Marie mentioned that our grandfather played piano by ear. Here’s a sample from back in the late 1960s:

“Playing by ear” mystifies me. Grandpa could also seamlessly move from one song to the next, modulations included. I don’t know what his style of playing is called, but to me it sounds like an old-fashioned music box.

My cousin also mentioned the gift of artwork our grandfather left for us to treasure.

This painting is my favorite by far (explained here):

My other favorite paintings tie together our family’s love of Charles Dickens with Grandpa’s talent:

This photo, which includes Grandma and Father McGrath, is from just a month before Grandpa’s passing. They celebrated their wedding anniversary each year with a Mass and dinner out with the family.

My grandparents lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, for nearly 50 years. For two of those decades, they headed north each summer for a few weeks on the shore in Ogunquit, Maine. Grandpa loved to sketch while on vacation and take his drawings home to paint seascapes over the winter months.

Here’s one more painting by my grandfather, who couldn’t resist the tug of the sea:

Grandpa was born in Brewer, Maine, in 1899. May he continue to rest in peace.

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