DAY 19...POST KIDNEY TRANSPLANT - THE 27TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DAY I ENTERED ST. KIERAN'S SEMINARY.........

Sunday is starting much better than yesterday. I am awake and up, after a peaceful night's rest and looking forward to televised Mass, Holy Communion coming to me from the local parish church and the Sunday shows. Today will also be special as it is the 27th anniversary of the day I entered St. Kieran's Seminary in Kilkenny, Ireland and met Oliver and all the lads who more than a quarter of a century later have become a lasting part of my life. Father Oliver will be arriving a week from tomorrow on his latest visit to me, to check up on me in person, and to assist for nine days with my caregiving. It will be the third medical visit he has made to see me in the past 7 years of my diabetes/kidney ordeal, and very much appreciated by me. His generous presence is the essential spirit of our interpersonal friendship. He is always there for me and I try to be there for him. I am indebted to him and all my Irish friends for their unwavering friendship and support thrrugh these nearly three decades. Two weeks ago they held a, "Walk Down Memory Lane", Dinner Party to celebrate my kidney transplant and unite in solidarity with me across the miles. They are truly wonderful people : Father Oliver, ADM of St. Mary's Cathedral in Kilkenny and his Family; Father Dan Bollard, our seminary Spiritual Director, now Parish Priest of Thomastown; Monsignor James Cassin, our Moral Theology professor, former President of St. Kieran's College, now the Irish Bishops' Education Liasion; Father Doctor Dermot Ryan, of Ossory, who recently completed his doctorate in Theology and successfully defended his dissertation in Rome, garnering one of the highest scores recorded in this generation; Brigid Mullins, who with her late husband Michael and their children, have been a mainstay in my life throughout my priesthood and who has remained in constant contact with me by telephone during these harrowing years; Kevin and Geraldine Butler, who we've know from the beginnings of our St. Kieran's experience 27 years ago, when Ger was the new college secretary and Kev whom she was dating then, would arrive to drive her home each evening. Over the past eighteen years we have watched them raise their two children into near adulthood; Michael and Patricia Shortall, our world traveling friends, whose 3 Riverside Drive home in Kilkenny is a home away from home for four decades to innnumerable priests and friends, with their, 'Midnight Straganoff", and 'Bar Shed', of "Patty on the Patio" fame; along with Fathers Martin Tobin, Kieran Cantwell, Paddy Dunne, Paddy Baker; and Liam Campbell and his Family; Kay, Stephen, Paul McDaid and Family; Gerry Cleere; and the man who was the Shepherd of Souls as Bishop of Ossory from 1981 - 2007, and who has become a magnanimous and wonderful friend through all these years, the Most Reverend +Laurence Forristal. I thank him and all the above for their faithful friendship, and congratulate them again on Kilkenny's 4th ALL IRELAND HURLING CHAMPIONSHIP in a row last Sunday.........More to Come on this day later...Fr. Troy