Dear Friends:
Please help us celebrate Christmas this year by joining us in a short memorial to our nephew, Ethan Michael Maus, the son of Tom’s sister, Kathleen, and her husband, Joe. After providing us all with a collection of memories we will always treasure, Ethan passed away unexpectedly in August at nine days of age.
Ethan had a few opportunities to smile during his short time here, and we know that he still looks to each of us in our difficult hours, awaiting another opportunity to share a smile with each of us. Though we can’t avoid the suffering caused by such a painful loss, we want to honor Ethan’s memory by suffering proudly, not miserably. The memory of Ethan’s radiant smile makes our heavy hearts merry, and we still believe that a merry heart provides good medicine for the soul.
We wish Ethan would have lived for us to tell him in person about our trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico this past January. We know he would have liked to hear how badly we butchered the romantic language of Spanish and sullied the lush Mexican scenery with our lily-pale hides. We wish we could have shown him the attached photo, in which Aunt JoAnn poses with two spider monkeys and a crude, obnoxious beast that shall be forever known from this point forward as “The Scourge of Quintana Roo.”
Aunt JoAnn’s dedication to school, family, and job would have provided such a good example to Ethan, and we’re sure he would have giggled along with Uncle Tom while pointing at certain pictures in JoAnn’s anatomy and physiology textbook.
We think Ethan would have listened wide-eyed to the story of Aunt JoAnn’s participation in the complete remodeling of her Mom’s dining room, a project surely inspired by one of the few television shows with any redeeming value whatsoever: Extreme Makeover/Home Edition. We believe that Ethan would have found that program almost bearable to watch, if only the host would quit shrieking into his bullhorn. Ethan would have learned how not to help with such projects through Uncle Tom’s example, which involved handing incorrect tools to JoAnn, holding nails unsteadily while she hammered, and cursing at appropriate as well as inappropriate times.
Ethan would have learned how to conduct himself during his years of employment by doing exactly the opposite of Uncle Tom, who quit yet another job in July, thus bringing his career combined total of joyous resignations and raucous firings to well above double figures. We think Ethan would be surprised and entertained to learn how Tom prepared for his new job by picking up after Avery the dog in the backyard.
We wished so many more things for Ethan that we’d like to tell you about, but we know you are all busy preparing to celebrate the birth of another very important Child, so we appreciate the moment you have shared to help us remember him. The best gift we can give in thanks for your time is to remind you, right now, to close your eyes, open your heart, and remember the smile of a child in your life.
