Rose Pillay, centre, greets co-workers at her mother’s funeral. “There stood my colleagues from the superintendents’ office. All of them. I called out to them: ‘My family is here!’ (Submitted photo)
A cradle Catholic born to parents who were
both converts, I am a product, promoter, and beneficiary of Catholic schools.
My inherited faith was nurtured within the trinity of home, parish and school. I attended St. Mary’s Elementary and graduated from Notre Dame Regional Secondary. After becoming a teacher, I returned to my high school alma mater and taught there for 12 years before transitioning to the Superintendent’s Office, where I am an educational consultant serving, supporting, and celebrating the Catholic Independent Schools of the Vancouver Archdiocese.
Reflecting on nearly a quarter century as an educator, I am blessed that Catholic schools are where my professional career and confession of faith intersect. More than a place for learning subjects, Catholic schools are spaces for living sacramentally, living “convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to …” (Pope Francis, Evangeli Gaudium)
Sharing more in common than a timetable, the truth, beauty, and goodness of celebrating the sacraments, participating in liturgy, and praying in community during school made us more family than occupants. Attending former students’ weddings, celebrating their children’s baptisms, or being present at their funerals have been sacred reminders that they were not just my students but saints on their way Home. In these moments when your heart is either breaking or bursting, you remember that teachers are meant to make a difference and not just deliver curriculum.
Like a fish that doesn’t know it is surrounded by water, I took for granted growing up, living, and working in the Catholic school system. I was not aware of the full measure of blessings from being a member of this faith community until my mother passed away in August 2014.
It was then that past and present colleagues and students walked into my grief. Gathering to pray at my home or at church, they came to witness their faith through their selfless acts of love.
The first flowers sent to my home were from my current colleagues, while a former colleague hand-made all the floral arrangements including the casket spray.
Then there was the teacher who drove from Abbotsford with take-out Chinese food for my family. A pair of students from the summer course I taught at St. Mark’s College came to one of the novenas and sang Ave Maria a capella standing on my front lawn. Another former colleague directed an alumni choir for the funeral Mass.
When my mother’s casket was being carried out of the church to the waiting hearse, I followed behind. As the procession turned towards the parking lot, I caught sight of a group of people standing on the grass. One by one I recognized each face: Lucy, Stephanie, Jackie, Phung, Doug, Sandy, John, etc. There stood my colleagues from the superintendents’ office. All of them. I called out to them: “My family is here!”
Scrapbooking the hundreds of sympathy cards, Mass cards, and perpetual novena cards, I found several from the school communities that I support. Returning to work at the start of September 2014, I realized I could not see them as colleagues but as family. I worked with them, but they wept with me.
My mother was always proud that her children became educators for the Catholic school system. She taught me that having a job meant having more people to relate with and to. Co-workers were simply more “relatives,” in her opinion. She encouraged me to talk to strangers because strangers were just “family we have yet to meet.” Strangers were just “distant cousins.”
She taught me to address my elders as “aunts” and “uncles.” She called her co-workers her “cousins” who affectionately called her “Auntie.”
Often I would call her at work, asking for “Anita Pillay.” They had no clue until I asked for “Auntie.”
Even though Ma cared for them as her own parents, her residents (patients) became her other children. Not even divorce, death, or distance would sever people from her multi-branched, grafted family tree. For better or for worse, once she made you family it would be an eternal relationship.
She would be so happy to see how the faith community of Catholic schools is now part of our extended family tree.