My Christmas Miracle: A widower in Rome, 2006
14 years ago, widowed almost 11 months, I journeyed to Rome at Christmas. Somewhat of a pilgrimage for me as my first/late wife, Kim, had played there some 20 years earlier as a part of a touring Euro-American youth orchestra. Even before she got sick, she told me wonderful and inspiring stories about her trip, and we talked about traveling there together someday. That never happened as she passed in early February. On Christmas eve, after having a wonderful meal of homemade pasta and the local house wine at a local osteria, I meandered through the winding and tight back streets from my "neighborhood" for the week, Piazza della Rotonda, over the Tiber River to the majestic and pretty overwhelming and crowded main thoroughfare that runs through Vatican City up to St. Peter's Piazza. Along with thousands of other shivering folks who, like me, didn't have a ticket to enter the magnificent church, we nonetheless experienced a unique Christmas Eve as Pope Benedict presid...