On our tenth anniversary we went out for a very romantic dinner. As we were reminiscing about our wedding day, I asked her why she decided to marry me. Without hesitation she said, “Because you were reliable”. I thought, “Oh great, she thinks of me like a Toyota – they’re reliable.” Then she added, “and I always knew I could count on you”. And I knew I could count on her as well because that was the reason I asked her to marry me. So that commitment to each other was the foundation of our marriage.

At her funeral mass, one of the people who spoke was our close friend Rabbi Stacy. At the end of her eulogy, she said, “Those of you who know John well know that most of his sentences start with three important words – ‘Here’s the deal’. John’s deal with Maureen was that he was going to walk with her, through thick and through thin, in health and in sickness, in this world and the world to come. Eternal means eternal. After all, as John would say, a deal is a deal.”

Maureen and I did have a deal and she would have done the same for me.