As the dream continued, Marie Thérèse looked for people to read B’s telling of the incidents to accompany the illustrations.

When she woke up, the dream was very vivid. She thought about it, and suddenly it hit her. Why not? It was do-able—though obviously not by just Janet, and not in 24 hours!

She went to Cathy Mitchell, the local director of MH Combermere, who encouraged her to discuss the idea with Susanne, the director general of women. Susanne said to go ahead.

Marie Thérèse had planned to use memories prior to Catherine’s time in Friendship House. But then, that day at Mass, she felt Catherine near her after Communion, Catherine saying, “Get someone to illustrate the time I first met Eddie.”

So Marie Thérèse asked Janet to do that one.

Marie Thérèse, who coordinated the whole presentation, spent countless hours researching Catherine’s writings, choosing the memories to be used, and selecting music to be played before the reading of each memory, music that fit its mood and place.

She sent notes to various individuals and also put out a general request to the community asking people to do the illustrations.

People enthusiastically signed up and created their art pieces in various mediums—ceramic, wood, leather, paint, photography, collage, fabric, pencil, embroidery, and multi-media.

Chuck Sharp and Peter Lyrette photographed each art work, and Marie Thérèse, Renée Sylvain, and Theresa Girard assembled a slide presentation of those photographs and made an accompanying audio tape of the readers and music.

About fifty-five people were involved in the project in one way or another.

The night of the slide presentation, Helen Hodson and Reyna Smith artistically displayed all the art pieces all around the auditorium. Each was unique, each exuded life and creativity; each was beautiful, imaginative, delightful.

How to convey how beautiful it was! How to share it with you? We can’t show you the live presentation, but we did the next best thing. We shared the earliest memories and some of the illustrations in the February 2006 printed edition of Restoration. We’ll be sharing more of them in the future.