Celebration of Love

Welcome to our CaringBridge site. We've created it to keep friends and family updated. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement during this time when it matters most.

After losing both parents within 44 days of each other with Mom (Susan M. Erickson) passing away on Tuesday, December 29, 2015 and Dad (Richard E. Erickson) leaving this world as we know it on Thursday, February 11, 2015. Dad's life, in a compressed summary, was published in the Boston Globe on Valentine's Day 2016--the day I am writing this. Mom and Dad were both 90 years of age and shared close to seven (7) decades of life and love together.
Richard and Susan Erickson's love for one another, and for their family and friends, is unstoppable. This site will prove that. The love they shared remains in our hearts and minds as we now hold dear those many moments we experienced with them. 

I am creating this new blog for readers who knew, and who didn't know Richard and Susan Erickson. As parents of Sheila (Erickson) Pichette and Lisa (Erickson) Barreto, in-laws to Gary Pichette and Bob Barreto; grandparents to Erik and Lauren Pichette; and an aunt and uncle to other family and non-family members, together, this blog will show how the beauty of love can work in this world. 

An Invitation to You

You are invited to share brief snippets of loving moments in time. It can be a loving moment shared with one or both of our parents. It can be a loving moment shared with our family. Or it can be a loving moment shared by you with someone who changed your life for the better. If you provide a memory is of our Mom or Dad, or a moment with them individually, my sister and I will cherish them throughout the rest of our lives and have something to pass along to our family so they have a resource to go to when they need words of love to inspire them and continue onward. For everlasting love is generational--even amongst those who create their own special family of friends.  Some of these stories will be posted. 

Illness and death cannot remove the spirit of the wedding vows exchanged between those who are mutually able to live them out through the decades:

For better.  For worse.  For richer.  For poorer.  In sickness.  And in health.  To love. And to cherish. Till death do us part. 

Our family saw all of these. And although death parted them for 44 days, when we think of one, we think of the other. Together they showed us their pledge of faith to one another during the better and worse times; the richer and poorer times--although not necessarily viewed to us as financial richer and poorer times. We observed and learned from them what positive actions can be taken despite sickness and during healthy times.  We observed, learned and followed their lead regarding various meaning of the verb "love" and what it truly means to cherish the love that builds up in family relationships and the fellowship of friends. 

Death cannon remove their union. Death cannot remove the daily sometimes simple momentary gifts that we remember--wise words, stories with lessons behind them, poetry shared, music performed and sung together, art and dramatic performances, literature, and greeting cards of many momentous occasions. Richard and Susan Erickson gave us permission to look around us and participate in the miracle of our ability to love as humans.  This "Celebration of Love" blog is ours to share together. Anyone entering it will be provided with loving inspiration while demonstrating ways to live purposefully as we contemplate on how we can continue to make our lives matters.

Our love and endearing gratitude is extended by acknowledging stories within the lives of Richard and Susan Erickson and those voices who came before them. We are recipients of many accumulated blessings that have been passed on to us that we in turn will pass on to newer generations to come.

Our family is grateful for your condolences, your cards with words of faith, hope and love, and the memories you with to share with us that we can turn to when we miss hearing Richard and Susan's voices, their touch and simple sitting with them in silence and prayer. We acknowledge that we have been given great gifts by being born into their loving arms.

Thank you. 


~ Lisa Beth (Erickson) Barreto