CHAI time chaldeans
CHAI time chaldeans conNecting community events in and around metro detroit august 2009 [Wednesday, August 5] Cigars: Monthly “Smokandoah” event includes appetizers and cash bar. 6:30-9 p.m., Shenandoah Country Club. Guests welcome with a member. [Thursday, August 6 - Sunday, August 9] Retreat: The Emmaus Retreat is a four-day young adult retreat aimed at spiritual conversion and renewal based on Sacred Scripture and Chaldean Spirituality. Subiaco Retreat House in Oxford. Kristina Awdish, (248) 909-6786 or kristinayou@gmail.com. [Saturday, August 8] Music: A concert including all the Chaldean church choirs takes place at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph Chaldean Catholic Church in Troy. See a member of your church choir for tickets. [Thursday, August 27] Chaldean Chamber: Quarterly Networking Meeting runs from 6-8 p.m. at Comcast Newsmakers Studio, 27800 Franklin Road, Southfield. Hors d’oeuvres and raffle prizes. RSVP to (248) 538-3700 or lkalou@ chaldeanchamber.com. [Sunday, August 9] Reunion: All members of the Sitto family are welcome to a family reunion at Camp Chaldean. Noon-10 p.m. Call (248) 762-4424 or (586) 484-3131 for details. [Friday, August 14 — Saturday, August 15] Comedy: Third Annual Arab American Comedy Show takes place at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn. For tickets, visit www.mizna.tv. [Saturday, August 15] Golf: The Coalition of Pregnancy Centers presents Ace For Life, a golf outing at Fox Hills in Plymouth, with cash prizes and hole-in-one contests. Foursomes start at 0 per golfer. (313) 277-5637 or www.aceforlife.org. [Saturday, August 15] Dream Cruise: It’s the 15th year for the popular classic car cruise, which runs along Woodward Avenue from Seven Mile to Pontiac. www.woodwarddreamcruise.com. [Saturday, August 15] History: Annual Historic Theater District 4.5-hour walking tour includes the interiors of nine of Detroit’s historic venues and lunch at the Detroit Opera House. Tickets are . http://preservationwayne.org. [Saturday, August 22 — Sunday, August 23] Music: Third Annual Chaldean Music Festival at Camp Chaldean near Brighton. Entertainment, food, children’s rides and more. The BMW raffle drawing takes place on Sunday at 8 p.m. [Saturday, August 22 — Sunday, August 23] Festival: Fourth Annual Big Fish Festival takes place in Keego Harbor at Roosevelt Elementary School. The fun includes entertainment, food, artists, a boat raffle, fish-casting contest, martial arts exhibition, canine show and a bike-themed bike parade at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at Cass Lake and Orchard Lake roads. For exhibit information, call (248) 682-1510, ext. 31. Advanced Family Care of Commerce America’s Best Doctors are in your neighborhood Need a doctor? Advanced Family Care of Commerce 4123 Martin Road, Suite 102 Commerce Twp, MI 48390 Phone: (248) 366-3700 Access Center 1-888-DMC-2500 www.dmc.org Evening and weekend appointments are available Care For Your Entire Family We’re experts. We listen. We’re close. We care. Gary Sarafa, M.D. Associate Professor, Family Medicine, Wayne State University Any hospital can say their doctors are the best. At Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital, our patients say it for us. 12 CHALDEAN NEWS AUGUST 2009
two years later… -The Binno Family Some say that with time things will get better. Others tell us to be happy for, “He is in a better place.” There are those who say nothing because they do not have the right words to say. And there are those who say we have no Faith; others say we have lost our faith; but we say … Faith is what keeps us going. Faith is what brings our heads off our pillows still soaked in tears, from the night before each morning and what allows us to walk around with a fake smile so people do not know the truth of how broken we are. Faith is why we continue; it is what keeps us alive. 2007…what a year. From the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq; from the beginning of the 2008 country recession … 2007 was a hard year and yet the world kept spinning. And even closer to home, within our own Church community events shook people into an alarming reality … Death! Deaths of family members and friends; old and young; sick and healthy; poor and rich. Learning that no matter how much money or knowledge you have, no matter of your age or health NOTHING will interrupt the plan of God. Hearing how people had to burry their grandparents, friends, parents, and worse of all … their own children. Families left broken with nowhere to turn except to God. 2007 is a year that many will not forget. But although there were many events that will be remembered by the world forever, there was another event, one that not the entire world knows of ... an event that we will never forget nor will anyone in our family. Just the thought of the year brings shivers to our bodies and tears to our eyes, our hearts begin to beat rapidly and are bodies become numb … 2007 is the year we lost the core of our family; the center; the heart … 2007 is the year Ryan Binno lost his life and we, his family, learned the true meaning of death. 2007 is the year in which we came to question ourselves and wonder if we are the cause that God chose to take away such a loved brother and son; one whom was cherished and respected. Not many people realize just how hard it is to lose a sibling or child. No one who has not been through it can understand or feel how it changes and affects your life. Two years later on the anniversary of Ryan’s tragic accident, a year after that devastating event and still we don’t feel that we are getting stronger, yet we know on an emotional level, that what happened nearly killed our family. Feeling the guilt and anger as though we could have, would have, should have done something, combined with the dreaded awareness that others we love could leave this earth just as quickly, was enough to make us want to shut down for good. The odd thing is that we all had to get up the next morning and actually live our lives even though we felt our souls have died and our hearts had stopped beating. “A tragedy will make you stronger” they said. And even today we want to question them, to tell them how it feels to be a part of our family at this point; I want to know, “How? How is it now that we are supposed to be stronger? The days that have followed the loss of our dear Ryan have been unbearable. Our family was torn apart and none of us would ever be the same, especially our Father and Mother. Our mother started to tell us gradually how she felt, she said that, “when you have children one day and carry them in your stomach for nine months and raise them you will feel your children’s every hurt, sorrow and pain”; “My purpose of a mother is to immediately know what my children need and live every day and to protect them”; and “I never thought a day would come where I would want to hide away from people and not know how to face them. I feel like I am living every day with cancer in every part of my body and people say ‘you cannot be like this, you have to move on, you have to live your life’ and I would say ‘Huh, only if they could feel or see my insides.’” Our father says, “I feel like a dead body walking every day” and “the worst thing in the world is having to bury your own child. It is the most terrible kind of grief especially knowing even time can’t make it any better. Raising a child from birth, watching him as he takes his first steps and losing his first tooth, all the way to watching him walk across stage for high school graduation …then with in a snap of two fingers he is gone from our lives and there is nothing you can say or do to bring him back.” Not a single hour passes that we do not pray, that we do not ask that the great Lord keeps our Faith strong and alive. Although we constantly question why this would happen to a good Catholic family; why the Lord would take away the most important thing we had; why it couldn’t be another day; why we couldn’t PAID FOR BY THE FAMILY OF RYAN BINNO stop it; why; why such a good guy who didn’t deserve to die; we know that Faith is the only hope we have of seeing Ryan again. Faith is the only thing that reminds us that he is alive and watching over us. Faith is the reason we continue to live our lives. Faith is the reason we live our lives better, so that one day the Lord and Ryan open the gates to the place we long to reach … Heaven. We will mourn for the things that we’ll never see with him, the fun and celebrations we’ll never share and those special moments in our lives when he won’t be there. We will continue to remember the past, live in the present, and await the future. There is a constant feeling of something missing but you don’t know what it is. We might smile, have fun, celebrate, joke, and laugh but for the rest of our lives we will all live with a huge hole in our heart that will never be filled again. To those who have lost loved ones you know how it feels and to those who haven’t we ask of you to cherish your loved ones, live every moment as if it will be your last, keep your Faith and pray for others. Life on Earth is short but life after Earth is eternity… “Happy 25th Birthday Ryan and Happy 2nd Birthday in Heaven. Your soul will live forever” August 25, 1984 - July 8, 2007 AUGUST 2009 CHALDEAN NEWS 13
