Even the different circumstances in which Ken and Joanne left this world seem to correspond, somehow, with the distinct ways they lived in it. On March 2, 2018, while Joanne was at home with Ken and speaking to Daniel on the phone, her heart failed. It was a First Friday, dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and earlier that day she had been to Mass. It was a snowy day, Daniel says, “but that never stopped my mother from going to church. You could usually find her in church, praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.” In the ambulance, Joanne’s heart restarted. (“She always prayed for people in ambulances," Daniel recalls. “It makes you wonder if someone prayed for her.”) Joanne never regained consciousness, but for six days she was visited by priests and all of her children in her hospital room. Joanne died on March 8, at a moment when only Ken was at her side, talking to her and holding her hand. Five years later, as Ken lay dying of cancer, “all he talked about was the Shrine,” Daniel says. Ken was very disappointed not to be present on Eden Hill for the Feast of Mercy. Daniel served in the Adoration Tent as usual, and when he visited his father afterward, Ken eagerly asked how everything had gone. “He wanted to make sure things were done the right way. He was dying of cancer, and all he wanted to do was go help other people.” Ken was delighted when Daniel brought him his volunteer hat and lanyard in the hospital. After Ken died, the hat and lanyard were placed in the casket with him. “Love has to spread and grow,” Daniel says. The friends and family of Ken and Joanne Clough remember them as a couple whose love spread and grew within and beyond their home. “Their charity kept increasing,” explains Daniel. “In Heaven, it won’t stop increasing.” Through their prayers, Daniel believes, his parents will continue to draw souls closer to God. “They’re not going to stop helping people just because they died.” Visit ShrineOfDivineMercy.org/volunteer to honor the Cloughs by taking up the work they loved. a mile from their home so they could visit the Blessed Sacrament. Daniel remembers his mother teaching him and his eight siblings that “you need two things — Jesus in the Eucharist and Mary.” Ken’s journey was different. Ken was not raised Catholic, and although he attended Mass with his wife and children, “he didn’t really buy into it,” says Agnes Bourque. As coordinator of volunteers at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, Agnes got to know Ken well during the final two years of his life. He told her about experiencing chest pains while on a trip to Italy in the late 1990s. Back home, doctors discovered that one of Ken’s arteries was 90 percent blocked; in the hospital, he promised God to start going to daily Mass if he lived. “He kept that deal,” says Agnes. Mary Kay Volpone, provincial coordinator of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception at the National Shrine, also remembers Ken’s eagerness to share his conversion story. Ken told Mary Kay that much of his resistance to Catholicism stemmed from his reluctance to confess his sins to a priest. When he finally converted and received the Sacraments, Ken “was overjoyed that God accepted him and loved him in spite of his past,” Mary Kay says. Daniel witnessed that joy. “You could see the change when he started receiving the Sacraments,” Daniel recalled. “He was more calm, happier.” Pondering in her heart Joanne was more focused on the interior life than Ken was, but she was still warm and open, especially when given a chance to help others grow closer to God. Ken told Mary Kay that, in his volunteer work, he aspired “to do what Joanne did, to be able to talk to people and share, because he saw how much comfort she gave to people.” Mary Kay remembers the couple as an excellent team: “They learned so much from each other. I think Joanne was put in Ken’s life to help him get to Heaven.” Marian Helper • Winter 2023-24 • Marian.org 5 “Their charity kept increasing,” says Daniel Clough of his parents, Joanne and Ken. “In Heaven, it won’t stop increasing.”
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