"Remembering"

Once again this year, September and October brought a bagful of solicitations for money from religious organizations who wanted to "remember" my loved ones for me in November. And the vast majority of them never mentioned why they wanted to do this or what good it is supposed to do. I look in vain for the word "purgatory" or phrases like "suffering souls", "poor souls", or "the punishment due to sin". It does make selecting to whom I will donate an easier task. I can "remember" my father by myself. And rather more easily, too, since I knew him and they didn't. So I needn't send them anything.

The other much smaller group who promised to pray to shorten my father's time in purgatory are another case altogether.