When Angels pass through your life........

We've had an Angel pass through our lives & touch our hearts. We moved into my husband's Grandfather's old house after he passed away and shortly after our arrival we met our neighbor's Bea and Tyler. They lived next door to each other around the corner from us & had adopted each other. They had often visited my husband's Grandfather while he was housebound and came to meet the people who were taking his place. We too would soon be adopted by this angelic pair.

Bea was a true blessing in our lives while we had her. She was a former Nun who left her order to marry the man she fell in love with and become an Occupational Therapist. Tyler was a boy who lived next door to Bea with his Grandparents that was affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Bea had taken Tyler under her wing from the time he was 18 months old and worked with him to help overcome his physical deficits. He flourished under her care. Soon you couldn't even tell he had any type of issues the way he ran around with all of the other kids & played baseball. She was his rock when his Grandma suddenly became gravely ill and died. They did all sorts of stuff together all the time. She got him to eat veggies & took him on trips to expand his horizons. They went on adventures and learned all sorts of interesting things together.

Bea always had a kind word for each neighbor and would often be seen heading off to prayer meetings, church or Yoga on the beach at dawn. She would accompany the neighborhood widower (also a widow herself now) to dinner and go out dancing with her friends. She helped rescue stray cats and ensured they would be neutered to help control the stray population. She took in other cats who needed homes and loved them like her own children.

She was my Angel in so many ways. She would often pop up at the door just when I needed a couple minutes for myself to take the kids for a walk. Or would always scoot around the corner to stay with the sleeping kids while I ran to store or picked my daughter up from preschool. There were times it was almost as if God had sent her. She never judged if the toys were all over or if I was still in my pj's at 11AM. She would simply say "motherhood is God's work but even mommy's need a break". How true that was!!!

Never did a negative word come from her mouth and anytime she heard of others struggling she'd say quietly; "I'll pray for them" and she did. Her faith was inspiring. She would tell the kids wonderful versions of the Bible stories and encourage such excitement & faith in them as well. She never complained and always found the silver lining in every cloud. Her love would just surround everyone around her and there wasn't ever a time she didn't welcome anybody who knocked at her door. She was always excited to see our latest renovations or the kids' newest work of Art. She would often stop by to play with our kids all the while doing OT types of play with them but making it so much fun they didn't know the difference.

It was this time a year ago that Bea called to tell us she wouldn't be able to join us for our son's birthday dinner & cake as she had since we met. We thought it was odd because she complained of not feeling well and she was rarely sick. It wasn't until she called and begged off for Mother's Day too that we immediately knew something was remiss. I went over after dance class the following day and found her struggling to walk & hold things with her left hand. This was instantly a red flag considering how active & healthy she had always been. We got her appointments with her regular doctor and a Neurologist. When her siblings and nieces & nephews learned of her struggles they came and whisked her off to NY for more doctor visits.

Only to be told that she had terminal Cancer (Brain, Lung, Bone) and to put her affairs in order. Her family didn't know she had already done just that when she had some Basal Cell Carcinomas removed from her eyelids the winter before her diagnosis. I remember thinking when she asked me to come & witness some of the changes with her Attorney that something must be wrong. When I asked her she kept things upbeat and simply said I'm not getting any younger and told me I had other more important things to worry about & changed the subject.
She asked to return home to her cozy cottage on the water where she had spent her married life with her husband. It was a tiny, storybook like cottage they had lovingly surrounded with beautiful flowers and religious figures. It was a place you could escape to and watch the boats go by and listen to the waves.

Her family was all hours away so my husband & I did all we could to help her. We got her things to make her more comfortable. We called and asked old friends to come & visit her and the people just flocked to her door. They would tell us how Bea was tireless in her work as an OT for Special Needs children. Or how she helped them get sober or to find God. Each week we drove her to her doctor's appointments & Cancer center visits and as she endured pain & discomfort she never forgot to thank each person as they finished giving her a Cat scan or fitting her for a Radiation mask. We were meant to help her on her journey back to God; it was a good thing we did because her family didn't know she was Diabetic or had had those Carcinomas removed.

There were frantic calls in the middle of the night when she was disoriented and then one fateful night a call that she'd been taken to the hospital. I kissed my sleeping babies & left them in my husband's care as I made frantic calls to alert all of the family members, friends and her Clergy on the way to the hospital. She had a list of people she wanted called to be with her and her area in the ER was packed with neighbors, Priests, Deacons, some of the family members who were closest.

It was that night we were informed of her Do Not Resuscitate order. There were Clergy there from every church in the area and we all prayed for a quick return to her God she so loved. It was as though she was waiting for others to come & say good bye before she left us. It was a calm, peaceful passing as she quietly stopped breathing and had a peaceful smile on her face. The funeral home, church and reception afterwards were packed and each person had another story to tell of how Bea had impacted their lives. She was loved so dearly by so many.

Its hard to believe she died almost a year ago already because her memory and her love are still so fresh in our hearts. My life has been touched by an Angel and I am a better person as a result. I hope to someday have had the same kind of influence on as many people's lives as our Angel Bea did.