Angels Among Us

I found myself feeling sad this week. Maybe it was because my husband was away for business and I missed him. It was deeper than that, though, a deep sense of loss creeping in beneath the hubbub of everyday life. It wasn’t any one thing, but seemed highlighted by the events echoing through my life.

On Wednesday, for example, I began saying good-bye to a beautiful friend and helper who assists us with cleaning our home. Ausra is returning to Lithuania to her family, something that brings her great delight, in spite of the challenge of leaving. I was struck at how sad I was to see her go, how much a part of the fabric of our family she has become even though we only see her every two weeks.

"I have always liked taking care of people," she said once when I told her how much I appreciated her hard work. “This is not hard,” she smiled at me from atop a ladder, a special favor she was doing for us by washing the windows—in 100 degree humid weather. Before coming here, she graduated from college where she studied the craft of designing costumes for theater. In her spare time, as a hobby, she creates needlework that rivals that of professionals.

We had another woman help us when we lived in New Hope, PA many years ago. Her name was Cristina and she was from Poland. She spoke very little English, but somehow we managed to communicate very well. She was a tiny woman with biceps that resembled that of a bodybuilder. She showed me how she would lift the vacuum cleaner like a barbell to make herself stronger, and how she did handstands in her spare time.

She too returned to her country after a year or so of being here. She too was always cheerful, going above and beyond what she was here to do—fixing a picture frame with a rubberband, bringing me Polish medicine from a small shop in Trenton and refusing to let me pay for it when I had a bad cough that wouldn’t go away.

The other person who has been very much on my mind lately has been my client Michele. About four years ago, I had the honor of meeting with this magnificent woman regularly to give her Reiki treatments as she battled a serious form of aggressive cancer. Within a short year of receiving the diagnosis, she was dying, resisting this idea, while also preparing to say good-byes to her two young sons and husband.

She was another person full of light and love and service. As she prepared to pass from this earth in her own way--at this time of year, in fact--she brought together a whole community of loving women who would meet in her home and learn about alternate ways of healing and improving their lives. She did this not just as part of her own exploration but also to serve, to share with others. While she may not have realized it, she gave as much if not more than she asked to receive.

Michele called me her spiritual healer, although in so many ways, by letting me into her life the way she did, she was really mine. She finally passed only a few days before my husband Jim and I left for our three-month cross-country trip in 2002 and the memorial service was synchronistically scheduled for the day before we departed.

As I was taking my daily walk with my son Devin the other day, thinking these thoughts, I noticed something outside a neighbor’s house I hadn’t before. It was a rock carved with the following poem, perhaps in honor of a deceased pet.

Our hearts still well with sadness
Secret tears still flow
What it meant to lose you
No one can ever know.

There is a magic, I believe, to those people who enter our lives and then pass out of them again, seeming simply like mere acquaintances, but who forever leave their footprints on our hearts. I feel so thankful to have met these miraculous women whose spirits have become woven throughout my life. Each, in their own way, taught me what it really means to be grateful, to love life, and to serve.

Each of us have a story within us of loss—as well as all we’ve gained from those we’ve loved—that is difficult to touch let alone share with others. The greatest gift we can give as we’re on this earth, I believe, is that of ourselves.