I don't even know their names. They were just two women camped out in the visitor lounge outside the palliative care unit of our local hospital. I would learn that they were sisters and that their mother was in the room next to my daughter Jaime's. Jaime, after being diagnosed 9 years earlier, at age 20, with melanoma caused by her tanning bed use, had been a "guest" of this hospital for 5 weeks, and within a couple hours, she would leave us and her pain and suffering behind.
I had left Jaime's bedside for a short break. I went to the lounge and curled up in a recliner, physically and mentally exhausted, with my world taking a deep dive into the darkness that only a mother who has lost their child can know.
My husband came in and gently asked -- "Are you okay?" I snapped back out of my fog with the fury of an injured wild animal -- "My daughter is dying, and you ask me if I'm okay???" My husband, who needed consoling himself, was just lost in my anger and couldn't respond.
Then, as if it had been choreographed and rehearsed to perfection, those two women pulled up chairs on each side of me and took my hands in theirs. One told me the story of how her teenage son was in a horrible auto accident and died in her arms. She told me how painful this was going to be for me; she told me that I would want to die every minute of every day for a very long time. And she told me that it would be the most painful thing I would ever face but that I would survive. She was right about everything.
I returned to Jaime's room, knowing that what was about to happen would be the best thing for my little girl but would rip my heart right out of my body. A few minutes later, the nurse came in with a small stuffed lamb that she said the women next door wanted me to have.
Such a loving gesture ... one that had even more meaning to me than they could ever know. Years before that, Jaime's nephew, my grandson, had died when he was a week old. I had put a little stuffed lamb in his casket with his tiny body. And here I was once again clutching a little lamb for comfort.
You might think all this is coincidence, or fate, or an accident, or maybe pure chance ... but I believe it was more than that. I think people are sometimes put into our lives for a specific reason. I don't know how this happens, but it just does. I am so grateful to those two strangers and have thought about them often over the years. We had a bond, a special moment in time, and I don't even know their names. But I call them "Earth Angels."
Melanoma Mama (Jaime's mom, Donna)
http://www.facebook.com/donna.h.regen
http://www.facebook.com/jaime.regen.rea (Remember Jaime)
https://www.etsy.com/shop/sweetpea321 (Jjem Creations)
http://stores.ebay.com/Sweetpea321 (Jjem Creations)
http://www.facebook.com/BanTheBeds (Pull the Plug on Tanning Beds)
