What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes part of us.
HELEN KELLER
I WAITED for a long time to have my daughter. I had always assumed I would have children one day but never felt the time was right. There was always one more mountain to climb, one more task to accomplish, and of course there was the question of finding the right mate.
A couple of years after I first moved to Los Angeles, I began dating a wonderful man. David was a film director, and we went on a blind date, set up by a friend of mine. We quickly fell in love. Within a few months, I booked the role of Monica and realized that I would be moving to Utah to film the show; so after we got married, he split his time between Utah and L.A. His work was in L.A., as well as his lovely seventeen-year-old daughter, Vanessa. I was already thirty-five by then, and so I knew that if we were to have children of our own, there was no time to delay.
When I found out that I was pregnant, we were both thrilled, and I couldn’t wait to tell my other family, the cast and crew of Touched by an Angel.
The day came when I felt ready to share my news. We were filming in a jazz club, of all places, and the legendary musician B. B. King was on set. We had been filming onstage and had a lull in the action, so I told B. B. that I had some special news to share with the group. He said, “Can I play a little intro to get their attention?” and I smiled and said yes. He began to play his guitar, and everyone on set turned to see what was going on. When B. B. finished his musical introduction, I turned back to the cast and crew and said, “Well, thanks, B. B., for that lovely introduction to some wonderful news. I’m so thrilled to share with you all—you who have become my trusted friends and who are truly like family to me—that we are adding one more little angel to the family. I’m pregnant!”
Everyone cheered as B. B. began to play again. I turned around, and he came over and began to play to my tummy. My eyes filled with tears with the special introduction my precious baby was getting to the world.
We had quite an interesting time on the series keeping my pregnancy hidden from viewers. Given our filming schedule, we were expected to shoot until early May, and I was due in June. So there were countless scenes where I was carrying coats or large sun hats or shopping bags, or standing behind open car doors or a couch. With other kinds of shows, a pregnancy might have been written into the script, but that wasn’t an option since I was playing an angel!
I chose not to find out whether we were having a boy or a girl, wanting that miraculous surprise at the moment my child was born. But the truth is, when I heard the words “It’s a girl!” I realized just how much I had been hoping for a daughter. And here she was now, in my arms. My own precious, beautiful child.
I named her Reilly, to honor the memory of my mother, Maureen O’Reilly.
As I stared down at my sweet baby girl, I felt something happen within me. Tears streamed down my face, both for the miracle that I held in my arms and for the fact that something I so desperately missed was now restored. I cried in that moment for the mother I had lost and the mother I had now become. I had been filled with longing my whole life for this mother-daughter relationship. Now, with Reilly’s birth, I was given a second chance at that relationship, a relationship I had been missing for more than half of my life. When my mother died, I missed her so much that there was truly a hole in me; the woman I became just grew up around that “hole.” But it was as if Reilly’s birth put a “W” in front of that word and made me “whole” again. As I held my beautiful baby girl in my arms, I cried tears of joy and healing. There is no question that love is a healer. It began in that hospital room; and in the years since, the love has filled me and touched all the old hurts within me. The love Reilly brought to my life has ultimately healed me. She is my special angel. My sweet, beautiful girl. My gift from God.
Motherhood opened up a deep well of love in me, love I didn’t know I had access to. Becoming a mother also helped my faith grow and deepen because it has given me insight into how much God loves us. His unconditional love, His perfect loving. I finally understood just how much God loves each and every one of us. We are, after all, His special children. The depth of my love for Reilly amazes me. And, of course, I then marvel at God’s love for us.
Even though Reilly was born by caesarian section, I had to go back to work just a few short weeks after her birth. But I was blessed to have had the help and support of so many. I’m thankful for Debbie, our amazing nanny, and everyone on set who made me feel so loved. I could not have done it without Linda, my assistant, and the wonderful cast and crew who cared for us. And I was gifted with a schedule that offered some downtime, when I could rock and feed and love on my little baby girl in between my time filming.
Della was a doting grandmother, and our other regular cast member, John Dye, was the perfect, loving Uncle Johnnie. He always called Reilly his little lamb. In the embrace of this extended and loving family, Reilly grew and blossomed; but sadly, the same cannot be said for my marriage to her dad. My dreams of happily ever after were crushed around the time Reilly turned one. We decided to separate, and by the time she turned two, we had divorced.
So for many years, it was just the two of us. Reilly’s dad came to visit her every few weeks, and he was always a good dad and a loving part of her life, but for the day-to-day of it, I was a single mom. Of course we always had Della by our side. I sometimes had family visits from Ireland, when my two half sisters, Ann and Jacinta, would come on their vacations. Reilly always loved the visits from her Irish aunties. But for the most part it was me, my girl, and our two doggies in our big house in Utah. We were best buddies and so incredibly close. We spent all our time together. Once while shopping in a local mall, someone asked me for an autograph. Reilly, who was only four at the time, tugged at my hand and said, “This is my mommy, not TV mommy.”
You don’t know what unconditional love is. You may say you do, but if you don’t have a child, you don’t know what that is. But when you experience it, it is the most fulfilling experience ever.
REGINA KING
Reilly and I had such fun together. We had tea parties for her dolls and stuffed animals, we painted pictures, we played hopscotch, and we pretended to be characters in the movies we watched together while curled up on the couch. We swam in the summer, and we built snowmen in the winter. I adored her and passed all my loving and nurturing into my sweet little girl. I knew Reilly was sometimes confused about the fact that our family didn’t look like a traditional family. I knew she longed to have a mom and dad and siblings who all lived together as other children do. Her dad and sister, Vanessa, lived in another state, and though she saw them regularly, it wasn’t the same. One day a little girl at school said that we weren’t a real family because it was just the two of us. That upset Reilly, and she came home to me in tears.
Oh, my little angel,
you are the flesh and blood
of my flesh and my blood.
It was God who breathed life into you,
and, for me, that was His greatest gift of all.
And now as I watch you sleeping,
I’m still lost in wonder
at the miracle of your birth,
and lost for words to describe
the blessings you have brought me.
Where once my life seemed sometimes empty and futile,
now you fill me up and give me reason to live.
In a world full of suspicion, dishonesty, and distrust,
you, my little angel, are an open book.
When I am weak, you give me strength;
when I am drifting, you are my anchor.
Yesterday I found you weeping over a broken doll,
and I wanted to cry as I held you in my arms.
And when the day comes that I find you
weeping over a broken heart,
I know I’ll want to die,
but I’ll still be here to comfort you.
Oh, my little angel,
whate’er befalls you in the years ahead,
may the Lord above, who gave you to me,
hold you in the hollow of His hand.
Phil Coulter
I tried to explain that no matter what, it’s love that defines a family. I tried to share how much I felt like Della Reese was my mama, no matter that we came from two different places. I went on to tell Reilly about the fact that my family didn’t look “normal” growing up, as I lost my mother when I was ten; so I was a little girl without a mother, and with just my dad to raise us. Other family members helped out when they could, but my father really was a single parent again. He learned to braid my long hair and took me shopping for dresses, and he never wanted me to feel the void that was obviously there from missing Mom. Bless him, he strove so hard to make things okay.
This story seemed to comfort Reilly. She held me tight and said, “It’s you and me, Mama. We are a family.” I kissed her little head and reassured her, “Yes, baby, I will love you forever, and I will always be your mommy.”
I tried to show Reilly that she was part of a big family, too, by taking her to Ireland once a year so we could see my siblings and she could play with her many Irish cousins. I wanted her to know what it means to be Irish, to know the richness of our culture and beauty of our country, since it is such an integral part of who I consider myself to be.
It was a few more years before Reilly and I found the family we’d always dreamed of. And when we did, it was so fun and joyful to be welcomed into the family of Burnetts and feel like we all belonged together. We blended two families into one, often joking that we were like the Brady Bunch; we all felt so fortunate to have found one another. We weren’t a traditional family, so we felt that much more special. We had created something of our own, had taken what could have been just wounds and made something beautiful from them. Love is a healer, a mender. Love has the power to make things whole.
The Beatles were right. All you need is love. Love makes a family, not DNA or background. Love. Just love. Simply love.
All those years ago, as I was in the midst of my divorce, heartbroken and hurting, I didn’t know what was to come. I didn’t know then that many years later, I would sit at my Thanksgiving table, under the tree in my garden, with my family, my husband and my daughter and my two fine stepsons. And that one year we would also include my ex-husband and his nephew, and my husband’s ex-wife and her father, and we would all break bread together, and hold hands and pray, and be thankful to God together for the blessings we have, and for the gift of family, no matter what it looks like.
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
