Paper Angels
I felt as if I’d met her before. Her gestures were calm and familiar. She was knitting when I burst into the room and interrupted her rhythm with a wail. Past the point of pain I could bear, I crossed the threshold into the small waiting room while suffering a moment of untamed grief.
Normally, I would have been self-conscious about such a dramatic show of tears. But on a normal day I wouldn’t be saying good-bye to my momma. On a normal day I wouldn’t have to leave the bedside of the one who had tucked me in, and know I would never see her again on this earth.
I was completely mad at myself. Frustrated that I was too weak to stay and hold her hand through those last moments, I ran to the family waiting room to cry alone. The room had been empty and had provided an echoing silence all weekend. It was a quiet respite with tiny chairs and outdated magazines.
But then I saw her.
She didn’t seem upset that I was a maniac. She glanced over her glasses as if she had been expecting me.
At twenty years old, I couldn’t help but feel a little robbed. My heart already missed my mom. My friends would have their mothers around to answer questions about how to make meatloaf and what to do with a colicky baby. As if those were major concerns. Either way, I wouldn’t know how to do them—at least not the way my mom did.
I plopped down in a rust-colored chair, trying not to wail too loudly and disturb the tiny cubicle of peace. Jerry, my husband of a year, had stayed behind with my mom, dad, and uncle. He was the brave one. He was saying good-bye to a woman who’d become his second mother.
My mom had been unhappy until he called her by what she felt to be her deserved name. “Jerry, you need to call me Mom—I won’t answer to anything else.” She had been determined to nurture his heart.
Jerry had lost his mom at the age of eight; many memories of his mother had faded like a sun-bathed watercolor. And my mom, raising three girls with hormones and bad-hair days, was anxious to claim another son-in-law. Calm and collected, Jerry’s moods were as level as well-placed bricks. Jerry and Mom were a great fit.
And now I didn’t know how I would replace the piece missing in both of our lives.
I’m not quite sure when it happened—maybe when I closed my eyes—but the knitting-lady was no longer knitting. She was tending to me in the worn chair next to mine. Apparently she was ready to console my fears.
Her voice was seamless as her words sewed stitches into my heart. I saw her curly silver hair through the puddles in my eyes. Her hair was like my mom’s, soft and uniform in color. She didn’t appear worried that I might wrinkle her as she pulled me close. And with her sweet hushes, I was a little girl again.
As my mind traveled back, I could hear my mom call my name while she stood on our cement porch. My favorite snack, celery sticks slathered with peanut butter, waited for me inside.
Earlier that morning, I hadn’t wanted to go to school. At the bus stop, I held on to the stop sign, my normally compliant body refusing to let go, while I pushed the patience of the bus driver, who beat on the horn. Kindergarten can be tough for an insecure four-year-old, I suppose. My anxious body melted into the steel pole while Mom in her red robe and fuzzy slippers came to my rescue.
It could have ended badly. But it didn’t. I could have been scolded in front of the last two streets of kids, their noses stuck tight to the windows. But I wasn’t. Instead, my mom’s words were calm and secure, “Let’s go home, Beth-Anne.”
Her fingers gently peeled me from the pole while she stroked my tear-soaked hair.
The woman, hands void of knitting needles, pushed back the wet hair that stuck to my cheeks. “Oh, my dear child, your mom loves you very much.” Her words floated like a hummed lullaby. “God loves you.”
For the next however-many minutes, she reassured me of God’s love and plan for my life. It was as if she knew me. Or that she knew I had read Psalm 23 to my mom earlier that day and was reciting it back to me in a palpable way.
My mom and I had been alone together in her room, a room awake with alarms and respirator puffs, while her body slept in a coma. The doctors assured me that she could hear. Our one-way conversation was intimate as words bounced off of the sterile sheets and sunk into my heart—words that peeled my anxious heart off of my stubborn will, promising calm pastures and a restored soul.
I wanted that. And in a hospital in the saddest of situations, I felt I could have it. I wish I’d have been more observant that day. But my senses were numb, as if dulled by the selfishness of grief. You would think that I’d have been very alert to a complete stranger. Especially one so willing to be used as a giant Kleenex. But there was no time for congenialities; my tears were interrupted by my husband’s sobs trailing down the hall. He came in to tell me what I already knew: My mom was gone. A week before Christmas.
While I helped my father check out of a bed-and-breakfast that evening, the owner, hoping to console me for my loss, handed me a simple but appreciated gift—a paper angel.
That next day, I placed the gift on the top of our tree. It seemed the right spot for such a beautiful little item, as Christmas came quickly that year, leaving me with little motivation to decorate. After Christmas, Jerry, eager to lighten the load, offered to help wrap up the ornaments. That was usually not my favorite chore, and was even more daunting with my heavy heart.
Reaching to the top of the tree, I lifted the paper angel.
“Honey, do you remember the woman who was in the waiting room with me the day Mom died? I’ve been thinking about her.”
Jerry stared at me as if straining to fill in the blanks. “What?”
“You know—the woman sitting beside me when you came in—she had a bag with knitting needles and a blanket. I really don’t know why I didn’t introduce you, but I guess I didn’t even ask her name . . .”
My voice trailed off as I remembered her words of comfort.
My husband seemed confused, either with the wrapping of ornaments or the conversation. Or both.
“Honey, no one was with you in the waiting room; you were all by yourself when I came in.”
And as I thought it through, I really didn’t remember seeing her after he came in.
Hmmm. Now I was the confused one. Had my mental state been so altered?
No, I felt the touch of her hand—I heard her words. But really, what color yarn was she knitting with? What was she wearing?
Questions piled high in my mind. But thinking back, I was so wrapped up in the blanket of grief, I couldn’t see through it. I guess everything seems a little blurry through a downpour of tears.
“No. She was there,” I corrected. “She stroked my hair just like mom used to do. She talked to me about God’s love and told me it would be okay. I’d have gone crazy without her.”
My husband’s sideways glance was all the confirmation I needed. He felt I already had gone crazy.
Logically, I recognized his dilemma. And I had to agree—it didn’t make sense. But then again, life hadn’t made much sense in a while. And true, there were no streams of light, nothing shiny or attention-grabbing about the woman who so willingly kept me company.
“Well, she was a godsend.” My tone sounded cliché even to me.
I stared at the paper angel resting in my hand and traced its subtle etching and delicately placed halo. Suddenly it made perfect sense. I knew then that just one detail was missing from the paper angel—a tiny pair of knitting needles.