When my first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage, I didn’t
think I’d ever recover. Signs of trouble early on resulted in an ultrasound displaying a
heartbeat. This only amplified my devastation when at three months, just
as I thought I was heading into the clear, I lost the baby.
It was difficult to return to work as I was surrounded by
women at different stages of pregnancy. A few days later I was coming back from
my lunch break when I found a card on my desk. Tucked inside was a guardian
angel pin and a note from a co-worker. Barbra and I were only casual acquaintances.
She worked down the hall from me and when we crossed paths, we would chat.
Unbeknownst to me she had suffered the same loss I was now experiencing and
wanted to offer me some encouragement. Enclosed in the card was a guardian angel pin.
“Now your little angel can be with you always”, she had written. This gesture
had been a turning point in my grief and I could begin looking at things in a
different way. Yes, I had lost a child. But I had made an angel; an angel that
would be with me always.
My first Christmas divorced I was having a hard time
motivating myself to decorate. I was not in a festive mood and the thought of
sharing my kids for the holidays saddened me. I just didn’t have the energy to
make the fuss, yet I knew that I should with two young children. Then a good
friend called out of the blue. Having been through a divorce herself, she
guessed that I would be having a difficult time. She remembered feeling
overwhelmed her first Christmas alone and wanted to make things as painless for
me as possible. She said that she and her boyfriend would pick the kids and me up
that Friday with their truck and head to the lot. All we had to do was choose a tree and
they would bring it back to our house…simple and easy. Her thoughtfulness
brought a great sense of relief for me and as I decorated that tree with my kids,
I thought of how miraculous her timing had been and how grateful I was.
My father’s first significant indication of dementia came suddenly
one January evening. He had been irritated, argued with my mother, and stormed
out of the house in a rage. It was the middle of the night, he was 87 years old,
and there was a foot of snow on the ground. By the time my mother caught up to him, he was
a good distance away and walking directly in traffic on one of the busiest
streets near their house. Just as she approached, my mother noticed that a
young couple had pulled over. They were out of their car, one on either side of
him, walking down the center of the road with my dad keeping him safe. They
stayed with him until help arrived and then quickly disappeared. We never did
find out who they were, but those kind souls showed up exactly when my father
needed them to.
A few years ago, a friend unexpectedly lost her son. After the funeral, I was out walking around a
plaza meandering mindlessly in and out of shops. In one store, I was drawn to a
huge display of rocks. Each had an inspirational word carved in it. From the
pile, I pulled a rock that had the word “Strength” etched across. I immediately
thought of my friend and a little voice inside urged me to buy it for her.
In the moment, I felt silly, though. She had just lost her son- and this was a
rock. How dumb an idea. So, I left the store. But the feeling plagued me, so
much so,that I returned shortly after and purchased the rock. I sent it off to
her in a little package and the day it arrived I received a text. “How
could you know?” she said. “How could you know that every day I wake up, look
in the mirror and tell the woman in the reflection- YOU ARE STRONG?"
I think sometimes when we want to do something for someone, we second guess ourselves. We are afraid of
how our actions, even if heartfelt, may be received. We wonder if our gesture comes at the wrong time or if it may bring more pain. But whenever I hesitate, I
remind myself of the many occasions when I was the beneficiary of another’s
kindness at exactly the right time. Barbra
didn’t know me that well, but her small gesture helped me look at loss in a
different way and begin the steps to heal. It was an assumption on my friend’s
part about how I may be feeling about the holidays. That assumption was correct and led to my
spirits being lifted. The couple just driving down the street had no
idea who my father was, or anything about him. They just knew that in that
moment he was someone who needed help and they acted.
And I could have never known that a small token I thought may
be irrelevant would mean so much to a friend who was struggling to stay tough in
the face of grief.
Whenever we choose to act in kindness, it is never the wrong
thing to do.
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