A monitor beeped to signal that my mom Dayna’s blood transfusion was complete, and I glanced up to see that the clear bag on the IV pole above her hospital bed was empty.
“I’ll get a nurse,” I said, starting to rise from my chair.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Mom replied as she adjusted the cap that covered her bald head. “Someone will be in soon.” She smiled and reached over to the nightstand beside her bed to retrieve a box of chocolate candy.
“Want one?”
“Okay. Thanks.” As I bit into the creamy chocolate, I tried to focus on its sweet scent and ignore the overpowering aroma of disinfectant in the room.
“So …” Mom began, but let her voice trail off for a moment as a rare serious expression crossed her face. An uncomfortably long pause sat between us like an uninvited guest. Was Mom finally willing to talk about faith? Even after being diagnosed with terminal leukemia, she’d change the subject when I tried to ask about her relationship with God. It was just like how she’d been for the more than 20 years I’d tried to talk to her about spiritual things. I wanted her to find salvation; she wanted me to “lighten up.” Now Mom seemed lost in thought about something, so I leaned in closer.
“You know what, Mom?” I said, too eagerly. “God knows what you’re going through, and he cares. He sent Jesus because he loves you and everyone else on Earth…”
“So what has Honor been up to at school?” Mom interrupted with a nervous smile, asking about my 8-year-old daughter.
“Um, well, she’s working on a project about geography where she has to invent a pretend country and design a map of it,” I replied, talking fast. “But as I was saying about God …”
“Oh, there’s the nurse now,” Mom said as she spotted a nurse approaching from the hallway. Mom gestured toward the chocolate box. “Here, why don’t you have another one while she takes down the bag?”
I just sighed and reached for another chocolate. Then, as the nurse worked, I stared at the plastic IV tubes going into Mom’s body and wished I could order her a faith transfusion as easily as her doctors could order a blood transfusion. No matter how hard I’d tried over the years, my efforts to bring Mom to faith had failed – and sometimes even backfired. Once, on a trip we took to Europe, I’d been too zealous about asking her to pray with me inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. She countered that she was just there to see the artwork, and nothing was wrong with that. After I argued that cathedrals were meant for prayer, not tourism, she refused to even step inside the massive church at all.
After that I tried to be more aware of when our discussions about spiritual issues became less like conversations and more like lectures. I started to talk less to Mom about God, and began to talk more to God about Mom. Then, gradually, Mom abandoned her agnostic stance and told me she had come to believe that God exists. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that she was ready to begin a relationship with him. She went as far as coming to church with me on special occasions like Christmas (mostly to placate me), and sometimes she would allow me to pray for her about a current challenge in her life. But she always added the caveat, “Be sure to make it a short prayer.” If I rambled on too long, she’d just cut me off with an “Amen” and a smile that combined both affection and amusement.
Now Mom has been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia and landed in a local hospital for nearly two months of grueling chemotherapy. Doctors didn’t expect her to go into remission, but Mom was willing to do whatever it took to try to gain some more time.
The nurse finished taking down the blood transfusion bag and left the room. I glanced at the clock on the wall; I had to go soon in order to pick Honor up from school on time. “Well, Mom, I’ll stop by your apartment later to pick up your mail,” I said, rising from my chair to give her a good-bye hug and kiss. “I’ll be sure to bring that in with me when I come to visit tomorrow morning.”
“Okay; thanks, Whitney,” Mom replied, the serious expression crossing her face once more. “And um …” She paused, pondering something in her mind, then finally spoke in a near-whisper. “And I haven’t told you the most important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I saw an angel,” Mom blurted out. Then she searched my face carefully to see how I would react.
“An angel?!” I sank back down into my chair. It wouldn’t hurt to be a few minutes late picking up Honor.
“Really,” Mom said, with awe in her voice. “I know it must sound crazy, but it really happened.”
“I believe you,” I assured her. “Angels are real.”
“Yes – yes they are.” Mom’s face lit up with excitement as she told me the story. “It was last night. I was sitting in a chair by the window there while two nurses were changing my bed. And when I first saw the angel across the courtyard, I turned away and thought, ‘I can’t really be seeing what I think I’m seeing.’ But when I looked again, she was still there, looking straight at me.”
“Were you afraid?”
“No, and that’s the funny thing. I felt a lot of peace – more peace than I’ve ever felt before.” Mom reached for my hand and squeezed it. “And she was so beautiful. She was lit from within with a very powerful light that didn’t hurt my eyes when I looked at her. And those wings! Such intricate designs, like ripples of white, cream, and chestnut brown that matched her brown hair.”
Mom paused to let me speak, but I decided to do something wiser instead – listen.
“The angel raised her hands and started gesturing toward me like this,” Mom said, moving her hands gracefully back and forth in a circular sweeping motion. “And then she sent me something.”
“What was it?”
Mom shook her head. “I have no idea. But there were about four or five of them. They looked like oval-shaped bits of energy. The outlines of the ovals were like glowing gold, and the insides were transparent. They came out of the angel’s hands, across the courtyard, through the window, and into my chest.” Mom studied my face again as if she was afraid I might laugh at her.
But I leaned in closer and embraced her instead. “Did you feel anything when that happened?”
“No – nothing physically. But now …” Mom searched for the right words. “It was all so overwhelming! I didn’t believe much before. But now, I’m a true believer!”
Lung scan results later that day showed that the angel’s mysterious bits of energy had apparently cleared up severe pneumonia in Mom’s lungs. And a bone marrow test revealed another gift – Mom had gone into remission, much to her doctors’ surprise. But the greatest gift of all was the change in Mom’s soul.
After God showed Mom that he loved her so much he was even willing to send one of his heavenly messengers her way, Mom began to seek him in earnest. And for the rest of the time she had left to live – until she passed away two months later from an infection – she initiated the conversations about God. I didn’t have to ask her permission to pray with her anymore, because she was eager to pray (and even those long prayers were fine). Through the angel He’d sent, God blessed Mom with just enough time to place her trust in him.
Shortly before she died, Mom had gotten up the courage to tell the story of her angelic encounter to a few people, like my sister Courtney, a nurse at the hospital, a hospital chaplain, and a pastor from our church. And she let me interview her so I could keep telling her story after she was gone. I sat in silence, scribbling down notes, knowing that the best gift I could give Mom wasn’t talking – it was simply listening.