Mom taught me all about angels.  She told me that God was way too busy to be taking care of each and every person on the planet.  After all, he has to take care of billions of stars and millions of other planets.  So, because he loves each of us so dearly, he gives us a guardian angel who silently watches over us.  If we get into trouble, then this guardian angel lends a helping hand.

The whole idea of having a guardian angel watching over me at all times was a little frightening at first, but it was wonderful to think about as well.  My mind was full of questions.

“If God gives me a guardian angel, why can’t I see him.”

“Well, if you did get to see him, you would become so interested in him that you wouldn’t have time for your mom and dad and all your friends.”

“Oh, I see.  My guardian has to stay invisible.  And I bet he’s not interested in playing softball or in climbing trees.”

“Right, you are, my son.  In fact, since everyone has a guardian angel, it would create a real mess if they were all visible.  Think of yourself at school when everyone’s guardian angel is visible.  Your classroom would be crowded and it would be impossible to pay attention to your teacher with all these wonderful angels moving around.”

“Yeah, you can just bet that Sister Matilda would be really mad if these guardian angels began putting on a show.  You can bet that she would slap her ruler on her desk and tell them all to sit down quietly in the aisles. Then she would tell them to turn their lights down so they would be almost invisible.”

“Good thinking, my beautiful, intelligent son.”

That evening, when we knelt down side by side at the edge of my bed, my Mom taught me the special prayer for my guardian angel.  She explained that my guardian angel would enjoy knowing that I was aware of his presence.  Thus, “our little prayer” was our way of thanking him for his tireless presence.

My Mom said each part of the prayer slowly and clearly, and I tried to repeat everything after her.  Some of the words were new to me.  But that was OK.  As Mom says, “It was the thought that counts.” 

The Boy with a Hole in his Heart

When I was eight-years-old, an unexpected tragedy struck my family.  I deliberately crafted this story to take on the form of a "fairy tale" that I learned from my mother.  My story, consequently, has some fanciful and magical elements that serve to highlight how I, as a young boy, experienced the tragic events surrounding the death of my mother. My story goes like this:

Once upon a time, there lived a simple tailor [my father] who was a midget. He had the good fortune to marry a noble and gifted lady named Emma [my mother]. In due time, Emma bore the tailor his first-born son. But this was no ordinary mother, and this was destined to be no ordinary son.

As an infant, feeding upon the milk from his mother's breasts, this male child grew exceedingly strong and large. At two months, he weighed what most infants weigh at four. At six months, he could already pull himself to his feet hanging on to his mother's dress and could babble a few indistinct words—feats normally associated with children at twelve months. And so, this marvelous progress continued for years. Everyone marveled at the strength and vitality of Emma's son.

Left by himself, this child would have been quite ordinary. Emma made the difference. She had the gift of taking what was small and insecure and kneading into it her own goodness and power. As a wife, she had considerably enlarged the size and stature of her husband, the tailor. In fact, while she lived, anyone who had not known him earlier would never have imagined that he had once been a midget. Thus, the marvelous effect Emma was having upon her first-born son could be seen as a continuation of the marvelous transformation that had earlier graced the boy's father.

But the gremlins grew jealous. They plotted in secret how to bring this extraordinary family to naught. After much planning, they brewed a strong poison called "cancer" into which they dipped a fine-looking apple. This poisoned apple was slyly placed in the fruit bowl of Emma's cheerful kitchen.

The next day Emma ate this apple, but she was too much in possession of life to die. Others would have died after just one bite, but not her. She became ill, all right, but just as quickly recovered. The infuriated gremlins set their efforts to concentrating the poisonous "cancer" and contaminating more of her food. Thus, she took ill with increasing regularity, but she always appeared to recover. Yet, over a period of three years, the poisons had gradually weakened her system so massively as to bring about a prolonged sickness that ate away at every part of her soul and her body.

The tailor gradually showed signs of deterioration as well. With no one to hold him, to rub his hairy chest at night, and to blow life-giving breath between his lips, the poor man gradually lost both his strength and his stature. Within a few months after his wife's death, he had become a midget again, just a little larger than he had been before he first met Emma.

In parallel fashion, after Emma's death, there was no one to kiss her first-born son each morning and tuck him in bed and read to him fairy tales at night.  Now he came home from school each day and entered a house where no one greeted him with hugs and no one made him hot chocolate and cookies.  No one asked him what he had learned at school, what games he played at recess, and what was the condition of his heart. So, with his mother absent and no one prepared to take her place, it is no mystery that the eight-year-old boy ceased to grow as he had done before.

If one could peer inside this little boy (shown in pic), one would notice that portions of his heart had slowed down and other parts had stopped functioning entirely. Decay set in. Like dead leaves, some portions of his heart actually rotted and left behind a gaping black hole.

Grief blocked by my Dad and my Aunt

When my mother died, I had no choice but to model myself more and more after my dad. Duty, obligation, and will-power were the character traits that mattered most in his life.  Under the rubric of "being strong," he never allowed himself to shed a single tear in the presence of his children. He told us in a calm voice, "There was nothing that could be done to save your mother.  We have no choice but to go forward as though nothing has happened." According to my Dad, the grief, anger, and fear occasioned by our mother's death were of no account.  We must "go forward as though nothing had happened."

My mother got sick and died just before I turned eight.  I remember vividly kissing her cold, pale-pink cheek as she lay motionless and dead in the metal box (casket) placed in the living room of our home.  One of my beloved aunts noticed my kiss. She rushed to my side and took me in her arms and confided to me, "God must have loved your mother very much to have taken her to Heaven to live with him so early." 

I had every reason to accept her well-meaning advice.  After all, I firmly believed that God loved my mother very much. Yet, in the years that followed, when I began to suffer daily the full measure of my mother's absence, I began to ask myself how God could be so good to my mother at the same time that he was so cruel to me and my family.  As I saw it God already had his own mother, Mary, with him in Heaven.  He didn't need another mother.  I, on the other hand, was very much in need of my mother. God may have loved my mother very much as my aunt suggested, but he was surely "a cruel monster" when it came to leaving me and my family to suffer the rest of our lives without her.

Uncle Lee returns from the war

After my Mom was buried, everyone in our family was careful never to mention her death in my presence. Thus, my Dad’s words were very accurate: We must "go forward as though nothing had happened." I, on the other hand, was keenly aware of my Mom’s death every single day.  Mom was the one who made the sandwich and raw carrots that I ate for lunch at school.  Now, I was making the sandwich and cutting the carrots.  Mom was the one who greeted me when I arrived home after a day at school.  Now no one greeted me.  More importantly, no one asked me what I had learned at school, what games I played at recess, and what was the condition of my heart.  Mom was the one who washed the supper dishes while her son read to her from a story book.  Now I was doing the dishes in silence and taking out the garbage each day.

My Dad was now like a ghost in the house.  He never asked me about what was happening at school or what I was learning in the Boy Scouts.  He never asked me about my fascination with rockets.  As it happened, I was taking the heads off of stick matches and using the chemicals to propel my amateur rockets that shot up into the air some thirty feet. He never knew anything about my personal life and, truth to be told, he never even suspected that I had a personal life outside of our home.  The only time he spoke to me is when he wanted to teach me how to prepare some favorite Slovenian recipes such as “pigs in a blanket.”  He got into the habit of giving me commands, “The lawn needs cutting.  I want you to cut it right after school today.”  The only activity that we did as a family was to go to the ice cream parlor and have “a treat” together.

Six months after my mother’s death, my Uncle Lee returned home following the bloody reconquest of North Africa and Italy.  Our whole family gathered together at our home.  Uncle Lee wore his kaki uniform.  All of us were very proud of his military service.  I was amazed that he gave me his pup tent because he had learned that I was camping with the Boy Scouts. Then, in the midst of laughing and talking, all of a sudden, Uncle Lee asked, “Where’s Emma? I haven’t hugged her yet.”  An embarrassed hush spread over the crowd. Then someone blurted out, “Didn’t you know that Emma died of cancer?”  And, at this, Uncle Lee suddenly burst into tears. This was the tacit permission I needed to join him.

Uncle Lee was the only adult male in my family that shed public tears for Emma. I was secretly proud of my Uncle Lee, and he caught on to this and gave me some special attention in the years that were to follow.  Uncle Lee was surrounded by death in North Africa and Italy.  His flow of tears upon hearing of the death of my Mom was so genuine and spontaneous that no one dared fault him. I learned that, in matters of the heart, my Dad was not to be trusted.