Glimpses of “Another World”

Catie getting ready to go after the whipped cream cake my friend Marcia made her on her first birthday!  Matthew is ready to help.

We returned from Lourdes refreshed. There was no miracle, but Catie continued to progress as long as we brought the world to her. She remained passive in all her expressive abilities: large motor, small motor, and oral motor. However, her affect remained bright and her receptive skills were continuing to grow nicely. Over the next weeks and months, she learned her major body parts, all the familiar objects in her daily routine (cup, cookie, eat, blocks, book, hungry, kiss, everyone’s names, etc., etc.). She could pull to stand using only her right hand, manipulate objects with her right hand and her mouth, take steps if we held her hands, and as her first birthday approached, she was saying “Good girl”, “Gonna get up. Gonna get out.” (from her crib every morning), Dada, Mama, and quite a few more words. When she crawled, she had a kind of hitching move that she would do because of the spasticity in her left arm (She held it close to her body and flexed tightly). I would always say “Catie, use your other hand too.” She’d then place both hands on the floor crawling correctly for a few moments.  Sometimes Cate would be moving on the floor on her own, and I’d here her say to herself “Odder hand. Odder hand.” She’d then put her left hand down on the floor and crawl as I would have told her to do! She had internalized my instruction and was anticipating it. How smart was that?

I made a list of her receptive words, including objects, verbs and people in her life, and tested her many times with the objects themselves and with pictures. When she did well with colored photos or flashcards, I went to black and white line drawings that were more abstract and she knew them too. Cate was doing well. At six months of age, the developmental specialist at the Newborn Follow-Up Program at AMC placed her two weeks behind her age. Since she had been so sick and in the NICU for two weeks, both Dr. Pickering and I thought she was on target or very close.

Life continued to be hectic. Appointments daily with Catie’s educational program. There were frequent neurological, orthopedic, and pediatric medical appointments too.  There were also constant blood draws, EEG’s, and appointments with orthotists and special equipment vendors. The boys were needy too because they were all so young. When things were tense with me and/or Mark they would pick up on it and act out. Children sense what’s going on and our kids clearly did. Mark’s job was demanding and he juggled and finagled to get time off for medical appointments. We had few breaks and little to no outside help. Money was getting tight without my part-time income and with our additional expenses. We thought maybe we would have to sell the new home we had just built. Not only would that have been emotionally difficult., but the turmoil of a move in the midst of everything else, would have been monumentally hard to deal with for all of us. We had neighbors that were our friends, and the kids had playmates and a school they liked, and we had our emotional/prayer support from church.

I would call Carol and Marianne with my concerns and they would pray both with me and for me, and also impart their wisdom about the ways of God to me, to keep me encouraged. They were my lifeline.

My sister Jamie and I are a year apart, had always shared a room growing up.  We were very loyal and close to one another. Jamie was perceptive about how things were going with all of us, and at times when things were reaching a point of desperation, she would intervene in some way. She’d come with meals, pray extra hard or send me little gifts. She caught on that money was a huge issue and she took it upon herself to tell our brother Chris, and ask if he could help us. Chris was single and doing well in his work in NYC as a software consultant. He has a big heart and always has. (I remember as a child of seven, when we lived in the Catskill Mountains, in the tiny village of Ashland, N.Y., we had a neighborhood family nearby that was very poor. They had seven kids and two were disabled. Wayne, a little boy near Chris’ age had Downs Syndrome. Chris would leave his other more typical friends oftentimes, to play with Wayne. One day my mother asked him “Why do you play with Wayne so much?” Chris answered “Because he has no one else to play with.”) Anyway, as soon as Chris knew what our situation was, he offered to lend us money. He gave us a generous amount, but months later when he learned we were still short, he sent us another check for almost triple that amount. Seeing that we were struggling to repay him, he said “You don’t have to pay me back.” We’ll always have a special love and gratitude for his magnanimous generosity when we were at our lowest, and feeling increasingly despondent. May God bless him one hundred fold.

Trisha with Mark, Paul and newborn Catie.

The fall of 1985 Trisha moved back to our area. She was in a halfway home nearby and not doing well. With no parents to turn to and all the psychological and addictive behaviors she was dealing with, she was becoming more and more depressed and dark. One day in February of 1986, we got a call that she had taken her life. Poor Mark was utterly devastated, as were his other siblings. He had lost his mother at age twenty-two, his father at age twenty-nine, had a daughter with brain damage at thirty, and now to lose a sister to suicide at thirty-two, was more than he could bear. The emotional impact was tremendous. There was great sorrow, anger, depression, and a merciless guilt that all family members of a suicide victim feel.

I was worried about Mark. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders. I was also worried about Trisha. Growing up I’d heard conflicting things about what happens to a person who commits suicide. A few days after her funeral I couldn’t take not knowing where she was.  I cried out loud to the Lord “Where is she? I need to know where she is!”
That night I went to bed at the same time as Mark. We were both fast asleep fairly quickly,  when I was suddenly awakened by what felt like bone and feathers brushing against me. I opened my eyes and there were two huge angels standing over the foot of our bed, on either side of Trisha. They were both dressed in long white robes and seemed to be escorting her and protecting her. Trisha was looking normal and quite well.  She was standing within what appeared to be a bluish kind of light (like a pilot light), and wearing something akin to sweat pants and a crew neck sweatshirt. Her face was clear (she had been all broken out before) and she seemed to be at peace.
I sat up in bed and said “Why did you do it?”
“I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Where are you?”
“Purgatory, but it’s not that bad.”
Then they were instantly all gone.
The last part I still don’t understand. I said to Mark “I just saw Trisha.” He answered “I know.” (But he was asleep.????)
The next morning, I went to Marianne to tell her what had happened. Gracie was there too. I didn’t dare share it with anyone else except Mark just yet for fear they’d think I was insane.
Marianne said “You had a contact Patty.”
Gracie added “What she had to live through down here was hell.”
Later that day I came across two scriptures, in two different books, that gave me a spiritual interpretation of what had occurred. One book had the passage from Mathew 18:10 “See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” Trisha had been with her guardian angels.
I then came across a second verse in another book by Ralph Martin, “But if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:15) Trisha had been surrounded by a glowing blue light. I believed it was a purifying light, a kind of fire.

It made sense to me. God knew her torment. She had been brutalized by her assailant as a child and had not had proper psychological/spiritual treatment.  Then she had to experience the deaths of both parents. God was merciful. He knew her enormous wounds were too much for her to bear.  The Lord was healing her of the sins committed against her and all that followed as a result. In His infinite mercy He was making a way for her to be made whole so she’d be healed fully and free to enter heaven.

To put some perspective on this. Mark and I had had another heavenly encounter when his mother died ten years earlier.

Louise died in the early afternoon. I was working as a waitress while I was in nursing school, at the time. I got out of work late, so Mark didn’t want to tell me over the phone. We had made plans to go to Grafton Lake the following morning. This was something we often did because it worked well with my work schedule. We’d go and cook breakfast and then sleep on the beach, swim and have a picnic lunch too before we had to leave so I could work again. I answered the door of my apartment that morning, and turned away quickly without really looking at Mark.   I was rushing around and finishing packing up our beach things, chatting away about what I had prepared for us to eat, and how work had been the night before. Suddenly I noticed he was really quiet.
I looked at him and said “What’s the matter?”
“My Mom died last night.”
We sat on the couch crying and holding one another. We fell asleep crying. Suddenly I saw his mother. She was surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers. I said “I saw your mother.”
“I know. I saw her too.”
“What did she look like?”
“She was wearing white.”
“Yes! With flowers in her hair.”
“Yes!”
“Was her dress chiffon?”
“What’s chiffon?”
“It’s sheer and flowy. What was on her feet?”
“She was barefoot.”
“Yes! Did she look kind of like that lady in the commercial “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature?”
“Yes!”
She looked young and whole. No trace of cancer. She smiled at us and then it was over.  It was so beautiful and so comforting for Mark.

I believe part of the reason we had that experience was so that we would understand the contrast and context of the encounter with Trisha. God was allowing us to go through severe trials, but He provided understanding and peace and mercy to make them bearable.