...the plot of the movie circles around a young boy who, for a social studies project, begins a "movement" that spreads across the United States. The concept of "paying it forward"...changing someones life for the better, lending a helping hand, offering hope in a time of desperation....
As the movie reaches it's ending, the song "Calling All Angels" flows from my television and I turn up the volume...I close my eyes as I hold on to each word;
"calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels
calling all angels
we're cryin' and we're hurtin'
and we're not sure why... "
I slowly open my eyes and my tears spill over...
...Pay It Forward...Calling All Angels...I think back to the day after my brothers death...
...let me explain...
My brother passed away on a Thursday evening...the same day that my parents moved from their home of twenty-six years to a new, one level home, to better suit my father who suffers from MS. My mother was already not herself...having spent the entire summer packing up years of home making and family memories. Selling the home that she raised her children in was difficult on my mother, to say the least...and then, as she was beginning to unpack her new life, she was told that her only son was gone.
My brothers death was unexpected. He was only thirty-one. He has two small babies and the love of his life waiting for him to heal from a terrible disease...but not a disease that people die from....so "shock" is an understatement.
I remember on the drive home from the VA Hospital in Columbia...late in the night, difficult to process leaving my brother behind and never seeing him again...I thought about the move...just hours earlier friends and family were gathered, moving boxes, organizing dishes, sorting through clothing...and there was still so much at the old home that needed to be done. The old home needed to be cleaned, dusted, vacuumed, bathrooms scrubbed...there were still so many boxes to be brought from the old home to the new....but it was the last thing on any one's mind.
Pulling up to my mother's new home, the darkness of the night enveloped the sky....cars lined the street outside the new house and every light within was brightly shining. As I entered the house, my parents closest friends, along with my mother's sister and her daughter were seated in the kitchen. Silence was thick within the room...and then I heard my mother's cry. Helpless...it's the worst feeling in the world...and it consumed every part of me in that moment...all my mother wanted was her son...and I couldn't give him to her. My heart was heavy...
...After a long night of tossing and turning...fits of rage...pleading with God and deep crying, the morning finally arrived. The sky was still dark...clouds covered every inch and the rain pelted the windows of my room...tears from the sky, it seemed so appropriate.
A long, hot shower and a cup of coffee seemed to soothe my mind for a moment and I drove to my parents home. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, boxes towered high around him, dishes wrapped in packing paper lined the counter tops...my mother was still sleeping in her bed, drugged with a sedative that I had asked our family doctor for the night before. I sat at the table with my father, neither of us said a word. We sat for a moment, watching the rain, listening to the sounds of the new home...
...I heard the door of my parents bedroom creak open...and my mother shuffled into the kitchen. Her eyes were swollen, her face pale, her shoulders sagged with a heaviness that no doubt was weighing on her heart too.
"Do you see them?" she whispered in a voice hoarse from a night of crying..."look out the window."
I turned my eyes from my mother to the window that my father and I had been looking out of just moments before...and there they were...
"Who are they?" I asked.
"They're my students" my mother cried....and my eyes filled with tears once again.
You see, the news of my brothers death traveled the social network of Facebook the night before...and my mother, who has been a teacher for over thirty-two years, was the topic of many "status updates" and "conversations"....a group of my mother's students rallied together and early the morning after, in the cold and stinging rain, they carried boxes from the old house to the new house, they dusted and vacuumed the old house and they one by one came in to share with my mother how much they love her.
It was an incredible sight. It was an incredible feeling. It was...just incredible.
"Calling All Angels"...the song means so much more to me now then it did the first time I heard it, years ago.
...I'm writing this post because this Thanksgiving I have so much to be thankful for...yes, there has been great loss and great hurt in my family...but there has been even greater healing, greater friendships, and greater love that we perhaps would have never noticed before...
...thank you to all those "angels"...
you have me in tears...
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