Angels Among Us

Those first days after Noah passed away are basically a blur. I believe your body just knows to keep on moving, but it doesn’t know where to move to. I recall spending hours on end just sitting in my living room, feeling so numb. Slowly the house started filling with family, and then the media started calling. I remember taking a call and being so calm, and telling them that it was fine to come over. It was fine, because we wanted to share about our son. We wanted people to know who he was, and how we had just lost a piece of our family. We didn’t sleep for almost 48 hours. I don’t believe any of us knew what was coming, or how much we had to do.

When someone dies, you almost morph into that person, and carry on completing tasks for them that they would otherwise be doing if they were here. You look at their typical day in order to figure out who you need to contact. Then, lists start being made of companies you need to call and cancel parts of their life. I recall waiting days to make those phone calls because then I would have to say those words, “my son passed away.”

In the craziness of those first days, we had so many questions, but didn’t know the answers, and we didn’t know where to turn to find them out either. In our fog and confusion, a few angels appeared. One of them was a very best friend of our son, one was her mom, and other was the best friend’s other dad. They loved him so deeply and wanted to do whatever they could to help us make the most important decisions…… how we could best honor and celebrate Noah. The bestie, we will call her “T”, was the list maker and note taker, (thank goodness because I couldn’t remember anything from one minute to the next). The mom, we will call her “S”, was the organized and bossy one, (lovingly so, of course) and the dad, we will call him “K”, was our knight in shining armor. Their patience with us was never-ending. We would sit and stare at them, and S would say “Okay, we need to find a venue.” Then she would give suggestions, and then make calls, then get back to us, always lovingly telling us to “just let her know and she will take care of it.” And that is what they did, T and S, they took care of it and held our hands all the way through it.

Now, K was truly a gift sent to us. You see, his job is doing cremations of loved ones. (Just another reality in this swirl of grief). He respectfully asked us if he could “take care of Noah” for us. Imagine how relieved we were to know that someone that loved our boy would go in on his day off, and ensure that he was with our son. You see, when a parent loses a child, they think of things like “my child is just going to be a number in a line to these people.” Our son wasn’t a number. He was taken care of and loved.

There were so many angels among us on the day of Noah’s celebration. We had coffee donated by friends of our son, we had hockey moms and baseball moms creating platters of food. My husband’s employer provided flowers, and we had a friend playing piano for all to enjoy. My brother Rick did Noah’s eulogy, and it was beautiful. I could have listened to him talk about him for hours. We also had a community stand behind us, and carry us through that day. Hockey players, all wearing their jerseys, lined the roadway in for us to the church. Players handing me flowers , and another angel lovingly took them for me and made sure they were all together for me to take home after. Strangers, who had heard Noah’s story came that day to support us. A community came together, and grieved not for us, but with us. Our community lost someone special that day, and we all felt it.

In this day and age of people being busy, and not as cognizant of others as they probably should be, it is important for all of us to take some time out of each day, and look around at the people that surround us. Every one of us has angels in our lives, we just need to slow down and take notice, and be grateful.

We lost our angel in the early hours of October 4, 2018, and that pain and sorrow will resonate forever, but I will also remember that through that loss, we gained so many angels in our lives. Those angels will continue to be a part of us forever, and I am sure Noah is happy and smiling about that.