I’ve been thinking recently of my grandmother and her words to me after my mother’s death when I was eight years old and she realized I was afraid of the dark. She sat on the edge of my bed and told me that each of us has a guardian angel who stays with us and looks over us and that I was very fortunate indeed,  because I had a very special guardian angel, my mother, who was looking over me.  My grandmother, the mother of my mother, was not being merely comforting.  She believed those words with every fiber of her Irish heart and because she believed them, I believed them too. I remember closing my eyes real tight, taking a deep breath and then saying softly, ” I’m so sleepy, I won’t open my eyes til morning,” and then opening them real fast in hopes of catching my guardian angel mother by surprise. She was always too quick for me and I never did catch her, but I knew she was there and I was always able to fall asleep, even in the dark.

My grandmother’s words were not spoken with a desire to leave a legacy of any kind. They were spoken out of compassion for a little girl who was afraid of the dark.  They were spoken through the grief of  a mother who had just lost her daughter and they were spoken out of a deep and abiding faith.  Even though it was not her intent, this experience became her legacy to me – the knowledge that in the darkest night, we are not alone and that another’s love can survive even death, can bring us comfort, and lend us strength.