"There's still hope, Mom," he always told her.
His story is one of courage because he never gave up. I knew Matt for three years, from age 13 to 16. I was there when he graduated from junior high school, and I wrote a story about it. I visited him at home and at the hospital. When it was apparent that I myself was ill, Matt was there for me. He wanted to come to the hospital and hold my hand while I went through tests. He explained it pretty much like: "I've been there. I understand. I've done all that."
One evening toward the end of his life, I went with my husband to visit Matt at the hospital. He was watching his favorite team, the Oakland A's, and his favorite player, Mark McGwire. (McGwire did take the time to meet Matt, for which his family is eternally grateful.) That was odd, because Matt couldn't really see the television. He was going blind from the cancer, but you would never know it. He commented on every play and told us how proud he was of McGwire.
The next moment was one of the most powerful in my life. Matt turned, looked at me as though he could see me and announced in the crowded room: "Diana, I love you."
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I was amazed that a 16-year-old boy could say that, and at that moment I realized he had changed from a boy into a man. I loved Matt. Forget journalism. Forget the rule that reporters are supposed to be objective. When you meet someone like Matt, there's no such thing. There's only love. I hugged him good-bye and said I'd be back.
Before I could, the phone call came. My husband clutched me in his arms and held me while I cried.
Later that day we went to the florist to send the family a plant. I was shaking when we walked in and felt like collapsing.
I gave the florist the address, and she asked me for the phone number.
"I don't have it with me," I said.
"Well, I can't send it without the number," she explained politely. "We have to make sure they're home to receive it."
Now I panicked. "Call information," I responded, but I knew in my heart that the Bennetts weren't listed. The florist called as we stood there, tension filling the air. I began to feel really sick.
As my husband and I watched her on the phone, we saw a strange look come over her face. The look was so peculiar and she was actually engaging in a conversation with the operator. When the florist got off the phone, she looked at us in stunned surprise and said: "They aren't listed. But the operator is their next-door neighbor. She promised to make sure they received the plant."
The moment was quiet. We all looked at each other.
Immediately, I calmed down because I knew somehow Matt was still with me, trying to keep me calm. Three years later, he is still with meat least in my heart. I keep his photo with me in my bedroom. When I'm sick and miserable, I think: "How would Matt handle this?"
Diana L. Chapman
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To All Parents
I'll lend you for a little time a child of mine, He said,
For you to love the while she lives and mourn for when she's dead.
It may be six or seven years, or twenty-two or three,
But will you, till I call her back, take care of her for me?
She'll bring her charms to gladden you, and shall her stay be brief,
You'll have her lovely memories as solace for your grief,
I cannot promise she will stay, since all from Earth return,
But there are lessons, taught down there, I want this child to learn.
I've looked the wide world over in my search for teachers true,
And from the throngs that crowd life's lanes, I have selected you.
Now will you give her all your love nor think the labor vain,
Nor hate me when I come to call to take her back again?
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I fancied that I heard them say, Dear Lord, Thy will be done!
For all the joy Thy child shall bring, the risk of grief we'll run.
We'll shelter her with tenderness, we'll love her while we may,
And for the happiness we've known forever grateful stay;
But shall the angels call for her much sooner than we've planned,
We'll brave the bitter grief that comes and try to under-stand.
Edgar Guest
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She Was Waiting
Patience is a bitter plant, but it has sweet fruit.
German Proverb
I loved you when you were just an idea, just a dream of future motherhood. I loved planning, wondering what you would look like. It was hard to imagine holding your tiny body, actually creating a little person. Yet I knew that someday you would become a reality, someday my dream of becoming a mother would come true.
When that day came I felt I was dreaming. I couldn't believe you actually were. I rubbed my tummy and talked to you. I thought about your due date, the day that I would actually be able to look at you and hold you, to finally see what you look like, my little child. Everything I did, I did for you. Everything I ate, every meal I made, I thought of you, the tiny life that I was feeding.
Your daddy and I planned your room, we picked out names, we started a savings for your future. We already loved you. We couldn't wait to feel your miniature fingers squeezing our own. We looked forward to bathing your
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soft body, hearing your needy cries for us to nurture you.
We looked forward to your first steps, your first words, your first day at school. We yearned to help you with your homework and to go to your baseball games. It was hard for me to imagine my little child calling the man I love "Daddy." These are the small things we saw in the future during those months that you were growing inside me. We loved you!
In one minute these dreams were taken from us. On a foggy morning at a routine ultrasound, we found out that you had stopped growing weeks before. You had, in fact, left us without us ever knowing it. All our thoughts and dreams for you had been in vain. But we still loved you! It took a long time to get over this shock. We were told that I could be pregnant again in only a few months. But we wanted you!
Eventually we realized that God hadn't meant for us to have a child yet, that we would be more ready when it was meant to be. This comforted us, although we missed you. We had been excited about your arrival, but we could wait if it was meant to be. And we knew that when you did come, I would stay home with you and you would have had a better life, for your daddy would be able to finish school first. In this way, we finally accepted our loss.
It has been four years since that terrible loss. This morning, I sat in our wading pool with my three-year-old daughter. As I watched her tiny hands picking up scoops of water with her bucket, I marveled at her beautiful innocence. It truly was a miracle that we could be part of such a creation. Suddenly she looked at me very intently, and with a twinkle in her eye, she said, "Mommy, you weren't ready for me the first time I came, were you?" I put my arms around my wonderful daughter, and through my tears I could only say, "No, but we missed you very much
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while you were gone.'' We no longer have to mourn for our lost baby, for now I know that she has come back to us. This is the same child that we had fallen in love with so many years ago.
Sara Parker
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6
A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
Two men look out through the same bars; one sees mud, and one the stars.
Frederick Langbridge
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Angel in Our Backyard
There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. They teach the truth by living it.
James A. Garfield
I was working in the beauty shop that I operate out of our home when my husband, Den, came in, a troubled expression on his face. "Look what I found in the girls' tree house," he said. He held out some jean
s and a T-shirt. "It looks as if someone's living in our backyard."
"It's those kids," I said, aghast. "Den, you're on the borough council. We've got to do something!"
Lately there had been several acts of vandalisma shock for our small townand teenage boys from out of the area had been seen roaming the streets. It was the fall of 1991, and crime had become frighteningly real in the
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nearby city of Lancaster. Our town was determined to keep the problem from spreading to Manheim. "I'll report this to the police," Den said.
A few days later I looked out the window and saw a group of teenage boys sauntering out from between our house and the neighbors', heading up the street. I ran out the door and, putting two fingers in my mouth, gave a piercing whistle.
The boys turned around. There were four of them, wearing relatively clean jeans and T-shirts; no gang colors that I could see. "Hi," I said. "What were you guys doing in our backyard?"
"Just cutting through," one said.
"Why aren't you in school?" I asked.
"Don't need that garbage," said another.
But then a tall young man stepped forward. Unlike the others, he looked right at me. "I'd like to be in school," he said. "But not in the neighborhood I'm from." He had a Hispanic accent and was slender and clean-shaven, with cinnamon-brown eyes.
As they headed down the street, I turned back to the beauty shop. At least they didn't seem like gang members or hardened criminals. And there was something compelling about that kid who wished he were in school. Somehow I wasn't surprised a day or so later when he reappeared as I was raking leaves in our backyard. "Hi," he said. "Can I give you a hand?"
I studied him for a moment, trying to read what was behind those eyes. I handed him the rake. "What's your name?" I asked. "Where are you from?"
"Angel Melendez," he said. "I'm from Lancaster. But things there are getting kind of rough."
"So where are you living now?"
"Sometimes I crash with a friend," he said. "I stashed some clothes in your tree house. Sorry, I didn't mean to cause any trouble."
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"You want them back?" I asked. He nodded.
I went inside, leaving Angel working industriously. After gathering his clothes, I watched him from the upper deck. He was so thin. Lunch seemed a fair exchange for raking a huge pile of leaves.
The lawn looked good. Angel sat at the kitchen table and wolfed down the sandwiches as if he could have eaten half a dozen more.
Over the following days, Angel continued to stop by to chat. Sometimes he talked about his dream of becoming a Navy pilot. He started coming around in the evening, while Den and I and our teenage daughters Halley and Amanda, were watching TV. Whenever I put out snacks he ate ravenously. As he cheerfully said good night, we knew we were sending him outto where? Nowhere.
Then one night Den said, "Angel, if you have nowhere else to go, you can sleep out in my workshop."
"Thanks," Angel said, smiling. He turned at the door, a bit nervously. "Mr. and Mrs. Brumbach," he said, ''I would really like to finish high school. I was wondering if you could help me get in."
As we prepared for bed, Den and I turned to each other with the same questions. What were we going to do about Angel? He seemed like a nice kid. But did we want to get involved?
"Before this goes any further," Den said, "I'll have the police run a background check on him, to make sure he is who he says he is."
In the meantime Angel informed us of what he had found out: To enroll at our high school, he needed a permanent local address as well as a parent or legal guardian who was a district resident.
That night when Den got home he summoned Halley, Amanda and me to the kitchen table. "I talked to the Manheim police," he said. "Officer David Carpenter called
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Lancaster and spoke with a Sergeant Wilson. It seems the kid's been on his own since he was eight years old. He's 17 now. But what impressed Sergeant Wilson is that, for a kid who's had to raise himself, Angel's never been in trouble."
"All he wants to do is to go to school," Halley whispered. "How can we not help him?"
It turned out Officer Carpenter had been impressed by Angel as well. Several nights later he called. "I know a police officer isn't supposed to get personally involved in his work," Carpenter said, "but sometimes you have to. I don't have room for Angel to move in, but I'm willing to become his legal guardian."
The rest of our community was harder to convince. We started to receive phone callsmany of them anonymousthat made it clear Angel was not welcome in our town.
The school didn't seem to want him either. Weeks turned into months as red tape continued to block his admission. In the meantime Angel got a job at the local McDonald's. He had breakfast and dinner with us, then spent the evenings doing odd jobs around the house or watching TV.
The weather turned frosty; Den's workshop where Angel slept was unheated. We called another family meeting. As fond as we'd all become of Angel, letting him move into our house was a big step. Maybe too big.
"What else can we do?" asked Halley. "It's getting really cold," Amanda added. It was brave of them. I knew they were being questioned at school by kids who didn't understand the situation. They only saw that Angel was Hispanic and a "city boy."
"If he becomes a member of the family, he'll be treated like one," I said. "He'll have chores and a curfew; he'll have to work hard and obey our rules."
We all agreed that Angel could move in. He was ecstatic at being invited to sleep on the living room sofa. "The doors lock at 10," I warned. "You've got to be in by then."
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"Yes, Mom," he said.
That kid had really gotten to me. "Angel," I said, "you've been through some really tough times in your life. How have you managed?"
"God kept me going," he answered. "When I was about seven, I started going to this place called Teen Haven. It was kind of a youth center where they told me about Jesus. As I've gotten older, I know he's still with me. He's kept me safe, and led me to people who care, people like . . . you."
Finally, six months after we had started the process, Angel had a legal guardian and a permanent address. I'd never seen anyone as excited as Angel was on the morning Officer Carpenter and Den took him to enroll in school. He wore his best clothes and held his notebooks as if they were winning lottery tickets.
It was a wonderful victory. But it had taken a real toll. Den and I saw our social life starting to slip away, except for a few close friends. Business had fallen off at my beauty shop. People who normally offered a friendly hello while passing by now ignored us. Sometimes Den and I snapped at each other in misplaced frustration. I began losing sleep. Many nights I paced, crying and praying. Was it all worth it? Should I just ask Angel to go?
One night, depressed and confused, I sank to the kitchen floor in the darkness, and my tears poured forth. "What's the answer, Lord?" I asked. "It would make it easier on the rest of the family to ask Angel to leave. But he's your childand he's trying so hard. What should I do?"
As the cry for help left my lips, the far side of the kitchen began to glow with a hazy yet bright light. Blinded by the increasing brilliance, I sensed there was a loving warm presence in that kitchen with me. Somehow I knew it was an angel. It delivered a message silently but clearly: Deni, let him stay. It will be all right.
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More amazing than the unearthly glow was how, in the twinkling of an eye, I was enveloped by a blanket of peace. No matter what hardships still lay ahead, I knew God would be faithful to us if we were faithful to him.
A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul Page 19