The Deal …
June 6, 2013, I arrived home after having surgery on my left breast.
Days had gone by and no results. I called the doctors every other day to find out if the results had arrived, and the nurse said, “I do not know what is holding up the results, please hold while I make a call.” I waited, feeling sick with fear. I come from a long line of women and men that have Cancer and almost every female on my dads side has had Cancer of some kind. “Hi Melissa, they had to send the results out to another lab to do a double check.”
I turned to my husband and told him, “I’m going to go lay down for a little while.”
As I walked upstairs to the bedroom, I knelt down by the side of the bed, still in so much pain and, emotionally, at this point, I was a mess.
Three weeks earlier…
As I was walking into CVS, I got a phone call as I was in the shampoo aisle. I put one hand over my ear while holding the phone closer to my other ear so that I could hear. A woman’s voice asked me if I was Melissa. “Yes, this is Melissa, may I ask who is calling?” What she said next changed my life, forever.
As I got back into my car I put my bag into the the backseat, turned forward and sat there. The rain was the hardest and quickest rain I had ever remembered hearing. “What just happened?” I asked myself. Sitting there, my mind gathering fully what was said, I felt waves of nausea overtaking my entire being.
“Melissa, I have your Mother at the hospital. She has been here for two weeks and we will not release her. She is tearing down metal doors,” said the female voice. At this point, a thousand memories flooded my mind.
My Mother, 64, had a history of Major Depression and PTSD. She had a childhood that could only be described as horrific.
Mom had a heart of gold and would give her shirt for anyone. But she also had a side that haunted her. As a child I endured abuse. Out of the five children, I lived with Mom the longest and endured her not so good days in whatever form I had them delivered. In the end, I would be the only child that went on this journey with her.
One Week After my Operation …
As I kneeled down by the side of my bed, I could see the sun shining through the beige blinds. I closed my eyes and put my hands together as my head leaned into the bed. I opened my eyes and looked down at the rug. It’s funny in those times, how you notice the most smallest details of something you would’ve never seen before.
“God, it can’t be both ways, I can’t take care of Your daughter and have Cancer at the same time. It’s got to be one or the other. If it’s Cancer, fine, I will take it and I will accept it. If it’s going to be me taking care of my Mother to make sure that she can make her way into Heaven, then I ask You this, please, let her suffer whatever she has to suffer here, to make up for her sins on Earth. I don’t know if I’m going to make it to Heaven, but I hope I do, and if I do wind up there one day, I want to be with my Mother. I want her there, greeting me when I die.”
I was so weary, I was so tired and my mind was so exhausted. I couldn’t think and I was too tired to cry. I got into the bed and pulled the covers over me. I remember the bed being cold and I liked that.
I felt myself drifting off to sleep.
I opened my eyes and Joey was by my side, leaning over me, touching my shoulder. I turned over and I looked at him. “Your doctor called, everything is OK, your results are OK, it’s like what it was seven years ago, it was a clogged duct that had been causing the bleeding and clear liquid,” he said.
I smiled as tears rolled down my eyes. I sat up and my husband hugged me. I told him thank you. He asked me if I was going to come downstairs and I told him I’ll be down in just a minute. I got out of bed and got down again on my knees and as I looked at the clock, it had been less than one hour since my plea to God. “We have a deal,” I said, “and I promise You no matter how hard it gets, I will not go back out of my promise. I will take care of Your daughter.”
The Death …
I watched my Mother die for three years, slowly.
In and out of hospitals and nursing homes when she was only 64 years old.
Medical staffs, hospitals, friends, family, no one person for months could figure out what was going on.
A diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia with possible Parkinson’s.
If anyone knows of Dementia, they will know it is one of the most cruelest diseases to watch someone die from. Mom had her good days and then she had her really bad days.
My Mother became my daughter for the last three years of her life.
On February 8, 2016 at 12:30 a.m. she died.
The Daisy …
I have had a devotion to Fatima since I was 16 years old. It began one night, as I was visiting my Mother at her apartment, we lost power after a strong storm came through. Living near the ocean, this was common.
As I sat upstairs, in Moms room, the only light there was, came from a skylight. The moon shined down on me. Being in the non-electronic age at that time, 1991, there wasn’t much to do when the power went out. As I reached around in the dark to my Mothers books, I pulled a random book out of the pile that was on her floor. I picked up a book and as I opened it up in the middle of the book, I saw May 13, 1917. This captured my attention because I was born on May 13. As I began to read, I read about Fatima and about the Miracle of the Sun in Portugal.
In the spring of 1992, I would meet my husband.
A week earlier to meeting Joey, I went to the Saint Anthony’s Church in Falmouth. I would walk there in the morning for the morning Mass. Kneeling down in the front pew, I asked God; if I could not be a Nun, would He please find me a man, who would be like an angel, a man who would treat me good and be a man of God. At the age of 15 I was considering becoming a Bride of Christ. I went to speak to my Parish Priest and he told me to come back when I was 18 years old. We had a nice conversation and I understood what he was saying about having to wait. God had different plans.
Many years would go by, and my love for Fatima was always ignited. I thought about Fatima over the years, in my 20s. Being a young wife and a mother, almost all of my attention was given to my children and my husband. I would look at Fatima information, etc. during those years and Fatima was in my heart. When my children became older and less reliant, I was able to go much more deeper into Fatima.
My in-laws who are 100% Portuguese and who came to the USA in the early 70’s would go to Portugal almost yearly and on one of those trips, they brought back a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. That beautiful statue, sits on my bureau drawer next to the statue of our Blessed Mother’s Son.
There would be many times when I would kneel in front of Jesus Christ and I would see His Beautiful Mother standing right there, next to Him, just as a Mother would stand next to her child. Many of those years were prayers about my Mother. Mom had a hard childhood and when she became older, as a teen, going into her married years and having children, a lot of events took place.
Mom would go on to lose custody of her children. In the end, I did go back with her and I look back now, even as I’m typing this, I know it is by the Grace of God that I am here today, I know that it is by the Grace of God that I have a stable life, stable mind, and a strong prayer life.
There came a point in Mom’s illness when she was going on to several months in the hospital and events took place within those months/years that were loving and also frightening.
The Daisy comes into play because my Mom’s favorite flower was a daisy. The reason why she loved daisies so much is because my Dad, one day, on the way back home from work, stopped and picked some wild daisies for her.
During the first week of February 2016, I received an early morning phone call from the nursing home. My husband answered and then handed me the phone. On the other line a nurse said,” Melissa, your Mother’s blood pressure is plummeting, what should we do?”
Months prior, doctors had gathered my husband and I together and told us that she more than likely was not going to live very long and while I denied them putting a feeding tube into her, which was the right decision.) Mom ate a full meal the day before she died and she was eating everyday. Her food had to be hand spooned to her after it was mashed.)
I told the nurse that there was a no revive form that had been signed and that when God was ready to take her home, God would bring His daughter home. She said okay. I remember getting on my hands and knees after that phone call and as I looked out the window, there was snow all over the ground. I looked at the statue of Jesus and Mary and I began to pray. I said, “Jesus I know that there is snow outside and I know that I am probably being very unreasonable, but If possible, would you please send me a daisy to let me know that mom made it to Heaven?”
The phone call came in at 12:38 a.m. in the morning that Mom had passed away on the morning of February 8. After my husband took the phone, and he hung up he told me that the nurse said, “tell your wife that she died with the Scapular on her neck.” This in itself was funny that she would say that because we never asked her about it.
I sat up in bed and was very quiet as I turned on the side light. I looked to my bureau drawer and there was Jesus, the Infant of Prague and our Lady of Fatima. I began to say a Rosary for her with my husband. Through tears, I think I got to the second decade and I started to look at the Infinite of Prague statue that was on my bureau drawer. My husband had found this a year earlier when our Church was cleaning out their little store that they had. There was one small detail on the Infant of Prague that was broken and my husband was able to get it for a donation.
I sometimes think in life that we don’t see things on purpose or we’re meant to see them when the time is right. I was staring at the Infinite of Prague, I noticed how there were daisies on the Infant of Prague statue. I told my husband, “Joey look, look at the daisies!!”
We both looked at each other and smiled, I told my husband and then I prayed to God and I said, “You know what? This is enough for me, I know that it’s snowing outside and to expect a daisy in this kind of weather is so foolish to think.”
That was enough for me.
Mom’s funeral would be held on February 11, she had her funeral on the feast Day of our Lady of Lourdes.
When my Mother passed away, a week before I had seen her, I put the Scapular that I had on my neck around her. I very much believe in the power and the promises of the Brown Scapular. The promises that our Lady of Fatima and the First Five Saturday Devotion, the Devotion that She tells us through Her Son Jesus Christ, the promises of the Rosary. At that time, while I knew about it, again, I think it’s one of those things that you just forget about because there’s so much going on.
Our Lady promises us that on the first Saturday after our death that she will come into Purgatory and bring us to Heaven.
I was not able to fulfill the First Five Saturdays, before my Mother passed away. There was so much going on between my operation, Moms sicknesses, I was moving etc. there was just so much going on at once. I think we can all relate to that. As I was sitting there, thinking, I wondered if our Blessed Mother would fulfill that Promise even though my Mother never fullfiled that in her life, not that I know of.
The Morning of the Miracle…
Joey, my son Andrew, who at the time was 16, we were at our vacation home in the White Mountains and every single Sunday, as is tradition, we sit down and we read the Bible and we have our family meeting. I opened up my Bible, and it was a new Bible that my husband and I have both gotten a few months ago. It is the Jerusalem Bible. We came across the Bible by watching Mother Angelica on EWTN. We have such a great deal of respect for her and love, that we wanted to be able to have the same Bible that she read.
Joey and I were talking about the new Jerusalem Bible and how we felt that it was a wonderful traditional Bible. I always put a place mark in the Bible, where it is that I last left off during the last family meeting and I opened it up. We had never seen the Bible without the book cover on and so for some reason, that day, we decided to remove the cover of the Bible, which is made out of fabric. As I was removing it, I opened up the very front of the Bible and sitting there was a daisy that was upside down. At that moment, the Bible was open, the blue part of the sun light window that is in our living room, was shining directly on the Bible. I thought I was seeing things for a second, because my mind was not wrapping around it that, that- was a daisy, laying right there. I looked at my husband and then my son. It was at that moment, that God and Jesus reminded me about the First Five Saturday promises and about how our Blessed Mother said that the Saturday after the death of the person that recited the prayers and went through with it, She would come and get that person from Purgatory and bring them to Heaven. My husband got up and my son and they came over, I jumped up from my chair with my Bible and I brought it over to the table. Joey grabbed a paper towel and we put the paper towel on top of the Daisy and then flipped the book over so that way we could have the Daisy facing upwards. The thing about this Daisy, is there was absolutely no stem piece to the Daisy it was just the Daisy itself. The Daisy was cool to the touch. There are pictures below. I then remembered as I was sitting there that it’s Sunday and that our Blessed Mother went to Purgatory and picked Mom up and brought her to Heaven on Saturday, even though I had not fulfilled the First Five Saturday’s. To me, I was even shocked, I questioned it and I couldn’t believe it for a little bit, it just didn’t seem real.
Even though I’m a Roman Catholic and I believe in the Miracles of the Saints, laypeople, etc. and you hear about it, at that moment, it was like, “huh?” Joey and I both looked at each other and we hugged each other. It was one of those moments that will never be forgotten. It increased my Faith. Even when I thought that my Faith could never be increased, it was increased.
I have always had a very strong devotion to Fatima. Years before, I started a Facebook page about Fatima that has grown to over 175,000 people.
This is my first time publicly sharing this Miracle, A testament to what happens when you have Faith. I have since kept my promise and have made my First Five Saturdays Devotion and I continue to do the Devotion for our Lady and for the lost souls on Earth and for the repose of souls. What happens when you believe. I have strongly followed the Fatima Center. I still remember the first time that I googled Fatima on YouTube and the Fatima center came up. It was Father Gruner. The entire Fatima Center staff and Father Gruner have changed my life. I have spoken to Father Gruner over email and was going to be going to a conference on Fatima in Boston. A few weeks before he was to go to Boston, he passed away. I speak to the Fatima center via email.
It just goes to show that when people take the time to spread something that they believe in and follow by what God tells your heart, miracles like this happen. Peoples lives change.
Below are the photos.
Reality Meets Faith 