Story of the Week, March 9, 2011, No Batteries Needed

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March 9, 2011

Debe’s mother in law passed away in Wisconsin during January, not the easiest time of year for a funeral. With so many friends and family members traveling to say their last goodbyes, the family decided to hold a memorial service at the funeral home chapel instead of at the gravesite. “We put her photos and favorite memories out for all to see,” Debe says. “One item I wanted to have on display was an angel that had fiber optics in her outstretched wings.” Debe and her husband had given the angel to his mother the previous Christmas, and she loved looking at it and watching the colors changing on the wings.

“On the morning of the service, I had some new batteries, just purchased, and I put them into the angel to be sure it would light up,” Debe says. “But nothing happened.” Maybe she hadn’t put them in correctly. Debe asked her husband to see if something was wrong with the batteries. While she finished dressing, he checked them out again. “You put them in right, but I did it again,” he told her. “They still won’t light.”

By now it was 9 AM and the family was to meet at the funeral home chapel at 9:30. Maybe something had broken inside the angel? But everything looked fine. “We have to go,” Debe’s husband told her. He had taken out the batteries again (although she didn’t know it) and they had run out of time. “Let’s just have the angel sitting by her photo,” he suggested as he went to start the car.

Debe was terribly disappointed. The lighted angel would have made the display so beautiful…She buttoned her coat and picked up the angel. Just one more try… She flipped the switch, and the angel lit up. Shocked, Debe turned the angel over to see if the batteries were locked in…
She opened the compartment.
There were no batteries inside.

Heart pounding, Debe looked around, and saw the 4 AA batteries on the table. She snapped them in as her husband pulled up. “Oh, you found some other batteries,” he said, looking at the angel’s beautiful glow.

“Uh huh,” Debe murmured. They were the same batteries, the ONLY batteries, she knew, but she could not tell him yet. If they had ever wondered where their mother was, they knew now that she was closer to them than she’d ever been.

A few days later, Debe told her husband what had happened. He had no trouble believing it. “Well,” he said, “that’s Mom. She wanted to have that angel at her service. And she did.”

“You see?” Debe points out. “You never know when angels are around!”