(EDITOR'S NOTE: Irene DeBlasio, whom we've dubbed as the Studio City Patch Den Mom, has been going through a lot of personal strife this past year. Yet, she's continued to blog and write for Patch, going to the Republican convention and offering her poetry and pearls of wisdom. At our urging, she also now writes about her most personal tragedy, and we at Patch offer our most sorrowful condolensces to Irene and her family. —m)
Our daughter, Michelle Maria, had just lost her seven-month battle against
cancer. My younger daughter and I had been reminiscing about all our years together as a family...holidays, trips, happy memories.
Coldwater Canyon at Ventura Boulevard is not exactly Bethlehem but a real,
live Angel did come to visit the gas station across from Twain's and Ralphs supermarket. My daughter was having minor repairs done
on her car at the Unocal 76 gas station on Coldwater Canyon and Ventura
Boulevard and I had picked her up, taken her to the market and when we returned to pick up her car Vic, the excellent mechanic explained it would be another ten or so minutes before the car was be done. There's a small table
with a couple of chairs facing the gas pumps and we decided to sit and wait.
A tall thin man with deep ble eyes approached us. He placed a $100 bill
on the table close to us. He smiled
and asked if we had noticed how rude and unpleasant society had become
recently? We both nodded
in agreement and he continued his speech about how we can finally do
something positive to bring about
change. We were puzzled by the money on the table and wondered what was
his scam? He seemed well
groomed and nicely dressed with a white shirt and dark slacks. He was
certainly not a panhandler.
He began talking about how he loved his brother. He and his brother
thought very much
alike. They had wanted to do something to help rid the world of evil but
didn't know where to start. Then they had crossed
paths with a mysterious stranger who showed them how. His message was that
it always takes three people to
enact a change in society. He began to walk away and we reminded him to
take his $100 bill.
He turned and said, "That money is for you. Take it and do good with it.
That is how it starts. I parked
at pump number 7 and I have to leave now. Bless you
ladies...goodbye."
At one point he came back to tell us about good and evil -- the Aloha
Spirit and the wonders of the number 9 (the
most spiritual number of all). He vanished as quickly as he had
appeared.
I picked up the bill to examine it. I thought it looked real. I told my
daughter that we should take it to our bank in
the event it was countereit. At that moment another young man approached
us and asked if we knew the
person we had been talking to -- we shook our heads no. He held up a $100
bill and said he had a brief conversation
with the man who also gave him a real $100 bill. "This bill is real!" he
said. Come on, let's ask the
owner of the gas station to check it out," We followed him into the man's
office. The owner assured us that
both bills were authentic and showed us the watermark on each.
We three stood there grinning in disbelief, dumbfounded. Could the money
have been stolen, was it marked, who was
the mysterious man? So many questions -- who was he? Why had he chosen
us?
We came to the conclusion that he was an Angel. He had come to spread his
message. This is truly the way we can
change the world. We can do something anonymous and bring about a positive
result. It works.
If you doubt that Angels exist or that Angels walk among us, I hope this
happens to you. Only then can
you begin to understand the impact -- what a powerful idea this is.
