None of us would be involved in this community without the unselfish help of guardian angels (religious or not). I'd like to know about yours if you wish to share and in the meantime I will rewrite for the third time an answer about mine.
Looking forward to your replies, I am, humbly just
Steve
That's an easy one! Every nurse, doctor, aide, therapist, social worker, psychologist, technician and volunteer that we have met at the VA hospital here in Maine. I adore and am grateful for every one. Wonderful, intelligent, generous, thoughtful, hard-working, loving souls. I would have been utterly sunk without their help.
Oh course you are right and your heart-felt response is brilliant. I guess I am looking for those who you least expect to fill the role by going above and beyond.
Glad you have them!
God Bless,
Steve
I also nominate our neighbor, who has quietly and unasked made it possible for me to take my sweetheart home every weekend, plowing the drive and shoveling the path over and over and over again through this long snowy winter, so that when we arrive there is nothing for me to do but to wheel him in and build the fire, and who installed the heater in the damp dark cellar that has kept the water lines from freezing.
Too prosaic?
Three people. My son who is still helping me! He has been a star.
A long term friend who took me to see my husband at least once a week sometimes twice. I am taking him for a meal tonight to say thank you.
Another lady who has become a friend. I helped her with a problem a frew years ago. A few months later I checked to see everything was alright. It was and she will as amazed Inhad phoned her.
We just got talking and I told her my husband was ill and we started to go out for coffee when I had a break. When my husband went into the Care Home she took me there to visit him and refused to take any money for petrol. She has fractured her toe now so I will have to wait until she is feeling a bit better and then take her for a meal too. I can't think of anything else to do for her.
So not many Steve but they allowed me to see my husband and did it without being asked. If there had been another 3 people to help itvcwouod have meant so much. Some friends just vanished. One has reappeared but after over 40 years of being friends things will never be the same again. I will never be able to trust her again or rely on her.
Hope that helps to answer your question Steve? I think a lot of the people on this site are angels too. I would have gone mad had it not been for them. They told me so many things I didn't know. I will be forever grateful to them.
Marie
Answered my question perfectly Marie. You are so right about people who have disappeared and given up. That just means they were fair weather friends, useless when the chips are down. Cherish those who stayed. My definition of a hero is someone who runs towards danger to help as opposed to those who run away as if you are contagious. I'm glad you had three heroes in your time of travails.
Much love,
Steve
Now I need another one to tell me how to use my new washer/dryer! I am not sure what I did this morning but it was definitely wrong!!
I will try to read the instructions but I am finding it hard to concentrate since my husband died. I just don't seem to have the patience with bits of paper!
Hope you are having a good day Steve?
Marie
Better now to have heard from you. As to the washer/dryer, you definitely have the wrong guy! I am so unhandy it is pathetic. Hope you get it sorted out soon.
With hopes for a great day for all,
Steve
Oh Marie I so relate to this!
Vicki
Which bit Vicki?
Marie x
The bit about finding it hard to concentrate and being no good with paperwork anymore. Think I have aged at least ten years in that respect since D died!
They say time heals all but you have to wonder sometimes.
Hope things get better.
Steve
Vicki
Yes I feel very old suddenly. I seem to have lost my confidence and the thought of sorting paperwork out is totally beyond me at present! My children don't understand this as I never used to be this way. I bought a new washer/dryer this week. It was delivered today and it's not working properly! I have reported this and I am told they will come out tomorrow but I am not holding my breath! I have phoned 4 different numbers so far and just been passed from pillar to post! Great when you need to sort ordinary mundane things out like paying for the funeral and wondering if I can afford to live?!
Much love to you Vicki and a great big hug too.
Marie x
Absolutely not. A quiet hero in my eyes, someone who did the right thing instead of shunning you in your time of need. Good on him. I'm sure God will reward him.
Love and peace,
Steve
Steve, since I was eleven years old and starting to work things out from my own experiences, I have felt that my guardian angels have been those who have loved me and left this life before me. Their souls accompany me on my journey and, I am sure, influence me.
Of course this is all part of the wider question you raise in your Has IT changed your spiritual or religious beliefs? posting. As one whose Faith is accompanied by occasional periods of doubt, I found the responses marvelously balanced and re-assuring. I thank you for raising the subject. When my wife,Roisin, was coping with PSP I prayed daily that God would bless her with courage strength and faith, and the absence of pain. I am not sure about 'faith' but all the rest were there to the end. Now all I can do is make that appeal for everyone suffering from it.
Christopher
Hello, Chistopher. It's good to see you are still about and checking in here. How are you doing?
Love, ec
Hi ec, I'm well thanks, buoyed by the warm sunshine of South West France, where Roisin and I settled in 2010, and trying not to take any notice of the looming Brexit clouds. Actually, this is untrue because I have applied for an Irish pass so that I shall have dual British and Irish citizenship...in case.
It's good to read that you are taking a few days off work and it was a joy to read your description of the drive to and welcome at the UCC service. You and Georgepa have a gift for painting in words - and your words in your response to Steve's earlier post about "IT's" impact on religion and spirituality brought back memories of the Saturday Evening Post illustrations by Norman Rockwell and John Philip Falter.
Take care of yourself as well!
Christopher.
Really flattered to be likened to the brilliant Georgepa. Thanks.
Very well put Christopher. Your perspective is akin to my beliefs about those who I have lost, especially my father. As he was only several hours from the end following a two decade fight with Parkinson's his last words to me through a morphine haze were "Keep on fighting son." This was May, 2013, over three years before my diagnosis. I have to have a good cry now.
Thank you.
Steve
It is just so cruel Steve, that your father's death should have been followed by your own diagnosis - even though, neurological diseases being what they appear to be, you were probably already suffering from PSP in 2013. (My son and I think that Roisin first started showing signs that something was not right four years before diagnosis). What a blessing that you had this father for such a long period of your life.
Yes, as hard as it was, it was a blessing since Dad lived to the age of eighty-five. The year I spent taking care of him (mid-2009 to mid-2010) was the hardest of my life. Eventually my mother felt I babied him too much so I left.
I believe some of my symptoms may have begun to surface as far back as January 1, 2005, when I was diagnosed with viral spinal meningitis. My follow-up care with a neurologist down in Houma led to a differential diagnosis of a seizure disorder of unknown etiology. That doctor treated my head pain with Botox injections into my forehead.
This treatment was successful until I began to fall in 2008. This led me to my last spinal surgery in April, 2009 here in New Orleans. The result was a drop foot in my left foot and constant pain from a tiny disc fragment too near my spinal cord to risk removing. The head pain returned, although not as bad. I could not get Botox due to my lack of health insurance. Following my first stroke in November, 2015, I have experienced constant throbbing head pain with every heartbeat. Ten months later was my second stroke and diagnosis of IT. I was actually feeling pretty good because the diagnosis was not Parkinson's. Then I educated myself through my fantastic neurologist, Dr. Freiberg.
I am not sure what Dad was referring to just before he passed, but maybe he had identified something like PD in me. We can discuss that when we are reunited, God willing. He was one of the most perceptive people I've ever known.
Thanks for allowing me to indulge myself by running on.
My best to you and yours.
Steve
Years ago, I was given a booklet on Guardian Angels by a lady I did not know. She told me that it was not a person who had asked her to give it to me, implying that she was divinely inspired. She said that she had been told that with what I would have to put up with, I would need it. Well, I have had a lot of crosses to bear,and I pray to my ( and others) G. Angels regularly. When I was having an op for cancer, waiting to go into theatre, a beautiful nurse looked down at me, told me I would be alright and that she had undergone the same op. successfully. I had a second op. a month later, late, the night before, a nurse sat by my bed, told me that she had had the same op. and gave me some practical and helpful information and kept me calm. When I was rushed into emergency admission and had to stay the night, another such angel popped up. I believe we have physical and spiritual guardian angels. All there if we need them, use them and appreciate them. X
Great and inspiring response. You have to be open to their presence and appreciate what they mean. You are indeed fortunate to have had their assistance in some very tough times. I hope to discover more as I continue my journey through life. Thanks, Robbo. With all my best wishes,
Steve
Well Steve, Some of us just have a lot of compassion for our neighbour... A neighbour is just ourselves walking in different shoes and living nearby.
Don't be offended, but I don't need a personified God to have compassion and to do what is instinctively good for myself, my loved ones, or my neighbour.
I mean no offence to those here who follow a religion and, yes I am deeply spiritual despite having no personified God.
We each have to find our own path, make our choices and then be as strong as we might in this turbulent world.
I wish you strength and then more.
Warmly
Kevin
Amen. I think you have captured my situation. Organized religion is not for everyone, but faith of some sort should be. As a veteran of numerous hurricanes, I understand turbulence better than some.
Returning your wishes for strength, I remain your brother in arms,
Steve
I can so relate to this. Organised religion was pushed on me from a very early age & It left me completely stifled as I couldn't relate to it in any way. Years later when my husband went through a liver transplant I found God, well I found that spiritual connection & have felt someone looking after me from then on. Too many coincidences in my life not to be sure of this. I have now looked after my husband for almost 17 years, I'm not exactly sure when the PSP set in, but it must be a good part of that although diagnosis came much later. I confess to being angry inside for a long time because his personality so changed & he was not kind to me making me often question why we were still together, but knowing deep down there was something wrong I remained loyal & Guardian angels ? I'm surrounded by them. My family & friends support me in every way, the carers with support from our local care home are nothing but marvellous but in the end it's a lonely world in many ways as my life (at 57) is totally dictated to by this awful illness. I am resigned to this now, the person I knew has long gone, but only through the faith I have that there is a God & he's looking after me for some purpose or another. It has kept me sane & I pray every day it continues. Here's to all of us xx
Wonderful post. Thank you.
You have struggled hard and long.
I so recognise the part about, "his personality so changed & he was not kind to me making me often question why we were still together..."
That is what we do. Its tough, but we do what we feel is right.
In admiration
Kevin
No question whatsoever, my Mum and you lot!! End of, without you, oooh doesn't bear thinking about x
Mum grew her angel wings 
My Warriar gained his angel wings this morning 
Another angel
Angel Wings 
My Dad has gained his Angel Wings
