When I turned forty-eight I was unexpectedly paid back a sum of money I had lent my good friend to escape her abusive husband. She had moved far away and I'd always hoped she could stay free from him. Eventually, he tracked her down... but that is her story, not mine.

My story is about what I did with that money and how God influenced me to make the right decisions to help others through difficult times.

With my windfall in the bank, I decided that I would begin college. I attended Community College, taking a few classes before taking a course that would total my life's accomplishments to two years college equivalency. I only needed two more years for my Bachelor's Degree! I was thrilled and chose to go to a college specifically geared for adult learners like me. Vermont College of Norwich University became my home for one weekend every month for the next two years.

Now, I've never been one that thought inside a box. Or even outside the box. Most of the time I find it interesting to discover that there was a box in the first place. At college, the students choose what they want to learn about and the faculty helps them achieve the necessary requirements to graduate.

The first semester, I chose to study "Mind, Body, and Spirit Connection." I learned ways to relax, meditate, and focus away from pain. I devoured books, wrote pages of essays and reports and presented guided imagery to my professor and classmates. I felt flushed with success.

The second year I was told I had to take a history component. I was much more relaxed at college by this time, so I decided I wanted to study "The History of Torture." I wanted to find out how some people could be tortured and still remain human. How and what got them through horrible times. And how could we hurt another being? I had a particular emphasis on the Holocaust, but my presentation actually bothered my classmates as I gave the statistics of people that had been killed while we sat in class that day. Not deaths of years ago, but right now in America, people and children were dying of abuse and neglect as we were speaking.

Next semester I was told I needed to have a literature component. I had to laugh. I had read books before I went to first grade. I opened a bookstore with books that I read. I needed a literature component? Ok. I chose a genre I hadn't read much of. "Erotica from a Woman's Perspective." I certainly enjoyed those books and papers I wrote. I presented a nice steamy story to my classmates and the professor gave me high marks and a high five as well.

For my last semester I chose "Death and Dying." I didn't know why, but I knew I needed to study that particular subject. I volunteered at hospice, and I had a special lady who died half-way through my semester. Her husband relied more on me than she did. That couple remains in my heart, although they have both long since died. I read books, I wrote papers and I learned so much about the grieving process. At my culmination presentation, I prepared a circle outside in the lovely Vermont Spring with wild-flowers. Classmates and professors stood together to say final farewells to people (and pets) that had passed. It was tearful and yet I received many thanks for giving a moment to honor loved ones once more.

So, I graduated, but I still didn't have a clue as to why I had chosen those random and strange things to study. I was going to turn fifty that year. My husband and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary that July. My bookstore was making money and I loved my life. Fifty was going to be great!

In August my step-son Terence killed himself! He was only twenty-five and he left a two-year-old son to be raised by his young mother. The heartbreak was especially hard for my daughter, Lisa, who felt she should have known something was wrong. She thought she should have protected him and kept him alive. My husband was stoic but his heart was also heavy at the loss. My education was put to the test as I struggled to help the two people I loved most in life cope with death.

Death hung around me as if daring me to be strong. Within six months of Terence's death, my only child was diagnosed as terminally ill with Lupus, Scleroderma, and Pulmonary Hypertension! The doctors thought it might be an extreme grief reaction.

I found myself helping her more and more. Not just the illness, but she had to leave her apartment that she loved and move back in with us so that I could care for her. Her illness brought pain, yes, even torture to her as the medical profession tried to save her life. One by one she had to adapt and change as she lost abilities. She had a near-death experience that she described as seeing fairy lights coming to take her away. She just took them into her heart and they gave her all their love.
I helped her with guided imagery learned that first semester and she used it often to overcome the side effects of the medicines and the disease. I gave her hope that she would emerge through the painful procedures. In my study of torture in the second semester, I concluded that hope helped people survive painful experiences. But my last semester was the most challenging and heart-breaking lesson I'd ever learned and I was to be put to the test.

Six years after Lisa was diagnosed, I had to be the one who told my warrior to stop the battle. She had had to be intubated and placed in a medically induced coma. For two weeks the doctors and I struggled to save her, but her lungs were steadily bleeding. I got a call from her step-mother and answered it by the bedside. My daughter's father had just died unexpectedly of a major heart attack. It seemed like when Lisa heard the news she finally gave up the fight. Her system started shutting down.

The next day the doctor's said it was time to stop the extraordinary efforts to keep her alive. I tried to get her released to me so that I could care for her at home, but I finally realized that she would never have any quality of life. No playing video games, no shopping, and no puppy dog or kitties on her bed with her. I couldn't sentence her to a life of more torture as it hurt her to even turn onto her side by now, although she was in a deep coma.

So I played her favorite music and my husband and I talked to her as she drifted from this world to the next. I talked so much that few minutes. I sang her a lullaby that both my mother and I sang to her when she was little. I told her I expected her dad to be there to open the gates for her. I told her "I love you" again and again. I stayed strong until I didn't have to anymore. Then I cried. God had his arms around me as I sought a quiet place to pray. I overheard a woman talking about wanting to bring her own daughter home and wondering how she could do that. I leaned in and gave them contacts to make that happen. I had learned a lot in the years I had cared for my daughter. I was stunned when the woman hugged me and said, "God sent you as His angel to help me." I felt His peace descend upon me and strengthen me.

I went back to the room where my husband sat with my daughter's good friend. Taking a deep breath I could hug them both in sorrow, but with hope. I find that trusting in God is both easy and difficult. But He knows what you need and offers you that which will sustain you. Death and I are aware of each other's existence, but I hope we can keep a little distance between us for a while longer.

Each year I spent at Vermont College of Norwich University added a dimension that would play an important part in my ability to handle pain and tragedy. I never realized how critical it would be to study guided imagery, pain, and death. I became stronger, even when I thought I was only being a rebel. Oh, and that semester I spent reading erotic literature? Well, I am writing... just not erotica... yet!