Many years ago, a neighbor who was our good friend passed away. A few months later, his wife and I and our children were visiting his grave. While she and I stood at his grave, our young children were running around, as children do when they are bored. My two oldest ones, who were 4 and 6 years old and her two (about the same age) came screaming to us, looking very frightened. Their faces were pale as they reported that my 3 year-old son had fallen into a big hole. We ran to the location of a double-deep open grave which had been covered by a large piece of plywood. Apparently he had slipped in between the plywood and the edge of the grave and now was in a 6 or 7 foot hole which was very dark and scary to him. I heard his cries as we frantically removed the plywood so we could see him. His tear-stained little face was looking up at us as though he was pleading for help and luckily, he did not appear to be hurt physically.
As I comforted him with soothing words and my mind raced for a solution, I was inadvertently pushing dirt from the edge of the grave down upon my forlorn little son. I was frantic! I laid down on the ground on my stomach and I told my friend to hold my feet so I could attempt to reach him, but my arms were fart too short.
In those days, I was not savvy enough to remain calm for the sake of my child, so the more anxious I became, the more he cried. The other children were all frightened and my friend and I were, too.
Just as we were looking around for help in the cemetery and seeing no one – not a person, or car, or anybody who was alive besides us, I realized one of us would have to drive somewhere to get some assistance. As we were discussing who would go, out of nowhere came a tall man in a dark business suit. There had been no one in the cemetery just seconds before his appearance. He approached us, saying nothing, laid on his stomach on the ground, instructing us to hold his feet. He stretched his long arms down into the grave and lifted my son to safety.
As we were brushing the dirt off of him, I was hugging and kissing him. Then I looked around for the man. I wanted to help him brush off his fine suit, but above all to thank him for what he had done. He was nowhere in sight, no car had started or had even been seen, and the man disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. For those few minutes all attention had been on my young son, and none of us saw the man walk away or “disappear.”
After we had all calmed down a bit and started our trip back home, we marveled at what had happened and recalled that my son’s toy gun was still at the bottom of the grave. It had been forgotten during the rescue and now he was crying for his toy. We laughed at how shocked we imagined the mourners at that site would be when they saw the toy gun in the grave. Of course, we had replaced the plywood so another child would not have the same mishap. Many years later, my son would get teased about his graveyard story as being one of a “very vivid imagination.”
At the same time, the rescue by the tall man in the dark suit was a mystery to us, and it was a good story to tell after the fright was over. Today, I know that the man was an angel sent to help. There is no doubt in my mind now that I have heard many stories from others who reported their angels appearing and quickly disappearing once the crisis was over. Our tall dark angel came out of nowhere and when back into nowhere after being now here long enough to lift up a frightened little boy out of a big dark hole into the safety of his mother’s arms.
When my son was an adult with children of his own, I sent him a gilded angel to hang over his bed. I guess he thought he was too old for such things, and each time I visited him, the angel sat on his desk. Following the tragic loss of his sister, when I came to visit him, the angel was suspended over his bed.