Our Angel Baby, What Is Her Message?

By Michael Wilke

Tragically, every year, nearly sixty thousand loving moms and dads in the US suffer through the death of an infant child.  Only those who have experienced such a loss can truly understand its effect on their lives.  As the author so vividly expresses in this book, the death of your own baby is something that you never 'get over'.Whether you are a bereaved parent, looking for hope, or someone seeking understanding about the angels in our lives, this is an exceptionally written and courageous book. It is an honest account of what it really means to lose a child, no holds barred.  But it is also a first-hand account of the love that is indestructible; the bond between a father and a daughter that is eternal, and the hope that prevails in the face of utter despair.This book can provide direction, peace, understanding, tears, and inner support.It encourages grief-stricken parents to make most of the arrangements themselves, helping them to understand that once the funeral, memorial service, family gathering and tears are over, there will never be a second chance to do it their way. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Islandrunner Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227923738

Michael Wilke

My name is Michael Harold Wilke.  I am second-born of six children. My genetic ancestry is a wild mix of Catholic/French/Canadian/First Nation Anishinaabe (mom's side) and Lutheran/German (dad's side). At the age of 74 years, I consider myself to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in excellent condition. I am currently single, but have been married twice to a couple of beautiful and loving ladies. Jeri is the mother and co-parent of Jamie and Jason. Bonnie is mother and co-parent of Ryan, Marie, and Andrew. All of our boys are married and have families of their own. They were raised in a secure, loving, and relatively stable Caucasian middle-class American family atmosphere. This life has been - and continues to be - a breathtaking roller-coaster ride, filled with plenty of life's challenges and celebrations. I have managed to mature and grow soulfully from consciously making decisions in my adult life. I Rejoice in positive outcomes while learning powerfully motivating lessons from some wrong, troublesome, and/or difficult choices. My life coaching techniques have synthesized through honest and open interaction with others, interpretation of personal experiences, along with lifelong reading and studies. The focus of studies have been in the areas of astrology, psychology, religion, and spirituality. LOVE, PURPOSE, and DISCIPLINE are embedded in me partially as a result of the parenting I received. In adulthood, love and discipline have been developed through relationships of all kinds. The alternative lifestyle that I live now is the result of a personal breakdown that brought me to my knees mentally and emotionally at thirty-nine years of age. Throughout the following years of self-motivating recovery, I have become an expert on ME. Recovery has not been easy; requiring what was, at first, an uncomfortable self-loving focus. Time and patience have allowed self-help therapies to bring health, happiness, and healing into my life. Within the parameters of my alternative lifestyle, I thrive as a peaceful, loving, and tranquil American guy. There is very little drama in my life.

Book preview

THE ISLAND OF THE FRAGRANT MIST

Sparkling, fragrant, champagne beaches

Bathed in tropical sunshine ...

Eleuthera.

Gently, deeply, powerfully massaged

(soothing touch)

by warm rhythmic, passionate swells;

caressing, crashing, Caribbean/Atlantic waves.

Eleuthera of Paradise,

Blessed by God and kissed by a spirit

of eternal joy in life

for IslandRunners and IslandLovers. - Michael

THAT IS WHERE I RUN EVERY DAY at lunchtime: On Eleuthera of Paradise, the Island of the Fragrant Mist or IOTFM.  No matter where I physically run, in mind and spirit I am on the IOTFM. That is where Marie Elizabeth meets me on this warm spring afternoon in 2008. My two-mile run is finished and I now sit on the east side of a large blue jet hangar, cooling down and eating some fresh fruit.  As I walked through the hangar to get to this secluded spot, a delicate white butterfly came gently floating into the huge open doorway, effortlessly lifting up to the ceiling before gliding down near me.

The fragrance of rose petals wafted through the air in the wake of this hand-sized graceful butterfly.  It followed me outside, playfully gliding and tumbling as butterflies often do, lifting my spirit and bringing a gentle kind of serenity to my heart. When I sat with my back against the hangar in the bright spring sunlight, this overly friendly and trusting butterfly landed on my left pinky fingertip and stilled its wings, folding them together straight up as if in prayer. That is when she appeared to me – Marie Elizabeth, I mean.

She sits across from me now, but we are not on an asphalt airplane ramp.  As if in a dream, we are in a rolling meadow. It is a carpet of lush green grass that is dotted with little yellow buttercups, sweet fragrant patches of pink clover, crocus blossoms and other beautiful wildflowers.  Butterflies, a white, yellow, and orange kaleidoscope of them, are dancing in the air and adding a spirit of freedom to the world.

This is my meadow, daddy, the cute little five-year-old says. Well, not really mine, she points to a robed man standing a short distance away and tending to some sheep.  It is His, the meadow of the Good Shepherd, where the lion lies down with the lamb.

My daughter, Marie Elizabeth, is the happiest and most joyful little girl you would ever want to know.  Her dark auburn curls bounce lightly onto petite, little girl shoulders.  A cheerful smile puts a sparkle in her vibrant blue eyes.  Her pointing finger directs my attention across a small patch of the meadow to where a lion cradles a white lamb in its paws.  The lamb rests its head on the lion’s muscular shoulder while the once ferocious hunter gently licks the face of the wooly baby until it falls to sleep.

Feelings of love and wonder fill me to overflowing.  This is a dream, a very real daydream, that helps me to know beyond any doubt that I don’t have to worry or fret about where my daughter is, what she is doing, or who is with her.  I know now that Marie Elizabeth is always with me and Him.  She will never leave us because our love for her does not end, and love is the most powerful force in the universe.  So, my daughter and me share lunch in her meadow until it is time for me to return to work.

Before we finish though, Marie Elizabeth smiles and says, I have a message for you, daddy. She gets up, and reaches out her hand.  I take it in mine and feel the energy of its warmth and love flowing into and through me. It is the message your heart has been searching for ever since you last held me in your arms.

We walk through the meadow as she gives me the simple message that I have been praying to hear for the last twenty-three-years. This message is for the world, dad; give it to everybody, she says.  You will know how to give it to the world.

Please come along and turn the pages of this book where God’s message to the world is revealed by a special messenger in this true story about Our Angel Baby, Marie Elizabeth.

PART I

A Blended Family

Yours, mine, and ours is how I describe our family in 1983. It is a year and a half into my second marriage.  Yours is Mandy, six-year-old daughter of my wife, Bonnie.  Mine are seven-year-old Jamie and three-year-old Jason.  All three of our children are from previous first marriages.  Ours is Ryan, born in December 1982, one year after Bonnie and me tied the knot. Married with children, a house in the ‘burbs, two cars in the garage and big cheesy smiles all around.  That is us, the Wilke’s of Medina, OH. We represented, in my mind, a happily blended family living the American dream.

Our big smiles and the happy appearance began to fade over time, though, as life together exposed the honest truth of a pithy observation by Canadian playwright Raymond Hull who wrote that, All marriages are happy, it is the living afterward that causes the problems. Add a frustrating portion of our former spouses to the mix and you begin to see a sad sort of truthful irony that is summed up nicely by comedian Groucho Marx’s one liner, Marriage is the chief cause of divorce.

Is there anybody who can save us from ourselves?

THE PERFECT FAMILY

We appeared to be the perfect young family living at the corner of Weymouth Road and Union Street in Medina, Ohio. Summer and fall of 1984 marked our third year of living in the big farmhouse that had been bequeathed to my employer, the Medina City Schools, upon the passing of Emilia Bowman in 1981. Over time, a casual onlooker would have seen a young attractive couple enjoying the responsibilities of parenting their four happy and energetic children.  A more interested observer might have caught a glimpse of real life with Bonnie or Mike frantically attempting to corral a laughing playful little Jason running around outside, naked and watering-by-urination the stately Maple trees in the front yard on an early summer evening after his daring escape from a bathtub.

Neighbors, on occasion, could have also seen Mike or oldest son, Jamie, climb into the house through a window because a napping two-year-old, named Ryan, woke up early and locked us out of the house.  With a family of four children, perfection was mixed with moments of mayhem.  From my vantage point as father, the word perfect is a term best reserved for God and God alone.

Perfect family or not, many of the 20,000 townspeople knew that the Wilke’s lived in the Bowman house.  My oldest son, Jamie, was in the third grade at the nearby elementary school.  Bonnie’s daughter, Mandy, was the cutest little princess in second grade.  And five-year-old Jason strutted proudly to his morning kindergarten class. While the older siblings learned their three R’s, and mom and dad went to work, youngest son, Ryan, stayed at home with his nanny, a wonderful and loving lady named Grandma Garnet.  We were a perfect family in a perfect setting, living the perfect American dream.

Bonnie, mom of the house, a thin, attractive and bubbly twenty-eight-year-old blonde, worked as a computer programmer at the county administration building near the city square. Mike, dad of the house, an athletic thirty-four-year-old, worked for the city schools in the maintenance department as groundskeeper for the two sports complexes. Jamie, at the age of eight, was in Cub Scouts, played soccer, baseball, basketball, and this year, football.  Mandy, a year younger than Jamie, was in Girl Scouts, played soccer, and was to be a cheerleader for Jamie’s football team, the Colts.  Jason played T-ball.  Ryan was just a cute little handful.  Moose, our black lab, and our black (demon) cat, Charlie, rounded things out for the perfect family.

With that lineup there were numerous occasions for conflict, misunderstanding, struggle, and frustration between husband and wife.  And, like most Americans, we did our best to hide the problems that we didn’t have time to deal with, in order to present the appearance of a totally happy and well-adjusted couple.

When Bonnie and me were married in 1981, it was not a popular choice.  I had been divorced from my wife of seven years for only a few months, and Bonnie’s family in Pennsylvania, along with many of her co-workers, were against us tying the knot.  We didn’t know each other well enough, and I did have the two boys. We kind of slipped beneath the radar by having a very small wedding with only two witnesses and a photographer.  Also, to push our luck we set the day as Friday the thirteenth of November, saying our vows in the thirteenth hour at the thirteenth minute.  There were numerous wrong reasons that motivated us to marry too soon, but a couple of right reasons were what we felt might keep us together. The most important positive reason for our marriage was that Bonnie truly loved me.  She embodied the beautifully expressed sentiment of famous painter Vincent van Gogh who once said, I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all of my heart.  Her love was that genuine.

Bonnie was in her mid twenties and had been divorced for two years when we met.  She was hurt and discouraged by the divorce and was determined to find Mr. Right the next time.  And there had to be a next time because she loved Mandy and wanted to have more children. The second good reason for getting married so quickly was our children and the fact that we both wanted more of them.  All three kids needed the kind of loving family relationship that only a marriage commitment could provide.  And, even though neither one or us understood how to make the necessary changes within ourselves to grow the marriage, we both knew that we loved our children more than life itself.  So, we took the plunge and quickly started building the rest of a Wilke football team the old-fashioned way, one boy at a