Thursday, October 8, 2020
My dear Judy wasn’t a friend, she was my Guardian Angel. Anyone who doesn’t believe in angels, didn’t know Judy Kimberly. She was there for me regardless of the nature of the crisis In my life. I But let’s start when I first met this angel. It was one of the coldest days in South Florida (Sunrise) when a knock on my door revealed two very little children wrapped tightly in parkas. The little girl was the spokesperson for the two. “Hi, I’m Kathi and this is Ronnie and we live across the street and we were wondering if you had any kids who were old enough to come out and play?” It was a few days later when I crossed the street to meet the mother of those two adorable urchins.
She was 23 and beautiful. Her laugh was infectious. She had a baby two.months to the day older than the baby I had sleeping in my arms. Judy scooped my little son out of my arms and held him and smiled and oohed and aahed. She sat and held him tight as I watched in awe at the natural way she fussed over my infant. That was a foretelling of the way she would treat all my children in the future.
As the children grew so did our friendship. Did I mention her husband Ron was also an angel? Judy and I spent countless hours standing in their front yard with our babies on our hip. We laughed and gossiped the way all young mothers do. Only Judy was special. She listened when I described the depression I suffered. She kept my kids when I sought treatment for my illness. She was always there for me.
I wII never forget the nights we would play “Jeopardy” and drink Hawaiian Punch with vodka. My son Lance played the moderator for awhile. Ron called him Art for the host at that time was Art Fleming. Lance eventually came to think of Judy as a second mom.
Judy and Ron moved to Georgia and my heart broke. I looked at their empty house and sobbed. How many times were all my children in that house playing with her’s? That was six kids. I would have had a nervous breakdown if six kids were playing in my house. We each had one more baby before they moved. We marveled at the fact that there was 8 new people between us.
With the exception of the sudden passing of her mom, I don’t think I ever saw Judy cry. She seemed to be hard-wired to handle whatever life dealt her. We talked on the phone for hours. She shared the pain of losing Ron to cancer. She shared the joy of a multitude of grand and great grandchildren. At times it took both of us to keep them straight as her illness progressed. We used to talk about.a time machine that would take us back to those incredible days in Sunrise. There we were young and healthy with small children who happily played together most of the time.
Circumstances and passing years moved me from Florida to Michigan to California and now Virginia. Judy and I lost each other briefly in my vagabond life. But we reconnected thanks to my daughter Kelly who had kept in touch with the little girl in the parka.
We connected shortly after Ron passed. Do you know the other reason I knew Judy was an angel? Because God gave her Ron, who was designed to marry another angel.
Then as Judy struggled with her own diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, we resumed our friendship. We spent hours on the phone reminiscing and laughing about our time in Sunrise, Florida. We talked about her cat that she named Kitty so she couldn’t forget its name.
Judy was so brave. She handled hallucinations and creeping memory loss. Her faith in God never wavered.
A few weeks ago my daughter told me Judy was in hospice. How could that be? I was just gonna call her the previous week. I didn’t call due to selfishness on my part. It hurt too much to hear her struggle to remember the names of who was whose child.
Then on September 20th my guardian angel went home to be with Ron.. My baby, that she held so lovingly that long ago morning, had passed at the age of 53 in 2017. And I know that Judy and Ron have already found my son in Heaven because that’s what Guardian Angels do.
Marilyn Kroetz Stolze
