A Promise is a Promise Page 8

  To the casual observer, this is a story about a young girl who slipped into a diabetic coma in her 16th year, and who continues to be detached from the waking world of consciousness more than a quarter of a century later. It also is a medical story about a prognosis of almost utter hopelessness from the “scientific” viewpoint. And it is a story about a physician named Dr. Louis Chaykin, who has treated Edwarda all of these years without charging for his services. This, in itself, is something that many would call a miracle!

  Finally, this appears to be the story of a mother foregoing her personal concerns, including her own health, while unconditionally loving and devoting herself to her comatose daughter for over a quarter of a century. Here is a mother doing virtually all of the work, including fund raising, to keep her daughter alive in her own home. Edwarda’s survival has much to do with both Kaye’s unconditional love and with her refusal to send Edwarda to a nursing home where her expenses would be covered. But the presence of the Blessed Mother in this epic makes the surface details only that—surface.

  This story transcends the surface facts, and leads us to a world that is beyond what we observe with our senses. The Blessed Mother’s entrance into Kaye’s life that autumn night provided Kay with something that she had only surmised up until that point. It gave her something tangible to go with her incredible faith and undying love. Now, at last, Kaye felt there was a far greater purpose than she had known before her visit from the Blessed Mother and her newly acquired information about victim souls.

  Kaye had been willing to follow her own instincts in Edwarda’s care and survival for over two decades prior to the first visitation by the Blessed Mother. Now she felt she knew why. This brought peace to Kaye concerning everything about her life during the previous 21 years.

  The Blessed Mother told her that the right people would show up in her life, that finances would be taken care of, that Edwarda was on a mission known only to her and to God, and that Kaye’s actions were perfect in that she had demonstrated, despite the greatest of challenges, the divine love of God and His son.

  In this final chapter, I will relate a few of the many miracles and some of the real magic that I associate with the involvement of the Blessed Mother with Kaye and Edwarda O’Bara. Kaye is certain that Edwarda chose to take on the burden of a victim soul. She doesn’t know the reasons for her daughter’s choice, or the length of time that this will endure. But her faith in the spiritual nature of this all-consuming event is unwavering.

  One of the most astonishing stories occurred in the early months of 1995. Kaye spoke about it with a calm sense of its mystery and rightness:

  Two Spanish-looking women knocked at my door one day, out of the blue. One of them asked me if I was Mrs. Edwarda, and could they come in. The other one just kept looking while I explained that I was Edwarda’s mother and invited them in. The one woman said her name was Mary and that her companion was her sister, Anne. They wouldn’t give me their last names and wanted to come in and pray with Edwarda.

  I am very careful about anyone staying alone with Edwarda, but I had a good feeling about these two women, so I agreed when they asked if they could pray alone with her. I walked to the kitchen and then quietly looked in on them. When I went back and glanced in, Anne had her head on the bed, and she had Edwarda’s hand on her head.

  I asked Kaye how old these women were.

  The one must have been about 50, and the other about 60. They didn’t appear to be from this country, and I was confused about the way they were praying. I thought to myself, Well, people pray in all different ways, just let it go.

  I went back into the room, and they were still praying with Edwarda’s hand on Anne’s head. As they left, I asked again if I could have their names, and they said no, but that they would be back. They only gave the names Mary and Anne, and they left.

  “They didn’t tell you how they found you?” I asked Kaye.

  Kaye shook her head, saying, “No, they wouldn’t tell me how they came or anything. Two days later, a man came to my door and said he needed to measure for the carpet. I told him that I hadn’t ordered any new carpet, and he told me that Anne paid for it before she went back to Venezuela. That’s how I found out she’s from Venezuela.

  “When I asked him what her last name was, he said he was not allowed to tell me her last name. He also said I would have to take the carpet she picked and said it was high quality and beautiful when I expressed concern that it might be a color I didn’t like. We made arrangements for him to come and install it the next week.”

  “Did you need carpeting?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. The carpet was very bad, and it was cheap carpeting that someone had put in for me about 18 years ago. It almost had a white strip through it where people had walked. So the sister called me the following Friday after they put the carpeting down, and she asked about the carpeting and said she was flying in from Pensacola and would it be all right to visit. Of course I said it was okay.”

  “Did she come?” I inquired.

  Kaye explained what happened next:

  Yes, she came. I thought when she asked to come here, she must have family here. When she arrived, she said she was going to spend the night. We presumed she meant to stay at a hotel, and my girlfriend Mary offered to drop her off about 8:00 P.M., but she surprised us by saying that she was staying here at my house.

  I explained to her that I really didn’t have room; my grandson has one room and my daughter the other, and I stay right next to Edwarda. She said it was okay with her to sleep on a chair, and so she did. The next morning, I asked her right out to tell me how she got here.

  She told me that Anne, her sister, had a brain tumor and had been going to all of the shrines in South America and kept being told to go to Florida. So she came to Florida and went to three or four shrines and was repeatedly told to go to Miami. Then Mary, the sister from Pensacola, was sleeping one night and was instructed to go to Miami and find the lady that has the sick daughter.

  So, they just started out, with no idea who they were going to see. They drove all over downtown Miami and went into a church where everyone spoke Spanish, and they started asking if anyone knew who it is that sees the Blessed Mother in her dreams. Someone told them it might be a woman named Rosa who lived north of Miami in Hollywood, Florida.

  They asked if this Rosa has a daughter who is sick, who has been really sick for a very long time. They said that the vision told them that the woman who sees the Blessed Mother has a sick daughter. At the church, they were told that they must be referring to Kaye O’Bara and her daughter, Edwarda, but that I hadn’t seen the Blessed Mother because that would have been in the news stories that had been written about Edwarda.

  (Kaye had always refused to talk to the papers about the Blessed Mother for fear of public rejection or repudiation by the Church.)

  The women got our address because they felt that Anne, the sister with cancer, was supposed to see me and Edwarda. That’s how they got here. She told me that she had seen Edwarda several times in her dream, and I said I hoped she wasn’t expecting a cure for her sister’s cancer. I don’t want people to come and touch Edwarda and think they’ll get all better.

  She said they weren’t and that her sister was under the care of a team of doctors in South America. I realized that if she was terminal, she might die any day, and I asked her to please let me know how she is.

  I later realized that Mary came and stayed at my house to make sure that the carpet she had ordered was installed correctly, so that the furniture they had also bought for us could be delivered. She wanted to make sure that everything was all right. Once she was sure, she left.

  Before Mary left, Kaye told me that she once again asked her to keep her advised about her sister’s health. Kaye subsequently received a stunning phone call, in response to her request. Kaye explained softly:

  The sister called me and told me the most miraculous thing. She said the doctors couldn’t find any signs of the tumor in her
sister Anne’s head. It was completely gone. I wanted to write to Anne in Venezuela, and asked her sister for the name and address. But she said this must remain absolutely private.

  “It was strange. It really was,” Kaye concluded.

  These strangers, one from another country, had a vision of a sick daughter whose mother saw the Blessed Mother. All the information they had was that she was in Miami. They asked at churches throughout the area and were guided to Kaye and Edwarda’s home, even thought Kaye had never publicly spoken about her visitations from the Blessed Mother. They then showed their gratitude by purchasing all new carpeting, which was badly needed, and a houseful of beautiful furniture.

  A miracle? A coincidence? The work of Edwarda while silently suffering as a victim soul? You will have to decide that for yourself. I am reporting it to you exactly as it was described to me.

  Another dramatic story unfolded around Kaye’s efforts to pay the ever-present bills. At one time, Kaye had 32 MasterCard and Visa Cards, borrowed to the maximum. She’d borrow from one card to pay off another. Kaye described the situation:

  “All of the credit cards were in my name. Some had my initials. Some had Kaye, others Kathryn, and they let me have them. Also, I had to borrow on my house frequently. I’ve had third, fourth, and fifth mortgages. Before Edwarda got sick, we were always able to keep up with the expenses. Then when my husband died, the expenses and debts went beyond anything I could have imagined. Edwarda’s hospitalization coverage was gone a month after the coma. That was all that the school system provided. So we borrowed. We borrowed on everything.”

  “So you were absolutely maxed out with the credit companies?” I asked.

  Kaye nodded. “I didn’t dare to go back to the banks anymore, so I started to look in the paper for money, and I found an ad that offered loans with no collateral required. I called the telephone number, and a man took all the information and sent me $6,000! It was an amazing amount. Actually, he had someone come out and deliver the money to me.”

  “Did you tell him what you needed it for?”

  “Oh, he didn’t care. He said it didn’t matter. He was just in the business of lending money, and there would be a little interest. I should have realized then, but it wouldn’t have mattered because I needed it, and I had to get it. Edwarda was home with us. She needed a bed, plus her drug store bills were way over, the credit card bills were way over, and everything had mushroomed on us. The man said that I should pay him $100 a month, and I said okay. So I paid him every month for 15 or so years. I started when Joe was still alive. Joe didn’t even know what this guy was coming for.”

  “How would you pay him?” I wondered.

  Kaye recalled:

  He would come to the door. I would give him money, and Joe thought that he was just coming from the bank. I paid him from 1972 until about 1986 or 1987, then I didn’t hear from him. I thought, Well, I’m paid up. I’m all right. But I learned later that you never get paid up with those kinds of loans. I didn’t realize this because they never give you a balance.

  So, I didn’t hear anything from him for about three or four years, and one day a man came to the door, on a weekend, a Sunday. The next day was a holiday, and nobody was home but me. He wasn’t the same man that had come to me before, and I thought it was someone coming to pray with Edwarda.

  Then he brought up the money I had borrowed. I told him I didn’t ever borrow money from him and that I didn’t remember ever seeing him. He said it wasn’t for him, it was for the man in the Keys (Key West, Florida). “I’m his collector,” he said. I said that I hadn’t heard from him in years, and the man said that was because he’s been in prison.

  Then he told me that the guy had been in prison for 15 years and that when you borrow from these people, your debt goes on and on. When I asked him what I owed, it was some crazy amount in the thousands of dollars. I told him I had already paid way more than that. He said that the first six years you paid only interest.

  The debt could be settled for $600 if it was paid that day, he told me. It was a holiday weekend, and I told him if he came back on Tuesday, I would have the money for him, but he insisted he could not go back to the Keys without it. He had to have something, he said, because the guy he was collecting for would get real mad if he didn’t.

  “Did he threaten you?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, he was definitely threatening. First he looked at me and then at the pair of scissors there. I wasn’t going to take any chances on him beating me up or hurting Edwarda.”

  “So you thought the worst?”

  “Yes,” Kaye said firmly. “I told him to come back at 6:00 P.M., and I would have the money for him. I thought I would call everyone I knew, and somehow I would pay this guy off.”

  “Was he scruffy looking? A gangster type?”

  “No. He looked like one of those guys you would see with Elliott Ness, a real gambler, a collector. Like an old bouncer, but he was very definitely serious.”

  “Can you remember what his exact words were?”

  “He said to me, ‘I can’t go back without the money unless I do something.’ Then he looked at those scissors. I looked at him, and he said, ‘Those are nice scissors.’ That’s when I told him to give me until 6:00 P.M., and he said, ‘Okay, I’ll come back at six.’”

  “So what did you do? You had no money.”

  Kaye explained:

  Before he left, I asked him if I could give him a check that I knew would be guaranteed by a neighbor, but he wouldn’t take a check. He seemed to feel bad for me, but worse for himself. He told me that he had a wife and children and that if he didn’t come back with the money, his family would be harmed. I tried to get the phone number of the man who wanted the money to tell him not to harm this man’s family, but he said he couldn’t dare do that, and he left.

  No one was home because it was a holiday weekend, and I had no cash and no way to even raise it. Finally, I sat down in an old brown chair I had in there and said, “Come on, God, you always said you’d see me through. I don’t care if you put a hole in my ceiling and I have to get a whole new roof. I need this money and I need it right now!” It was ten minutes before six, and I was still sitting and praying for the money to show up.

  I thought someone might just call me on the phone five minutes before six, but nothing was happening. Then I heard the doorbell ring and figured the guy was back a few minutes early and wondered what I was going to do.

  There was a little man at the door, a little Spanish man, and he said, “This is for you,” as he handed me an envelope. I invited him to come in, but he said he couldn’t, that he was just delivering the envelope.

  Like I told you before, when people give me envelopes, I never look in, I just put it in my pocket and give thanks for whatever it is. I asked again if he was sure he wouldn’t come in, and he said he was sure. He had to leave.

  I went back and sat in the brown chair again and decided to look in the envelope, expecting 50 or so dollars, and maybe the collector would accept it as partial payment. When I looked, there were six new $100 bills, exactly the amount I needed.

  I jumped up and ran across the street to Anne’s house. She was standing at the door, and I asked her to quick, tell me which way the man who was just at my door went. But she insisted that there had been no man at my door. She said she saw me at the door, and Abe was about to come over to see if there was something the matter.

  She described me standing at the door, holding my hand out, but there was no one there, and there was no car in front of my house. According to Anne, there hadn’t been a car in front of my house for about three hours when that man left earlier. They had seen the collector and no one else. There had been no one and no car.

  When the collector came and I gave him the money, he said he would be back. I told him not to ever come to my house again. I appreciated the loan and thanked him, but I said, “Money isn’t going to do that man a bit of good. Nothing he does from this day on will ever help him. And t
hat’s just how I felt. That’s the first time I was ever rude.

  “How long ago was this? Do you remember?” I asked.

  “Oh, that was in 1991, right before the Blessed Mother started to come. She came two months after that incident. I think she came because I was scared. That was the first time in my life I was scared. I wasn’t scared for myself, but for my children. I think that’s why the Blessed Mother started to come, because of that person coming to my house.”

  How could there be a mystery person, who was invisible to the neighbors across the street? How does one explain that person’s arrival while Kaye was deep in prayer over her plight? How could precisely that amount of money that Kaye needed, be in that envelope? How could Kaye’s fear at the thought of the collector inflicting damage on her or Edwarda be taken care of so perfectly?

  A miracle? Real magic? A coincidence? Are the answers contained in the appearance of the Blessed Mother, who assures Kaye that the right people will appear to take care of her and Edwarda? Are the answers related to Kaye’s learning about victim souls and Edwarda’s choice? Is a part of the answer found in the Blessed Mother’s teachings to Kaye that God has given her the brains to handle this situation?

  You will decide for yourself. Marcelene and I are convinced that part of the answer to this ongoing mystery has to do with people reading this book and participating in the compassionate act of including Edwarda and Kaye in their prayers, and helping them in any way that their heart dictates.

  Another mystery supports a conclusion that real magic is indeed part of the Edwarda story. Kaye explained that one day a man phoned from South Miami to tell her he had a rose bush for her:

  I asked him where he got it, but he said that he didn’t know. He just knew it was for me. I was going to have him put it out back where my former neighbor had seen the Blessed Mother’s aura, out by the mango tree. But then the Blessed Mother told me it was her rose bush, and it must be out front so people can see and enjoy its beauty, and she told me when Edwarda wakes up, she will go out and see all the roses and all the colors, and I can take a picture of her.