Rose DeFazio’s son, Jason, was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald who had worked his way up from the mailroom. He was 29; he and his wife, Michele, had been married for three months. Jay, as everyone called him, was a joyous, life-affirming person who was devoted to his family.
Rose sometimes asks her son to be with her, and she often feels rewarded by signs that indicate his presence. “One day when I was very, very sad and depressed about Jay’s death, I was talking to him, like I often do, telling him how much I missed him,” Rose began.
“When I walked out of the bathroom located off the master bedroom, I turned off the little Blessed Mother night-light I keep there. It went on again. I turned it off again. It came on again.
I called my husband to show him. He turned it off, and the same thing happened. I think that it was my son’s way of telling me to be strong and that I am on this earth for a reason.”
Rose has a collection of angels that she keeps on a shelf. One of them, a green stained-glass angel, seems to have a life of its own. The angel, which is about five inches tall with a heavy metal base, doesn’t want to stay on the shelf where it belongs.
More times than Rose can count, she has found it as much as ten feet away, across the room by the sliding glass doors. When they find the green angel on the floor, Rose’s grandchildren and other family members refer to its wandering ways, saying, “The angel flew today.”
Rose shared a favorite green angel story: “Jay and my brother, Anthony, had a special relationship, and Jay would always tease his uncle about one thing or another. One day when Anthony was visiting, he was out on the deck and got a splinter in his foot. Anthony came inside, sat down on a love seat, and started complaining about his splinter. We all started making fun of Anthony’s complaining. Out of the blue, with no plausible explanation, the green angel flew across the room, hit Anthony’s leg, and landed by his foot. How could that happen?”
