As a matriarch’s days draw to a close, a vision comes calling
The dying often see death rendered in the visage of a loved one or kind stranger offering safe passage — and that is a true gift.
In the winter of 2010, 90-year-old Helen Budzinski described what she saw, which no one else could see.
A blond girl, age 5 or so, at the foot of her bed. Then twin girls. Then a pair of boys named Michael and David.
Helen’s stroke in October sharpened what had been a slow decline. Her granddaughter, Jocelyn Pappas, whom she raised, now served as Helen’s full-time caregiver at Jocelyn’s home in rural Connecticut.
On Monday morning, Dec. 20, with darkness shrouding the woods outside the window,
