I got my faith from Mary. She showed me that She’s real and She loves me. 

When I really realized it was when my mother passed away. In 1998, my daughter and I were living with my mother, and it was just the three of us.

One morning in July, I woke up at five in the morning, which I usually didn’t do. I just had the feeling I had to go downstairs and check out my mom. So at five in the morning, I went down to check on her and she was sick so I got her all cleaned up.

She was shaking. I got her some hot soup. I had to help her with her pajamas. I got her all fixed up. I said, “Mom, maybe we should go to the hospital.” She goes, “No, no.” 

I go, “All right. I’ll be sleeping on the couch. If you need me, holler.”

Then about seven in the morning, she started yelling, “Kathleen, Kathleen!” I jumped up and ran in there. She was hanging off the bed. I set her up. 

All of a sudden, her head jerked. She started speaking fluent Slovak. Her mother died when she was three years old. I believe she spoke pretty fluent Slovak when she was really young, but she got away from that. As an adult, I might hear her say a word or two, a sentence at the most, but she was speaking like she was speaking to somebody, paragraphs and paragraphs.

Her face had all this joy. She was smiling, and there was this white glow coming out from underneath her skin. It was nothing of this world. It was just so beautiful. 

I shook her shoulders just a little bit and yelled, “Mom!” She was in this fixation. She didn’t even know I was there.

I got scared, and I ran in the kitchen and called 911. I ran back in there, and she had passed out. 

They took her to the hospital. They had to revive her. She was in the hospital on life support, but she was gone. They said, “We’re going to have to take her off life support.” I had to call my brother.

I don’t know why, because I really didn’t have anything to do with the Rosary at that time, but I knew she had to have a rosary in her hand because she watched EWTN, and she just loved Mother Angelica.

I couldn’t find her rosary. We were at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and I said to a girl, “Could you please just open the gift shop? I need a rosary.” And she goes, “No, I can’t, but here’s one here. It must be for you.” It was a mother of pearl rosary. I knew my mom had to die with a rosary in her hand. 

At 9:00 my brother was there and I was holding my mom’s hands. She had a rosary in her hand, and then Mother Angelica came on right at the moment my mother died. 

I was very confused. I didn’t know what happened. I knew something spectacular, something fantastic happened, something wonderful happened. Then I thought maybe my mother’s mother came for her, or maybe it was the Virgin Mary.

Well, then I started wondering about it all and looking at apparitions. I kind of knew about Lourdes and Fatima. I started studying that and I got a DVD about St. Bernadette and watched it. I said, “That’s how my mom acted, how Bernadette acted.”

This went on for a few years. I was trying to figure it out, always wondering what happened. I found Our Lady of Sorrows prayer and the Seven Promises. One of the promises, Mary said, “At the moment of your death, I will come and bring your mother.” That’s one of the promises if you say Our Lady of Sorrows Rosary. I don’t know if she was praying it, but it makes sense. We did go to Our Lady of Sorrows Church. It makes sense that they would have promoted that.

That’s when I started studying apparitions. I wasn’t really going to the Catholic Church, off and on with my relatives at a special function or something, but I was not really trusting religion, not trusting people. I was going to protect my own self and not get too involved in anything.

They had the traveling Fatima statue going around, and I went to see that. It was at a church in my area. I looked at a statue, and it wasn’t a statue’s face. It was a real face.

I kind of looked away, and I was thinking, “Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” The face was alive. It wasn’t moving. I would’ve really freaked out if it moved. It was just a living face, and nobody else seemed to see what I saw. I just kept looking back and looking at it, and it was a real face, and I just thought, “Wow.”

A highlight of this trip was the fact that I made it up Apparition Hill.

The muscles in my back are really weak, and they tighten up all the time. I’m in a lot of pain. Sometimes it felt like I was going to fall backwards. My knees also bother me, and sometimes they give out. I get physically exhausted pretty easily so it was very hard. 

I tried, and then I kind of had these women thinking I wasn’t going to be able to do it. They told me how far was. I was thinking, “Oh, gee, maybe I can’t.” So I turned around and went back.

Then I just said, “If I don’t go up Apparition Hill, I’m really going to be so disappointed for the rest of my life. If I fall and kill myself, I can’t help it. I gotta go, and I just have to trust in Jesus and Mary.” 

I did get up there. There were two men that helped me over some rough places. Then a husband and wife helped me to get down. Now I feel fulfilled that I did this. I took pictures and videos of myself up there. That’s going to be a witness to my family, that I was actually there. That’s for them, that I was there. When the permanent sign comes, I can show them and say, “I was here, and we knew it was going to happen, that there was going to be a permanent sign.”

I’m hoping this will inspire them. I’m sure it will, maybe not sooner, but later at some point, I’m sure it will. I’m positive. 

It was painful that night. I thought, “How am I going to wake up in the morning, and how am I going to do anything?” I was in a lot of pain, but it was worth it.

I think my mother was praying for me and my grandmother in heaven. I really believe they were praying for me, and that’s why I had some of the things happen that showed me that Mary is real and Mary really loves me.