My New Home
by Toni Stone

My wonderful loving husband wasn’t as equipped as I for handling the grief we’d experienced over the past couple of years (the loss of my parents and brother), and following a knee replacement operation he emotionally drifted away until one day he announced he wanted to live alone and ‘Find himself’. I am sure you can imagine the fear, and dread I experienced knowing all my family had gone. His first wife had passed away before we married and I spent 15 years loving and caring for him and his children, who I look upon as my own, building a business and looking forward to the day when the children were all grown up and safe and we could start to enjoy life together. He’d promised me if I was willing to put the time into the children we would have our time later. When you have three small children courtship has to take a back step…… Instead here I was facing life alone.

I decided very early on not to be angry or bitter but to look at the wonderful achievements we’d made because we had come together….The children now adults were stable and loving people, our business was reasonably successful and we have a beautiful home.

We put our house on the market and I started to look for a small home for me, but everything seemed out of my reach and I knew at my age (59) a mortgage would be difficult and we’d calculated how much I could manage. I looked on the internet and saw a funny little cottage, out of my price range by 40,000 but I just wanted to see it. I phoned the agent who pushed me to look at it there and then, no time to think I just jumped in my car and drove the mile and a half to meet the agent.

As we entered the garden of the property I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I wanted it with all my heart. It is ram-shackled and empty but I loved it. It oozed love and positive energy. I could think of nothing else and approached the agent the next day and made an offer. He said it had only come on the market three days earlier and he didn’t think the vendors would entertain an offer £35,000 less than asking, but was obliged to put it to them.

The next day I was having lunch with my husband’s aunt and wanted to show her the premises. It was unoccupied so I phoned the agent and asked if I could take her into the garden and show her around the grounds. They thought there would be no problem but would phone me back if there was. In my excitement I left my phone in the car and opened the gate…There was a gardener there and he approached us, ‘Morning’ kind words of weather and plants were exchanged and I asked him if he tended other gardens in the area, to which he advised me he was in actual fact the owner and visiting from out of county…..I was so embarrassed and explained that I’d made an offer the previous day and he apologised as he told me he was unable to accept as it was just too soon and too low an offer. I totally understood and told him I would do exactly the same if it were mine. He invited us to look around inside and I met his lovely lady wife. We talked and I left…….

I knew there was only one course of action left to me. They had refused because my offer was too low, and my house had just gone on the market and wasn’t sold. What would you do………. Me….. I asked the Angels…..I begged them to help me……My heart was aching for this quirking little cob cottage….I saw myself there….I felt I belonged there. Next day, feeling resigned to whatever would be…. I went for coffee with a dear friend of mine. Sitting in a pub in Ringwood crying into my cold coffee telling her of the cottage my phone rang….and it was the agent ‘In all the years I have done this job I have never come across this before’ he said. ‘What are you talking about’ I asked. He replied, ‘I’ve asked other friends who are estate agents and they say the same’. He was totally confusing me now….’what do you mean, never heard of what??’ He proceeded to tell me that the vendors had telephoned him, told him to take the property off the market immediately put the Sale Agreed sign up and accept my offer. He’d tried to dissuade them explaining that my house might takes months to sell and there were other interested potential purchasers. They firmly said they would wait as long as it takes. That they had slept on it and just knew that I belonged there and wanted me to live there. The tears streamed down my face, not tears of sadness now but tears of joy. Others in the pub must have thought I was demented I just looked upwards and said ‘THANK YOU, THANK YOU’ at the top of my voice. The vendors had asked that I call in that day to say goodbye before they returned to their home. I went in the evening sporting a bottle of wine and a small aquamarine crystal angel. I was greeted at the door like a old friend or family member, ‘Make the fish and chips go three ways’ shouted David to Gemma, ‘Toni’s here’. I sat with them for several hours eating a chip butty and drinking wine. We laughed and chatted and I learned of the love and joy this cottage had bought their family throughout their father’s life and how the grandchildren had loved to play there. It had never been on the market before and they said they felt they had put it on the market just to let me know it was there and they couldn’t explain it totally but they had the feeling the house wanted me……. And so my cottage stands waiting for me to move in when this house sells. I go everyday to say hello to the house and everyday I fall in love with it a little more. I truly know the Beautiful beings we know as Angels’ have wrapped their wings around me and are guiding me. I know and feel their presence everyday, and it is through them that I am able to feel nothing but love and gratitude for all the wonderful things they have shown me throughout my marriage and my life. I can’t wait for my next adventure, all fear has gone and my heart bursts with love and light. Take heed from this story…no matter how impossible something might seem, if it is for the highest good of all, miracles can and do happen.