I found out that she would sometimes have conversations with the saints. "St. Therese, what do you think about such-and-such? How should I speak to so-and-so?"

It wasn’t only strange; it was practically morbid! She loved to go to the graveyard and visit the graves of the staff who had died, especially Catherine and Archbishop Raya. How lovingly she would kiss their crosses and then kneel and kiss the ground! I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. It all felt so spooky.

But in my most interior self, I knew that she knew something. I wanted so much to discover that "something." So, I watched her… and I watched her.

Janine would always wear a pretty veil during Mass. I started to wear one, too. One day, I asked her, "Janine, why do you always wear a veil during Mass?" She said, "It’s my secret act of humility."

I was wearing a veil because it was my secret act of trying to be like Janine.

She really was humble, the very incarnation of humility. Her mind was highly developed, and so was her heart, but, one would never know that. She rarely spoke, and when she did, she spoke very softly.

Once at the dinner table someone thought that she couldn’t speak English. So, during the course of the conversation, that person repeated everything to her very slowly and with many hand gestures.

Janine just sat there as if she really couldn’t speak a word of English, and she looked so grateful. She realized that the person was being kind and accepted the gift graciously. I admired this but I was mortified—all at once.

One day, Janine and I attended a lecture. The speaker made some insensitive remarks on delicate issues which got me all steamed up. I considered making a noticeable exit. If you’re going to leave, you might as well be dramatic about it. But I stayed put.

At the end of the talk, I asked Janine what she thought about it. I was waiting for a condemning reply. Instead, she looked at me so genuinely, smiled, and said, "Naomi, I am so happy that he came to speak to us."

In my horror, I asked, "Janine, I don’t understand. Why are you so happy?" She replied, "Because now people will go home and pray for him."

Because she was able to listen to him with so much mercy and compassion, she saw more than I saw and heard more than I heard. I prayed for him daily for weeks after that.

One night, she looked at me with a silent, intense look of love. It was the look of "I know all of your faults and weaknesses, but that doesn’t matter because I still love you tremendously."

Her look hurt me very deeply. Why couldn’t she have seen all of my weaknesses and then hated me? Why did she have to see all of my weaknesses and still love me?

I was in so much pain that I later wept aloud. It was as if God himself had looked at me that way.

On the feast of the Presentation, February 2, 2008, Janine died. Her soul was ready, so she went to her Love. My grief was diluted by an overwhelming sense of joy and excitement. Truth be told, these days I’ve become strange.

Now I, too, am having conversations with someone dead. I say: "Janine, what do you think about such-and-such? How should I speak to so-and-so?" The way I see it now, I want to be as strange as she was.