On Wednesday, 23 October 2024, God suddenly took the soul of my beloved wife of sixty-two years, Lois Ann Bonnette. She had battled progressively severe mental illness for nearly sixty years, with serious physical illnesses developing in the last decade or so as well. She spent a month in hospital the end of last year. After taking her home, my son, Nick and I have taken care of her needs on a 24/7 basis for the last ten months. But all that came to a shocking end when she passed away peacefully and silently, seemingly instantly, as we were putting her to bed.
Despite her lifetime of mental and, of late, physical suffering, her sudden loss was devastating both to me and to my son who spent so many hours next to her, watching TV, while showing her love and affection and trying to keep up her nutrition shakes and other nutrients and medicines.
In addition to that unspeakable loss of my life companion of so many years, I was haunted by the question of exactly what had become of her? Where was she now? Was she now happy or somehow continuing to suffer? Without making theological speculations, I had the simple agony of wondering exactly what my beloved wife’s soul was now experiencing.
This appalling uncertainty led me to pray to God for some sign she was “okay” or somehow happy. Four days later, attending Mass at St. Bernard’s Catholic Church, near where we live, I recall asking Jesus before Communion time to please, please give me some sign that she was safe and happy. After Mass, we went into the church basement for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, trying to see whether it might make a good place for a reception after the burial scheduled for the next Wednesday. When we came out, it seemed all the cars were gone because the people had gone home fifteen minutes earlier.
My son and my daughter walked with me across the street to where our car was parked — sitting and talking a few minutes. Suddenly, I noticed another single car, parked at a ninety degree angle to our car, but several car lengths away. We all were suddenly overwhelmed to see the bold letters on its license plate clearly displayed before us.
It read in capital letters: “MAMALOIS” !!!
Only ONE car in all the state could have had that display! And, out of millions of plates, that singular one was standing boldly before our totally shocked eyes.
Moreover, had that car been parked anywhere else in the several lots, we would never have seen the plates. But it was placed precisely where we could not miss it standing before our eyes like a deliberate message from heaven! And why was this single car still parked there some fifteen minutes after every other car but ours had left the vicinity?
“LOIS” alone, my dear wife’s name, would have been amazing enough. But, why the “MAMA” in front of “LOIS”? My family never called her that – just Mom or Grandma. Well, it just so happened that in the months just before her death, my son, Nick, would try to coax her into taking food or drink, by saying “Mama, Mama, eat this or drink this please!” No one else knew this except him and me, the only ones taking full care of her during the last months of her earthly suffering.
For these reasons, the plate “MAMALOIS” appeared perfectly designed to directly answer my repeated desperate prayer for some sign that my dearly beloved wife was indeed safe and in the loving hands of God!
Finally, that car might have been left there for no particular reason or by someone with no connection to us at all. But, it turned out that the woman in the car was also Catholic and had just sat there looking for something all that time after the same Mass we attended. She also had lost her own beloved husband three months ago and has had seven children, just like my own dear wife, Lois. In fact, she is also a former student of mine, who had not attended St. Bernard’s Church in the preceding two months!
The effect of all this was massive relief to me and my children as to the present state of Lois. God has given us a wonderful sign that my wife and their mother is safe in the hands of a loving God and happy to be there!
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Since we know from philosophical reasoning that God does exist and that He orders all things in His creation according to His infallible providence, no event, such as the one described in this article, could take place without His deliberate intention or permission. Given the nearly impossible improbability of this event and how that fact impacts its observers, we must ask ourselves whether it could be explained by natural, preternatural, or solely supernatural causes. In any event, it must be part of God’s infallible providence. Since God’s goodness and veracity would never allow us to be deceived by what appears to be the clear meaning of this evidence—a direct and truthful answer to an immediately preceding prayer, the event itself cannot be either the product of “blind chance” or of demonic influence. Indeed, the devil would be self-defeating to order an event so promoting of faith in God and in His goodness! The only remaining possibility is that this “license miracle” is precisely that—a genuine miracle—that is, something that could solely have been directly caused and intended by God Himself, a sequence of events designed to answer the prayer of a bereaved husband.
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The Astounding One-Year Anniversary
23 October 2025 was the one-year anniversary of my wife, Lois, entering into the presence of God. A few days earlier I was thinking of the amazing sign God had already given me to assure me that she was “okay” and in the loving arms of Jesus – thinking to myself that Our Lord had already given us a more than abundant sign of her salvation and happiness with God. I assumed that no more signs would be given nor should be expected.
Since I was now teaching Aquinas School of Philosophy classes at the Fatima Shrine in Lewiston, New York, I did not go to Mass on the Thursday that was the exact anniversary of Lois’s death, since I could not readily fit it into my schedule.
But, the following day, 24 October 2025, I did go to the 4 PM Mass at the Fatima Shrine.
While finishing the third decade of my Rosary before that Mass, I was sitting in my car in the Shrine parking lot. Suddenly into my sight appeared the same car as the previous year – the one with the MAMALOIS license plate on it – driven by the same woman that drove it a full year previously!
I met up with her and walked with her into the Shrine office where she was going in order to arrange for a Mass to be said. She was not at the Shrine in order to attend the 4 PM Mass, but just “happened” to go there at that precise time. As we approached the counter in that office together, I introduced her to the secretary — who knew the story of the “license from God” — as “Mama Lois.” The Shrine office secretary expressed total amazement at seeing the woman who owned the MAMALOIS-licensed car before her very eyes!
I had not seen that car in most of a year, since the last time I saw it was at the same St. Bernard’s Church, but only before Mass two or three times some ten months ago. I had never seen its driver during that time either, since she always disappeared from the parking lot before I could get out of the church after Mass!
Yet, here she was again and with the same car and same license plate – exactly one day after the one year anniversary of Lois’s death! But, why was the timing as it was – with the first instance the Sunday four days following Lois’s death and now one day after the exact anniversary of that sad event?
God’s time is not our time. What I finally understood while going to Mass in the hour after the MAMALOIS plate’s car’s appearance at the Fatima Shrine was that in both cases the stunning events took place exactly on the first day I went to Mass immediately after the date of the “event.”
In the first instance, Lois died on a Wednesday and the next time I went to Mass was the following Sunday, when the car with the shocking license plate appeared. In the second instance, the same car appeared on the day after the anniversary of her death, but also on the first day that I went to Mass after that anniversary. This was God’s timetable, not ours!
So now we have two extraordinary “license plate” events that manifest God’s great love for me and other members of my family – both of which are intimately connected to the death of my beloved wife, Lois Ann Bonnette.
As said earlier, this last amazing event I did not expect, since I had a few days before explicitly thought to myself that God had already given us more than gracious extraordinary assurance of the happy state of my wife and that no more such assurance should or need be expected.
And yet, God has shown once again in dramatic fashion that His love and intimate attention to our human lives goes far beyond anything that we mere humans would, or should, expect!
Featured: Le Vol de l’âme (Flight of the Soul), by Louis Janmot; painted in 1854.
