Fostering Love: Caregiving Parents Lose a Daughter Whose Life and Death Offer Cherished Lessons

Bridgette, the beloved, joyful, ever-smiling, devastatingly disabled daughter of Tom and Maryjane Famulari passed away early this morning.

These remarkable parents, full of more love and faith and generosity than most of us can even imagine, were prepared for this mournful moment nearly 30 years ago. Back then, they were midlife parents of teenagers who agreed to take in a deathly ill, 'medically fragile' girl as a foster child.

I shared their story on the front page of The Washington Post, in 1988, when I was a twenty-something summer intern. Here is what I wrote back then:

The Joys of Fostering a Special Child; Disabled Girl Teaches Md. Family Unconditional Love.

Tom and Maryjane Famulari already have made plans for their 2 1/2-year-old foster daughter's funeral: The service will be the Mass of the Angels, her dress will be lavender with a white pinafore, and they will play her favorite song, "Hosanna."

Their daughter Bridgette is a 28-pound child who was born three months prematurely. She is profoundly retarded, has cerebral palsy and breathes through a transparent tube that runs from a hole at the base of her throat to a steel oxygen tank near her crib. She has been hospitalized more than 80 times.

Despite her long list of medical problems, the Famularis agreed at Bridgette's birth to become her foster parents. "She gives so much more than we can give to her," said Tom Famulari, 40, a high school biology teacher in Baltimore.

"Everybody needs love and to die in dignity," said homemaker Maryjane Famulari, 40, coaxing a pout from her daughter that quickly slid into a contagious smile. "She knows what it is to be loved. She can't hold her head up, but she has a joy about her that I can't explain."

Doctors told them she would die soon. They planned her funeral, picked a delicate burial dress, chose the funeral service prayers and hymns, and fought like warriors to keep her alive with the sheer force of their will, love, faith and extraordinarily difficult 24/7 care their daughter required.

And their daughter she fast became – by love and law.

I walked into the Famulari home thinking their story would be my big break, my ticket to getting noticed by all the big, important people. But the Famularis don't simply invite you into their home, tell you their story and let you leave. They invite you into a world where all rules of what is possible are stretched beyond recognition; where the normal range of human sacrifice vanish and something else takes its place. Knowing this family transforms you. I have no idea how they did what they did. They cared for Bridgette, the girl who was supposed to die three decades ago; they raised and loved dozens more of Maryland's sickest, most forgotten foster children as well as their own. Took them in wheel chairs, hooked up to monitors to Disneyworld and the Grand Canyon. "Everyone loves the sun on their face," Tom says.

"I tell people, it's not 'poor Bridgette.' Don't ever think that. She is a very happy person. We believe she is here," Tom told me a few months ago, "to teach others about unconditional love."

In that same conversation, Tom said it's all worth it, that Bridgette lights their lives. "She's a very, very happy person. She smiles all the time. She really enjoys people and life." Bridgette loves music and adores musicals, he says. "For a time I think she thought Julie Andrews was a part of the family."

Theirs is a transformative love

I cannot comprehend what they do, what they are. But I do know that if Tom and Maryjane Famulari love you, you are loved in the deepest possible way, in a transformative way, you are loved back to life every single day.

Loved her back to life

That is what they did for Bridgette. They loved her back to life every single day for nearly 30 years. And then they aged, and their bodies told them they could no longer provide the kind of 24/7 care their beloved daughter required. So they made the agonizing choice to place her in a residential facility they meticulously chose for its excellent care. They fought up and down the legislature and around the state to get their daughter placed there, with the proper funding for proper care. The prayed and they fought. During this fight, they both got diagnosed with the kinds of ailments that befall aging people who have lived full lives. They postponed surgeries for themselves to care for their daughter.

New home for Christmas

Finally, after fighting bureaucracies and their own bodies, they packed their beloved girl's belongings and helped decorate her new room in the nearby facility they prayed would take good care of her. She moved in just after Christmas. They insisted she be home for Christmas.

Since then, both parents' health seemed to falter faster, as if their bodies knew it was okay to let go, that it was time they took care of themselves. They had surgery and focused on their own worries, always keeping Bridgette in the forefront of their minds and hearts, though.

The News

And then the call early this morning. Bridgette had been in the hospital with pneumonia, then returned to the facility where she was reported back to her smiley, happy self. Tom's recovering from recent surgery himself, planning a visit. And then, shockingly, her heart gave out.

Tom called me this morning to tell me the sad news, but – being Tom – through tears, he saw the silver lining in this story, this love story.

"She's singing and dancing in Heaven now," he said. "Her body is whole."

In loving tribute to Bridgette Famulari

Her life and memory are a blessing – and a lesson – to us all.

  Fostering Love Part I

Fostering Love Part II

Fostering Love Part III

Fostering Love Part IV 

Fostering Love Part V