Love in an Unlikely Place
It was June 17, 2018, and Justin and his family were at the Angela Hospice Care Center where his aunt Rebecca was being admitted. Just down the hall, Noelle was with her grandmother, Viola DeFelice, for their Tuesday night tradition, watching America's Got Talent.
After six months of visiting her grandmother nearly every day, the Care Center felt like home to Noelle. She remembers she was wearing sweatpants that day and had thrown her hair up in a bun, but Justin thought she was adorable.
"She was very noticeable," Justin said. "Very cute, very rushed." Plus her grandmother kept yelling her name whenever Noelle would leave the room.
"It wasn't appropriate for me to be like, 'Hey, can I get your number?' I don't even think she would have heard me," Justin said. "She was like the Energizer bunny every time she walked by."
But they ended up leaving at the same time that night, and Noelle helped him use the keypad on the front door.
"He asked if he could give me a hug," she recalled. "He said it looked like I had a really hard night."
"I don't know why, I said, 'Welcome to hospice, we're all here together,'" Noelle laughed. "I thought in my head, You are so weird! Why would you even say that? And after I gave him a hug I'm like, What the heck, I'll give everybody else hugs."
So after hugging Justin and his whole family, Noelle drove home thinking she had really embarrassed herself. But Justin's family was amused.
"My cousins were like, 'She's cute, you should have asked her out,'" Justin remembered. "I was like, 'I'm not asking, your mom is in the other room right now.'" But when he went back the next day and saw Noelle's grandmother's room empty, Justin assumed the worst. He looked Noelle up on Facebook and sent her a heartfelt message, letting her know he was there if she wanted to talk.
It was a month and a half later that Noelle found the message filtered into a separate folder since they weren't Facebook friends. But she messaged him back and within 20 minutes, he had asked her out.
In the weeks since they had first met at Angela Hospice, Justin's aunt Rebecca and Noelle's grandmother passed within a day of each other. And Justin, who didn't believe in soulmates or fate, said he had some "pretty cosmic things" happen.
"I had a lot of pretty crazy dreams afterward, of my grandma and Noelle's grandma and my aunt," he said. (His grandmother had passed in Angela's home hospice care years before). "In those dreams I had some revelations of my grandma telling me that she was waiting for my aunt to pass, but she was also waiting for Viola to pass too."
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| A year after they met in the Care Center, Noelle and Justin came back and brought flowers to commemorate Rebecca and Viola, and bring some happiness to the families in their rooms. |
"It was just enough time for us to cross paths and it was like her job was done," Noelle said. "God had a plan."
"That was pretty crazy how we met," Justin said. "Still to this day, I still don't really believe that that's the way you meet the person you're going to marry, but you don't question it.
"I just know that that night will be probably the most important night of my life," he said.
"Mine too," Noelle replied.
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