Woman’s last days were rife with wings

Lorraine Watkiss knew she was going to die.

After beating cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, then having a malignant tumor removed from her groin — depriving her of her womanhood — the disease returned a fourth time, and she accepted her likely fate.

She didn’t go down fighting; she was too physically weak, her widow John Watkiss said. Instead, she went down painting.

For 80 days straight, Lorraine Watkiss painted variations of an angel, using a wide array of metallic, water-based paint to create images that John Watkiss says were inspired by a spiritual visitation his wife experienced.

Late one night, after reading a bedtime story to her 11-year-old daughter, Elena, Lorraine Watkiss nodded off. When she woke up she saw a mysterious light.

The glow descended from the ceiling, revealing itself to be a woman’s face decorated with an intricate, rose petal head adornment, he said.

“Something in the center of her said, ‘I knew I was gong to die,’” John Watkiss said. “She started drawing DNA patterns, which looked like they had blood flowing through them, and then they transformed into angels.”

Lorraine Watkiss, whom John Watkiss now refers to as Lorraingel, died July 20.

During the last weeks of her life, when she became too debilitated to paint, she was helped at her Los Angeles home by hospice nurse Don Brooks, the husband of Glendale Adventist Medical Center chaplain Irena Aghassian.

Aghassian, upon hearing Lorraine Watkiss’ story, resolved to showcase the 80 angel paintings at Glendale Adventist Medical Center’s chapel.

As a memorial to Lorraine Watkiss and other cancer victims, and a celebration of survivors and those living with cancer now, the hospital will display the 80 angels in its chapel beginning Wednesday, Aghassian said.

“I think these paintings are very spiritually driven, and I think that some force within her gave her the hope, the capacity to endure this,” she said. “When she’s involved with the angels, she forgets her pain.”

The angel project was not Lorraine Watkiss’ first foray into art. Before giving birth to her first of two children, she did design work for an advertising agency and always painted for herself in her free time, John Watkiss said.

John Watkiss, a development artist for the Walt Disney Co. and former art educator, would often critique his wife’s paintings, he said.

“Her paintings were delightful but conventional,” he said.

But when she enveloped herself in the painting of these angels, he didn’t offer a peep of criticism.

“I said, ‘What you’re doing is beyond my jurisdiction,’” he said. “I felt like I was witnessing something unusual.”

The paintings feature a similar feminine woman with multicolored garments flowing upward like wings. Some use solemn colors and show a lonely-looking angel. But most of the paintings are bright, lively and hopeful, her husband said.

“My conclusion in all of this .?.?. is it’s showing that she was bright and illuminated,” he said. “Someone that did this couldn’t have been down.”

The art will be exhibited at the chapel beginning Wednesday and will continue to be shown until the end of February. The hospital is at 1509 Wilson Terrace.