Angel [Life]

Some stories seem just too strange to believe. There are so many of these stories for me that it is impossible for me to discern which to tell, and which to let rest in my own knowledge of the truth. It doesn’t help that these stories are of a supernatural, or as the definition of the word states, of extraordinarynature.

One such of these stories is the tale of a Christmas I spent traveling home to the “Christmas City”. (Bethlehem, PA, US) I had spent a hard stay at a drug research study for bi – polar disorder where I had very nearly died. Amidst a crisis brought on by my abnormal reaction to a drug in the fourth stage of it’s research I planned an open – ended trip home from San Diego to rekindle the relationship I had with my family.

I had a minor heart attack in the middle of my guinea pig trial, and began an extraordinary trek to my spiritual core. I had witnessed just after waking from my attack looking across the room, a crystal arrow, 3 dimensional and solid unfold from the air above and point to the fact that I may visit the heavens if I did not in fact take control. It was so real and such a shocking display of the immorality of NOT suspending my disbelief, that I hardly knew how to take it. I told no one for a very long time, and clutched at the vibrant spiritual reality that there are things which I simply do not have a grasp of in the known universe. I immediately stopped smoking, began meditations daily, and ordered numerous spiritual texts from the live- in studies computer. And most of all, I began preparations to go home.

My soonest affordable flight was on Christmas day itself. The day before, in light of my severe sacrifice at the research study I was driven around by the companies’ owner to retrieve my possessions from various locations in prep for my journey. He told me of his own humble beginnings and was a sincerely nice guy to have shared my day with, even though it was at his own expense.

Christmas morning came and I was picked up in a shuttle van to the San Diego International Airport and delivered to my flights. I had one leg from San Diego to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then the final leg from there to Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton Airport (ABE).

I was more than timid to approach this journey. I had just “detoxed” from both my regular medication, and the research medication, and was in a state of anxiety ridden panic, facing my undefined and unknown future. I made it through customs and eventually boarded the plane, still shaky and shy of a stable source of inner stability.

The first flight was one of the most unbelievable things that had ever happened to me, though did not hold a candle to the second leg.

Through the course of the beginning of the flight I witnessed my neighbors survive one of the hardest flights their relationship could have posed. They moved to first class and I then, stuck to the glass of my newly procured window seat, I saw a 747, a 737 and two private jets pass by us way too close all at once. I stared up at the heavens, and there were three glowing triangles, UFO’s looking just as pictured in the conspiracy shows I had watched. They seemed to stand completely still for near ten seconds, and then shrieked off to eternity in a flash.

Shortly after in a collision of storms to from “the perfect storm” over the great Midwest, we experienced a downburst which bounced us a good 10,000 feet, at my best guess, down in altitude. Perhaps the reason for the extraterrestrial observation, something only our pilot, once again, could only answer.

Then we landed and I boarded my second flight, due in “The Christmas City” at around 8pm that night. As I sat silently waiting for the maintenance crew to de-ice the wings, the passenger next to me introduced herself by name. She then began talking about the specifics of de-icing, I suppose noticing my unease, and put my fears to rest. We shared the whole flight in that back row of the massive jumbo jet, sharing bits of conversation, though mostly her sharing some kind of silent, glowing wisdom in bits of talk that seemed to resonate much deeper.

She looked around 80 plus years and told me she had been a mental health nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital, she was a nun, and that she was leaving southern California, where she had been, to return for a sister’s funeral. She showed insight into unsaid parts of my writing, my music, my acting, and my illness, namely all of my dreams and obstacles, and shared with me timely whit and foreshadowing wisdom.

The plane landed, and I excused myself to the bathroom just in back of us, figuring I could say goodbye after this, there was a whole plane to empty. I accidentally went into the women’s room for about two seconds, exited and entered the men’s room directly across, peeing for what seemed twenty seconds. I then exited, and my next surprise was there, making my jaw drop, and my disbelief flood out of my being. The plane was empty. I don’t know if you know about flights, but it takes a good 15 minutes or so to empty a plane that size. As I made my way out of the plane and through the corridors of the airport, I saw none of the passengers I would recognize, and foremost, not a single sign of my companion.

 Baggage claim told me my bag was lost, and I started the beginning of one of the most difficult and growing pain filled times of my life, alone, living in the dead of winter in snow and ice filled Pennsylvania. The miracles continued, though not near as pure, straightforward, and eye opening as when I went to Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown to visit the Mental Health Ward where the mystery nun had worked. I was not a patient, I just wanted a visitors glance at the environs of someone whose wise words still helped me daily.

There was a commemorative collection of pictures of “The Sisters of Sacred Heart”, and I looked fervently at the collection of young and glowing sister – nurses who served the wing. There she was, in name and in picture, and underneath her birth date, and the date she had passed away. She had died years before I had met her.

An angel, an actual angel from the endless miracles possible in our existence had sat with me on Christmas.

Now as I look back, there were strange looks from other passengers as we had talked, stares that were questioning and demeaning. I had written it off as reaction to the sensitive topics we were discussing, but now I know, I was seemingly talking to myself. Isn’t that a metaphor for life? Little do we know how someone is experiencing their reality a few feet away from us, thus how far is our understanding of these things? The divine nature of these experiences are ours to own as we make our separate but equal journeys home.

I will never shake the feeling of awe and loving oneness provided by this hard Christmas brought to me from above. I will always remember the sight of her face, nose in a book in between clips of knowledge handed out to my fretting soul’s lost plight. It points out to me that we should never forget that we have yet to experience the next thing that will teach us about the endless possibilities of life. That even in the hardest times, we are not alone. Most of all that we should never give up. 

"Our angel is waiting to take flight with us."

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Thegratefulliving@mail.com