Photo by Suzanne Currie
If I don't explain my first encounter with what I believe was my Guardian Angel, during a childhood sickness, much of this ongoing series of blogs, my silent opus, you might say, won't make sense if indeed it makes sense in any regard. It's not easy to explain why I have lived a rather curiously insightful life where I do, almost daily, sense the presence of those who have crossed over, who have no compunction whatsoever, letting me know they not only exist but are players yet in the real, physical world. And no, I am not a psychic, and don't think you can ask me about winning lottery numbers or the horse that will finish first with a big pay-out against the odds. I'm just a journeyman writer, antique dealer and historian when the mood suits me, who happens to see, but mostly feel, dead people. Here's how I think it happened.
I had been sick with a terrible cough for weeks when I was six or seven years of age. My mother never kept any records of this period and I wasn't exactly photogenic at this point. I had about five minutes, ten at the most, between coughing jags that winded me on each occasion. Doctor Proctor, of Burlington, would come several times a week, to our Burlington apartment, up on the beautifully treed and nostalgic Harris Crescent, to check me out and make a determination whether I should be admitted to hospital. It had similarities with whooping cough which my mother Merle greatly feared, but the doctor knew differently from testing. I would also be violently sick to my stomach on every third or fourth coughing fit, and it meant I couldn't keep anything down, whether food or liquid. The danger was that I was getting weaker and less resistant to what the mysterious ailment was hitting me with each new day. I wasn't getting better that's for sure, and I was having serious reactions to the antibiotic medicine I was receiving. The options were becoming less and less, and I was pretty much out of it, except when I was stirred to consciousness by another violent coughing session.
I know it was close to two weeks and my mother was getting pretty concerned about the potential of hospitalization. I'd hear bits of conversation between my mother and father, and it probably would have scared me, but I'd fall asleep in the middle of their chat, and wake later and think it had probably been a dream. My mother knew how scared I was of hospitals. I'd been treated earlier for a seriously fractured foot and I wasn't desirous of being sent back even if the kind medical folks had fixed me up. I was almost angry at being sick because this outcome was entirely possible if I couldn't beat the fever which seemed to last forever. It was like having a really aggressive influenza but this isn't what the doctor called it, when he talked over and above me, while I rested in a chair that was best suited my almost constant coughing.
On the night when everything good seemed to happen in a bunch of interconnecting scenarios, my mother had encouraging news from the doctor, and it looked like I was going to be able to stay out of the hospital for the time being, and I had been able to keep down some food and hot lemon drink, plus my body ached a little less, and I slept much more comfortably without those jolting bouts of coughing.
My mother was still concerned about my lingering fever, and after giving me more aspirin, encouraged me to rest on the bed, while she applied a regularly refreshed wet cloth to my forehead. I can still clearly remember the exchanges of cloths, and the squeezing of fresh ice water back into the bowl at bedside. And soon enough I was sound asleep. Probably the most sound and thorough sleep in at least two weeks, and my body needed it, as much as my child's psyche. It was sometime in the next hour or so, that I had my first encounter with what, and who I believe was my angelic protector. The heavenly messenger who assured me I wasn't done yet with living, and well, here I am to write this in 2021.
Here is the scenario if you can visualize such a heavenly visitation in the most common of places you could ever imagine. I entered into a dreamland situation, of course, (and that is very explainable), and wandered through the doorway leading into the laundry room of the apartment building we lived in from the late 1950's to about 1964. I feel it was most likely 1962 but it may have been a year earlier. Not later. The laundry room always fascinated me because of the amazing array of old washing machines with the attached roller presses, which I was frequently warned would tear an arm right out of its socket if you put your hand too close to the rotating mechanism. There was always a lot of motion to connect with, and for a wide eyed, adventure loving kid it was like a mad inventor's workshop with all kinds of mechanical marvels and maybe some space travel prototypes. Or yes, it might just have been washing machines and dryers but you know how your imagination used to work way back when life and times afforded the imagination some extra liberties.
Everything about this dream seemed pretty ordinary until that is, I walked to the centre of the floor, which I believe was gray painted concrete, and felt a tug on my shoulder that really did seem like it was a dream breaker, that should have woken me up. I just couldn't wake up. When I turned to look back toward the door, my focus was compelled by ethereal force, to look into the corner by the stairs I had come down a few moments earlier. I can still get a shiver at what seemed to be hovering above me, but in the corner of the room, which was only a few yards from where I was standing dumbfounded by the situation unfolding.
In a most emotionally consuming vortex of swirling white vapor and the most alluring aura of tranquility and gentleness, I found myself actually levitating closer to the entity unveiling itself ever so slowly at my front at about ten feet off the floor. This wasn't possibly physically in that laundry room of course, but then this was a dreamscape afterall.
I was starring at the image of a pure white light of what I can only describe as a female angel, who looked so adoringly down upon the child below. I noticed her wings pulled back upon her shoulders, and felt in my heart a most awe inspiring sensation of benevolence and peace, that made me feel limp in body but keen of mind, to watch this most wondrous vision hover over me in that bathing light that to me, was heaven sent. Despite the fact I know very little about heaven or angels at that age, and in fact, the only angel I had ever recognized, was the decorative version we used as a Christmas tree topper each December. There was a definite scent and sound to this unfolding drama, as my audience continued with what I can only believe was my Guardian Angel. I was the subject of her kindly gaze, and she was talking to me with moving her mouth, and I was getting the message. I had much more life to experience before I would be recalled to my heavenly reward. I had no idea what that meant, in terms of reward, but I can tell you, that if heaven, as it touched me on that occasion, is a parallel of what I silently rejoiced in that angelic dream, I can have no fear of my own eventual demise.
It was a most beautiful and inspirational experience even if it was a dream. It was a touch of enlightenment I could never possibly understand at that age. I didn't really get the angel connection until much later in life, and believe me, I have tried to disprove it many times when I've gone through a God doubting period, usually after the loss of someone close to me, when I came to hate a lot of things I didn't even try to understand. The lasting ethereal sensations of that brief dream experienced so long ago now, has inspired me most, because it has lasted in memory despite all the other stuff of life and times that has obstructively got in the way since the early 1960's. It has always been on speed dial for me, when I've found my self in serious conflict, health or otherwise, and the essence of the dream has given me hope when, at times, there seemed nothing positive to grasp onto. I can't tell you how many times I've searched
for the face of that wondrous angel-kind who spoke to me that night of sickness, and assured me I would live to play once more.
I opened my eyes after a short restless slumber, hearing my parents talking in the adjacent room. It seemed as if I was in a tunnel with the resonation of sound, and as if my mother instinctively knew to check me, and my fevered condition, she arrived at my side, and seemed pleased by the fact the cold cloth she had flattened to my forehead was still chilled after some time on a once hot head. The fever had finally given me my freedom, and I was fully conscious of everything she was asking, and saying to me at that moment of increasing clarity. I hadn't really been tuned in much for the past couple of weeks, so I knew immediately that the sickness had lessened, as the fever had diminished. I felt restored and desirous of food soon after I had cleaned myself up, and it was a most remarkable recovery at a time when my parents had been seriously considering taking me to the hospital themselves, rather than calling in the doctor once again.
The reason this whole angel encounter event is important to me, is that, for one thing, it has never left me over all of these years. It is as vivid now as it was immediately following. While I never told my mother about my angel dream, I did tell my father shortly before he died, that I had once enjoyed the company of an angel. He said, without the slightest hesitation, "I know." He couldn't possibly have known because I never told him. Or, was this also the work of my Guardian Angel answering a prayer for a child's recovery? I had just wanted to comfort him as he bravely faced his own demise, and as I have always believed it had been heaven-sent, despite some naysayer friends who have challenged me on the issue, it just seemed appropriate to pass this little bit of wisdom acquired during a difficult family time. Shortly before he did pass away, he raised his arms in the hospital bed, reaching to the ceiling with outstretched arms, as if he saw his wife, my mother on the other side, and when we tried to bring them down for whatever reason we felt that was necessary, he would only raise them again in his strange delusion, or not, that a visitor had entered the room in an ethereal sense. I then asked my mother if she would please help him cross, and within a short span of time, he exhaled for the final time with a look of peace on his face. Had he been helped by his Guardian Angel, my mother, or some other heavenly agent? For those who don't believe in such things, and in heavenly rewards, I understand completely. And seeing as I am not a fervent Christian or active church goer, I am not a pitch person in any way, for believing in such mysteries of life and beyond. But I have no earthly reason to challenge what I have never been able to explain otherwise, even if just a reality of a fevered condition, and a child's fertile emotions and innocent imagination.
This connectedness to a long ago dream, an angel dream, I have felt with considerable personal conviction, about as intimate as it gets with self examination, that the reason I have communed with so many earthbound spirits and ghosts by any other names, is that I had that occasion in childhood, to witness something that I have never been able to resolve or remove from recollection. It is as much a part of who I am as the busted and misshapen nose on my face, or the baldness of my head, and when I feel it is all too much burden to be so heavenly influenced, I remind myself once more, about how many times the insightfulness and intuition I have long enjoyed as a human resource, has paid off in my approaches to difficult situations, and circumstances where a little angelic intervention can save dire consequences. Why dispatch or deny such a gift as this, or feel that to purge it from your psyche is even possible as some memories are indeed life long entities.
As a writer I use this once upon a time event to see me through difficult times of lesser inspiration, and as an antique dealer, I use its enlightenment to more fully appreciate the strange and alluring hauntings that linger with many old once-cherished estate pieces, that former owners have not just yet, in the immortal circumstance, let go of in the contemporary, actual sense. It comes down to intuition and the enhancements it has been afforded over a life time of Guardian Angel encounters, that seems in a strange but productive way, to give me a heads up about certain unspecified entities that really, don't go bump in the night. They just let the vibes instill the message, whatever that is at the moment of encounter.
My contact with spiritual entities is always innocent, unexpected and pretty much unremarkable when it comes right down to it, as memorable events. But because I always feel in company of those who have departed, I can also honestly confess, that I've never been scared of ghosts. That's the part of Hollywood that has jaded the whole mortal-immortal relationship. I will offer up dozens of scenarios where our whole family has come in contact with resident ghosts and sundry other spirits, and how our experiences have actually been appreciated and learned-from, instead of ever being the impetus of lasting fear and loathing.
As a writer without the two cents worth of spirits at my side? Gosh, I don't think I could get through a writing jag like this one. They give me the juice, I have to tell you, and I'm never going to deny them full credit for giving me an endless supply of subjects and situations to write about.
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