Angels

 

 

 

Creativity never ends.  If we think our creativity ends at death, think again. This is my angel story. I am posting it here in honor of the feast of the guardian angles.

Flowers From Heaven

 

 

 

 

At one time in her life, my sister Jo had a dream of one day starting a small business making flowers form silk ribbons for special occasions. Though her dream never materialized, for a time she made weddings bouquets and graduations corsages for friends and relatives. Later her dream was forgotten as many long years past while she lay in a nursing home dying.

Jo had a way of distancing herself form her dreams, and even from her pain like her ribbon flowers that she stuffed in a drawer somewhere gathering dust. When she first started getting the intense headaches she refused to listen. Days past and then she couldn’t listen. A brain aneurysm ruptured and sent her hurling toward eternity.

Jo underwent surgery and spent days recovering in the hospital. Her recovery was short lived when one morning she was found on her stomach unresponsive. No one knew how long she had been like that, and though she was revived it was too late. As a result of being deprived of oxygen, there was extensive brain stem damage, and that was the beginning of her thirteen year journey through hell to heaven.

When Jo finally passed away there was sadness, but there was also a great sense of relief. Early in the morning following her death, my younger sister, Cathy, and I talked about how those years must have been like solitary confinement for Jo.

“Can you imagine how it must have been for her not being able to communicate and to be locked in herself like that,” I said through my tears.

“I wish we had a sign from Jo letting us know she is in heaven.” Cathy replied in a sob.

Trying to be the big sister and offer some comfort I cleared my voice offering, “ After all Jo has been through, I believed there must be a very special place for her in heaven.”

On this same day, my husband, Francis, a chaplain who works at a local maximum security facility was visiting the segregation unit when he came across an inmate making flowers out of toilet paper. Inmates in segregation are not allowed to have anything in the cell with them, so toilet paper was the only material available to him. This inmate was pressing his flowers to the window of his cell when my husband passed. Francis was so struck by the beauty and the cleverness of the flowers that he asked the inmate to show him how to make one.

That evening when my husband came home form work, he said to me, “I am an artist too! I made you this flower because I knew you were sad about your sister.” I was so touched and surprised that Francis would bring me a flower that he made himself. Then it hit me. I blurted out, ” This is really something. I have never told you this before, but my sister used to make flowers out of ribbons for people. Actually, she wanted to start a business for herself making flowers.” I knew immediately this was the sign Cathy wanted. As beautiful as this sign was it was not the last.

I like to listen to books on tape while I do my artwork, housework, or to relax before falling asleep. When I go to the library, I’ll usually pick up a few that catch my eye. Weeks before my sister died, I had made my usual library run. In my stash, was a book called Song of Saigon One Woman’s Journey To Freedom by Anh Vu Sawyer and Pam Proctor. The book opens as a female medical student is about to cut into the thigh of a cadaver. I recoiled at the description of the scene, and put the book aside to take back to the library. However, I had this persistent nagging feeling that I should listen to it.

A week had passed since my sister’s death when I decided to give the book one last chance. I put the tape into the cassette player pushed fast forward to skip through the gruesome scene that had repelled me before. As the tape began to play, I got down on my knees and begin to scrub my floor.

This time the author was describing her prayers to God to bring her family to safety out of Vietnam. She talked about her prayer beseeching God to have mercy on her family, and she asked God to give her a sign that He was out there. The woman continued to say that she knew God had the power to pluck her family out of danger. That is when it happened.

The voice on the tape said, “I had a sense of assurance, a gentle calm. I felt like a paper flower, a bougainvillea, floating down a meandering stream” I dropped my wash rag and ran to the cassette player. The voice on the tape continued,” meandering down the stream like that paper flower, I was being carried along by a force that was not of my own strength to a destination not of my own choosing. And, as I bobbed along on the sparkling water, I remained vibrant and intact with bright fuchsia petals that sent a message of joy and hope. ” I was speechless in wonder and awe.

There is so much in this message that even today I am still learning, but one of the most beautiful parts of the message was , “I remained vibrant and intact with bright fuchsia petals that sent a message of joy and hope.” It revealed to us that she is intact and always was in tact in her journey to heaven. She assured us too that she was not going through hell all those years but that there was a force that was with her that carried her. The answer to my sister’s request was just beyond any joy or hope we could have expected.

Now, my sister Jo may not have known how to start a business making flowers here on earth, but she sure knows how to send them form heaven.