Angel Unaware

In September 1968, I thought I had things more or less figured out in my world, small as it was.

When you're five years, the world basically melts down to just your town, your street, your house and whatever is going on in this micro sphere is what must be going on through out the rest of the world in every house in the world.

For me, the world was our town and some distant place called England which my Dad claimed to visit on a daily basis.

"Where have you been?" I would ask upon his arrival home.

"I've been to see the Queen!" he would insist.

"What queen??"

"The Queen of England!"

I knew who that was. There was a stunning color picture of her in the front of one of our National Geographic books. That my minister Father was on a first name basis with the Queen of England was astounding to me. That he never took me to meet this queen was a source of great frustration.

"Does she ask about me and sister?" I always wanted to know.

Dad would assure me that she did, that he even showed her a picture of us which thrilled me no end but still did not make up for the lack of face to face with someone wearing a real crown.

Besides, time was of the essence if sister was ever to go and see this queen because any day now she'd be going to live with Jesus and go back to being an angel.

Jesus lived in heaven which was in the sky. Jesus could on occasion come to visit the Methodist church next door, (which is where God lived all the time), but his primary world was up there where all the other girls like sister Audrey became angels when they were done being Audreys on this earth.

I should pause here to relate that I was a very strange child in that while I would pepper people with questions on mundane issues such as why is the sky blue or why is so and so's hair a different color every week, when it came to the deeper issues like why can't my older sister walk, talk and go around like the rest of us, I chose to ponder this out on my own and arrive at my own conclusions which I then tended not to share.

After all, if it made sense to me, then it must be right and there was no further need to talk about it.

So with that in mind, I had reached the conclusion that Audreys were special beings that had been angels once and would be angels again when they were through with their missions here on earth.
Because they had once had wings, they couldn't walk very well on their feet nor could they use their hands that much. Angels communicated with thought so on earth, the use of the mouth to make words was an alien thing to them and they simply wouldn't do it.

Nor did they need to. Audrey couldn't walk to go and see this or that, instead, this or that came to her. She never uttered anything that came close to a word yet she spoke volumes with her eyes, her face, her laughter....and her tears.

Audrey was often ill. Audrey was often in pain. Audrey had already lived out 3 previous doctor imposed expiration dates and was closing in another one in that September 1968 so for this reason, my parents tried as gently as they could to explain to me that one day soon, my golden haired sister would be leaving us to go and live with Jesus.

And because I had already come to know that she was an angel trying to be a human, this did not duly upset me as they perhaps feared it would. I was concerned that she wouldn't know anyone up there. Yes, of course she would know Jesus but he was all over the place and who would she talk to when he was down here visiting his father at the Methodist church?

Of course, as an angel, she would have her wings back again so I reasoned that would be alright then. She could fly in the night time sky among the stars in the moonlight and perhaps she would come by and see me most nights. Yes, that would be fine. I would miss her but at least she wouldn't be sick and in pain anymore because, as I thought everyone knew, trying to be a human was hurtful for angels.

So that was my world as I figured it to be in mid September 1968; as colorful and flitting as a butterfly's wings and, as it would turn out...just as fragile.