Current Mood: Happy

Earth Angel ¹

I guess my siblings and I were raised as somewhat unusal Protestants, in that we were raised with a belief in Guardian Angels.

To ward off the “boogie man” - and assorted other beasties that stalk children at night - our mother used to draw a picture of our “Guardian Angel” and tape it to the wall beside our bed at night. “See? there’s a picture of your guardian angel. Nothing is going to happen to you while she’s looking over you.” Many, many nights I’d fall asleep looking at that picture. When I became a mother, I used to do the same with my daughter.

When mom got lung cancer, and all her electrolytes went out of balance, she’d be talking out of her head, and she used to be afraid to fall asleep. So to help her, I drew a picture of her guardian angel too, and posted it by her bed at the hospital. It helped her, too.

In her last year she used to talk about her Guardian Angel, a lot. She said his name was “Sing” - well, it wasn’t really his name, that was just the name he gave her because humans couldn’t pronounce his name. She used to tell us all about the conversations she had with Sing, all the while, dad shaking his head behind his paper. We all just humored her, our mom had always been “weird” - this was just yet another way for our mother to express her weirdness. If it brought her peace - why not?

Recently I had an opportunity to go over her medical records. Our brother decided to file suit with the State of Florida with the Engle Trust Fund, against the tobacco companies, and I had to search through them to find references to her smoking before 1996. I found something very interesting in those records.

(more…)