Who Can See Angels?

By Ardith Samida

Sophie had always lived an outdoor life, raising her children on the farm after her husband's early death. Now she is confined to the controlled atmosphere of a senior's home in the city. Suddenly an angel appears to Sophie, giving her the idea that she will soon die. She wants to go back to her past home one more time, but she can't seem to convince anyone in the family to take her. Sophie comes up with an ingenious plan to make a run for it. Will she make it "home" or will she be caught?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467038232

Ardith Samida

Ardith Brace was born and raised on a farm near Tisdale, Saskatchewan. She now lives in the Peace country region of northern Alberta, near Eaglesham. After teaching for many years she is now retired and is known as "Mrs. Brace, the sub" as she still goes into the classroom when requested. She has a wide range of interests including traveling, gardening, hiking, photography and reading. Of course, writing is her favourite, a pastime in which she has indulged since childhood.

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© 2011 by Ardith Samida. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 09/14/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4670-3824-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-3823-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011916603

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

SECTION I:

AN EXCELLENT PLACE

SECTION II:

REBORN

SECTION III:

THE ANGEL TREE

Dedicated to my sisters and brothers,

who are all

Earth angels in their own way.

Introduction

Have you ever wondered about angels? Most people believe that they exist. But of what form and material is their being? And where do they come from? Are they with us all of the time, guiding us as we go, or do they just show up when we really need help? Is each person assigned his or her own angel or angels or do we share their help with others? And especially, why do some people see angels among us here on Earth, while others never see them?

SECTION I:

AN EXCELLENT PLACE

Chapter I

Sophie, Sophie. It was her mother’s voice, soft and far away, whispering to her. She must have dozed off!! Even in its softness, its unnaturalness, the voice had shocked her awake, and now Sophie lay on her bed, rigid, forcing herself to take regular, even breaths. This was it!! She had come this far and this was the one chance to carry through with her plan. If it didn’t happen now, it would never happen. Sophie was sure of that; bridges had been burned and if she didn’t leave now, she would be a certain prisoner here until she died.

Sophie had often sat beside old Mrs. Harper as she slept in her wheel chair, and for the novelty of it, for something to do rather than stare at the idiot box as it repeated the same news again and again, she had matched the other old woman breath for breath, a softly purring, snoring sound with each exhalation. It had been a mere distraction at the time, something to help wile away a few remaining hours of her useless old age. But now she concentrated as she tried to imitate that snoring, sleepy sound with her own breathing. Sophie held her face slightly down and pulled the sheets close so the beam from a roving flashlight would not cause her eyes to twitch under their semi-transparent lids. A halo of fluffy, thin off-white hair was splayed on the institutional green pillowcase; the shiny, baby pinkness of her scalp gleamed through these sparse strands. A small, bony arm coated with paper thin, wrinkled skin and brown dotted with liver spots, poked from beneath the blanket so that knobby fingers gripped the edge of the sheet as if to pull it further over the multi-lined face.

Suddenly the door, which was already open a crack, swung noiselessly inward a bit more to allow the entrance of a body. As the woman stepped in, a flashlight snapped on and slid a shaft of light across the apparently sleeping old woman. Sophie was ready for it, but the actual occurrence caused her heart rate to bump up a notch, until she thought that the sound of the pounding might be audible outside of her brittle rib cage, but it wasn’t so. The intruder stood silently and listened for the breathing of the old woman as the flashlight played around the room but night nurse found only the blinking green stand-by light of the computer whose fan hummed softly in the darkness. There was no other sound but the raspy and somewhat irregular breathing of an old woman. The beam searched across the window sill, even though the flashlight’s user knew the window was glued and screwed tight shut. She had been present herself when this action had occurred.

It was late October, now, and as The Calm Days nursing home was climate controlled, all windows must remain tightly shut. In the late summer, when residents were not permitted outside or were taken out less and less, Sophie, longing for the outdoors, where she had spent most of her life, found she could pry the window open a crack and wedge the toe of her slipper into that crack. Even though she knew that opening a window was prohibited, she would pull her creaky old arm chair close, (she had been allowed to bring only a few of her ancient possessions here, in an effort to make her last earthly space more homey), and by leaning forward, could inhale the fresh, crispy, scented air emanating from the first frosts and the dead leaves. At first no one had noticed because Sophie had been careful to remove the slipper before anyone discovered her ingenuity. Then one day the slipper wouldn’t dislodge when she heard the approaching voices and, instead of staying calm and standing in front of the window until the voices had passed by, Sophie had yanked and tore on the slipper. She had been found out. At first, those in charge had simply asked her to not open the window because of the internal climate control and the waste of energy-the home was kept at a constant 24 degrees Celsius-as the caretaker tapped the window down tightly into place. For a while, Sophie complied, but when she could stand it no longer, she stole a knife from the lunch room and succeeded in prying the window open again. The staff, on the look-out for cool, drafty air, and being aware of Sophie’s stubbornness, soon discovered the transgression. After the second infraction, the window was secured with glue and screws. It would never again be open regardless of the season of the year.

Now Sophie lived in the sharp tang of disinfectants, the musk of urine, the sour smell of the aged and the sickly odour of a myriad of medications which could keep a body alive long past the time that any human dignity remained. When her kids came to visit her, the old woman always asked them to take her outside, but as it got colder and the skiff of frost which covered the ground in the morning persisted into the afternoon, the kids fussed and worried over her. Mom, you will catch a chill, pneumonia; fall and break a hip. She succumbed to their will-she had no choice. Sophie smiled at their attentions and cried when they had gone. She did not cry for her life; it had been full and rich, she cried for the loss of freedom and for gulps of fresh, frosty air.

This pattern may have continued until Sophie’s death if it hadn’t been for the angel. Twice she had seen it within the past three weeks. The first time, she seemed to be awakened by an exotic odour and a soft whispering, and as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness of the room, she saw a glowing figure standing at the foot of her bed. Was she dreaming? Sophie had always been a practical woman and while she believed that angels existed, she had always had the idea that seeing into the unseen world of spirits was something mostly concocted in an overly imaginative brain. Was the moonlight shining through partly opened curtains? Neither was true; and though her glasses were on the computer table, she could see the unmistakable outline of a gentle face, the sweep of white wings, and the iridescent glow in the blackness. When the ethereal being withdrew, she felt her whole being drawn along, but in the morning, she awoke, still imprisoned, wondering, wondering.

The second time the angel spread its calm softness and light into the room, Sophie believed instinctively that she would soon die. At first, Sophie did not know why she could not accompany the quiet spirit when it vanished, leaving behind the fresh, earthy scent not unlike that of rain on new spring grass. If she went now, a lot of trouble could be averted for herself and for those she loved. Life no longer held anything of interest for her; she was of no practical use to anyone, and she had nothing left to contribute to this world which had closed in so tightly and restrictively upon her in her latter days. She waited for a few days more, hoping that the angel would reappear at take her spirit along to its place of rest and peace, the green pastures she had read about; three’s a charm, she would say to herself. But not being of a superstitious mind, it was more of a wish than a belief for Sophie. However, she never saw the angel or any angel again, at least not on this side of creation. Sophie began to believe that she had been dreaming or that her old mind had played tricks on her, and yet the memory of the visions persisted so vividly.

As she thought about it, it gradually became clear; she could not die here-not in this place that was not home and never would be a home to Sophie. Her soul yearned to once more see her real home, the home where she had lived, loved, laughed and cried; her home where she had been born and where she had lived simply and happily with her parents and her brother and where she had stayed on into her adult life as she and Jimmy had raised their two kids and where her gentle husband had died-too soon.

She wanted once more to sit by the river and watch the lapping waves on the beach, to listen to twittering birds, to feel the breeze on her skin and especially to smell the river drenched air. Golden pollen filtered from evergreen trees in spring when the first leaves appeared on the poplars, smelling all sappy as the winds knocked the last of the catkins to the ground. That place under the trees by the river was where her earthly home and her heavenly home seemed to meet; the place where Sophie sat from time to time since her childhood to contemplate life and death or just to absorb the calmness in order to free herself from the cares and worries of that time; the place Sophie actually believed was Heaven on Earth.

At this time of year, late autumn, the air would be full of the tangy odour of decaying leaves, the primordial aroma of the swampy spots and the old muskeg, left damp and soggy by fall rains, the spicy essence of spruce, and the indescribable freshness of the river which gurgled joyfully as it slipped slowly along its way, its borders crusty with ice from the early frosts. Sophie always marveled at how humans had learned to capture sights and sounds with film and audiotapes, but through all history they had never learned to capture smells. Try as they might to imitate the chemistry of the smells, using real and artificial substances in a laboratory somewhere, in order to produce perfumes, the unnatural scents made by humans in a factory were only poor replicas of the heady perfumes made effortlessly by nature.

How could this return to the river where she had lived, and where she longed to go once more before she died be accomplished? The old woman did not want to tell the kids that she expected that she would die soon; they would fuss and try to placate her, they would not believe her. Children often think that a loved parent will live forever. Sophie asked the kids to take her to the river, take her home just once more, only once more. Of course, they said, In spring, perhaps, but you know that old road to the river has not been maintained. Insurance rates became too high for anyone to put his neck on the line for charges which might result from a wreck on a poorly maintained road. The population which might use the old road is too low. We will not be able to get close to the river, not even a 4-wheel drive could make it down that muddy trail through the trees any longer. Maybe, the lookout point. We’ll have to see. Perhaps, something deep down poked at their consciousness and made them wonder why Sophie asked so often and seemed so adamant about going back to her old home, especially now that it was already so cold and late in the fall. Was she just looking backward to happier days in her life, thinking that visiting the river could take her back to those days? Did their mother believe it would be the last trip back to the place of her birth before her mind became unaware of her surroundings and her senses dropped into the limbo of the aged? Did she think it would be her last outing before leaving this Earth for her real home in Heaven? Perhaps, subconsciously they thought that putting off the trip might actually keep their mother on Earth longer. Or was the desire to go back home just the musing of a lonesome old woman, who have not much else to do with her time? They would take her to the river, or at least as near as they could get to the river, next summer, when the air was warm, but now the trip would be impossible.

And how could Sophie explain to them that she must go soon-now? She could not even get out of the door of The Calm Days home by herself without alerting the staff because of that band around her ankle which caused the second set of doors to slam shut and lock if she tried to go out. She had no means of transportation and the river was far away-she couldn’t quite remember the distance but it took a long time to get there, perhaps as long as five hours or more of straight driving, she couldn’t remember even though she had traveled the distance many times in her life. She even wondered why she would think about getting back to the river at all. Sophie always believed that after she died and before she left Earth, she would will her spirit to go to all the places where she had wanted to go during her lifetime just to see what they were like. Why not just wait until death freed her soul and perhaps then she could just spend eternity by the river? Something deep inside her made her feel that the senior’s residence had claimed her body and soul and that her spirit would not be able to escape these imprisoning walls. No, she could not take that chance; she must not die here.

Sophie would not have considered herself a difficult client, but when most people are approaching their ninetieth birthday, they become forgetful or else compliant, being resigned to the winding down of their life and their impending death, the completion of the circle. Sophie had no patience with someone just sitting around waiting to die. Before she had come here, she refused to attend the functions which were held at the senior’s Centre in her village, maintaining that the centre was inhabited by a bunch of old codgers, she, herself, being as old or older than most of them. She had been active in life and would remain active until God saw fit to separate spirit and body. She expected to use her brain as long as she had