Angels Here On Earth
When I was 11, I saw my sister’s Guardian Angel.
It was late one night – probably past midnight, though the exact time has escaped my memory – and we were trying to maneuver our station wagon out of the parking lot of the local Taco Bell. We – we meaning me, my sister Marie* and my childhood friend Nina – had gone to the movies that night to see Interview With the Vampire for the third or fourth time, and finished up the evening in our traditional fashion with a late dinner at the pseudo-Mexican fast food joint.
The parking lot wasn’t full, but it wasn’t terribly easy to move a 1984-era station wagon in any sort of smooth maneuver, and it took only a moment for Marie to become stuck between an iron guardrail, a cement pole and the fencing alongside a house that backed up to the restaurant. She couldn’t move without hitting at least one of these obstacles, and for a teenager stuck alone late at night with two kids in tow, it was beyond frustrating. Marie was near tears when the Angel appeared.
The blinding headlights of a car that hadn’t been there moments before appeared, and a young-ish man stepped out and walked towards us. Even though it was late and he was a stranger, none of us felt any fear or ill will. The man was what I would have, at that age, described as ‘cute’: a short, attractive Hispanic man with a friendly smile, who knocked on Marie’s driver side window and offered to help. She nodded, sliding across the bench seat into the passenger side and sending me into the back with Nina. The man slipped inside the car and deftly maneuvered it out onto the side street, somehow managing to avoid every obstacle that had moments before left us stranded.
As quickly as he appeared, he was gone. Stepping away with a chorus of thanks following him, he got back into the car that we couldn’t really see, so blinded were we by the headlights, and disappeared just as easily as he had arrived. Awed, Marie quickly pointed out that she had heard no engine, and, as the street was one-way, there was really nowhere he could have driven to. Trite as the situation may seem, it was late on a weekend in the city of Chicago, and we had no idea what could have been waiting for us just around the corner, had we been stranded any longer. We came away certain that the man we had met was Marie’s Guardian Angel, and we all believe it to this very day.
Along with this unexpected brush with the supernatural or divine, I have learned over the years that there are different types of angels. There are the ones, like Marie’s, who appear in the hour of need as though heaven-sent, only to disappear without a trace and leave you wondering. Others are far less obvious; they are our friends, families, co-workers and acquaintances who step up at the moment we really need them and manage to save us from ourselves.
I have known my good friend Karen going on five years, though we have not yet met in person. From the beginning, I saw her as someone to respect and even emulate. Highly intelligent and a brilliant writer, she had been through a lot in her life and learned to roll with the punches, hard as it might have been to do. She’d struggled, that was true, but in the end she managed to hold her head high; she is the kind of person I would like to grow to be.
A year and a half or so ago, I had reached the lowest point of my adult life. I had grappled with some anxiety and depression over the years, but not to the degree that it hit me one early autumn. Each day passed in an agonizing crawl; all I wanted to do was go home and go to sleep, craving those hours of nothingness to wash away the constant fear, worry and sadness that held constant grip on my mind.
My family did not know how to react; this was something they had never experienced before. I am fairly certain my mother was terrified, watching me shuffle home from work, unable to eat or talk, simply to lay on the couch until it seemed late enough to crawl off to bed, only to start the same cycle the next day.
For all that my family worried, it was a hundred times worse on me. In the briefest moments of clarity, when I could drag myself out of the depressive fog I had sunken into, I feared for my sanity. The thoughts that ran through my mind of their own accord both frightened and worried me. I thought I was losing my mind and, as I ranted into an online journal, said as much. It was Karen who stepped up and gave me the peace I needed to start to heal.
Depression and anxiety aren’t all that uncommon these days, and Karen had been grappling with these horrors for years. Though we had not met in person and never even spoke on it in a one-on-one manner, it was the comments she left in my online journal that helped me seek the peace that I needed.
She made me realize that I wasn’t crazy, and that this was a disease that could be fought.
She made me see that there was nothing wrong with me that couldn’t be treated, and I didn’t have to be afraid.
For all of this, I realized that Karen is one of the two angels here on earth that helped save me from myself that fall.
Even as I accepted the idea of seeking medical attention for my problems, there was still one small nagging worry tugging at the back of my mind. Having been raised Catholic and long ago turned away from the faith of my childhood, the horrifying thought that there was nothing in the afterlife and that there was no God kept me up at night, the loudest in a chorus of terrifying What-If’s running through my mind.
At work – the place, it turned out, to be the biggest source of my problem – there was a cheerful woman named Dee who always seemed to be nearby with a smile just when you needed one. I knew her to be very vocally Christian, and though I had long ago given up any religious inclination, just being around her seemed to make me feel better.
I spoke with her a little more every day, each time feeling just a little bit better. There was something about her and the love of life and God with which she spoke that seemed to placate the part of me that was searching for answers. Though I don’t describe myself as a Christian to this day, I am content in my heart knowing there is something out there, and I can close my eyes to sleep at night without the rush of questions and What-If’s that used to torment me.
Between Karen and Dee, I was able to take back my mind, my health and eventually, my life. Though I’m not perfect, I can cope, and I know that I owe most of it to these two – my angels here on earth.
* Names have been changed to protect the anonymity of those involved.
