Ordinary Angel

for Colette

Saturday morning: a later start. Outside were bright blue blue skies, soft white cloud caravans moving along at a steady pace, directed. It was still early enough to view a grey mist lifting off the hills in the distance, their gentle portrait smudged by a smattering of plastic houses, but still a quiet reminder of God’s lovingkindness, always moving toward us despite our foolish, violent, careless ways.

As the world rages, my heart is overtaken by a single person. I’ve known Beatrice twenty-six years, since meeting my husband. Before I met “Bebe,” he told me his sister “has no malice in her.” Stubborn though, as a bull. Her obsession with pocketbooks reached a point where she could no longer distinguish between hers and someone else’s. I would try to retrieve my own, fooling myself into thinking I might teach her a thing or two about morality. Our two hard heads butted as her determination and the strength of her grip outdid mine again and again.

I surrender.

Soon that stage passed into something more docile, where she asked repeatedly for a new purse, or a new ring or bracelet, on my visits. I finally admitted life was moving along swiftly, and giving in was no indulgence but a small offering. For the outburst of joy on her face was new every time, like a sunrise, and could get me through an entire week of banal irritations.

Teach her a thing or two. Who did I think I was? What is morality for if not what she teaches me? So much harder to learn, or to find by forgetting, but for her always within reach.

She is the seer, as Malcolm Guite says, “an ordinary angel who can see.”

She has taken up residence in my heart, even more as her body and her words betray her. What remains is purity, a light pulsating with greater intensity as everything around her dims. Her heart softens mine. I no longer live in self-condemnation. She has helped me find my own love. Or dare I say God has made a plumb line into my heart through her. Excavated it. And then I see it is not my love at all but God’s, diminishing me but at the same time helping me rediscover myself, nearly unrecognizable since childhood. All was wonder then, play; we knew more than this one world. It was all there for the exploring, for the grieving and questioning and exulting in.

Remember?

She takes up residence, fills up the rooms of my heart, crowding out other preoccupations while making room for fundamental things, for those matters and people I overlook.

I’ve just arrived into her hospital room. We’ve spent several afternoons here this week. Everyone still falls in love with her even though she can no longer declare her love for them as was her habit not so long ago. Those long black eyelashes are twitching as she sleeps.

Thanks…

for the caregivers, especially Kima and Da’Shawn,

for Colette, who teaches me so many things,

for the miracle of Bebe.

…the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”. He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.…“ See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. 
-Matthew, 18:1-5, 10, 11

---

from two years ago tomorrow:

---

Kenny by Malcolm Guite

---

---