We Hear the Christmas Angels GuidepostsBooks

We're sorry, but this content is no longer available on Beliefnet. You may enjoy the following related articles: A 'Classic' Study of Angels By Joan Wester Anderson Is an Angel Trying to Contact You? By Hazel Raven Pink Roses in January By Cathy Lee Phillips Reprinted with permission from * Joe C, Hutcherson, my father, always had a story and everybody loved listening to him. But he couldn’t tell his stories anymore. He’d been unable to talk for four months because of a stroke. Now he was in the hospital, losing his battle with cancer, He’d left instructions that no life—sustaining measures were to be used, and in the last several days he’d begun refusing medicine and food. We took turns at his bedside—my mother; my brother Michael, who had come from Texas; my sister Linda, from Virginia; and me. I was a nurse and had finished a twelve-hour shift at the hospital just hours before, but I was going back for the night. We all knew Dad had made the decision to die. * The previous week I’d had lunch at a restaurant, and noticed that the adjoining country store was decorated for the holidays. I couldn’t help browsing for a while. My eyes were drawn to a large Christmas tree covered with angels. When I saw small brass angels, each playing a musical instrument, I thought immediately of my neighbor Grover Gilbert. Grover prayed aloud whenever he visited my father. “Dear God,” he would say, “we thank You for these four angels, one at each corner of the bed, who stand guard over Joe.” Goose bumps rose on my arms every time I heard that prayer. Grover seemed so sure the angels were there, and I wanted Dad to see them too. The brass ornaments would be a start, I decided. “I’ll take four,” I said to the clerk. * “Look, Dad, your angels !” I said that afternoon. I taped them up on the wall in front of my father, their faces shining directly at him. But the tape didn’t hold. Every time I looked, the angels were falling. During the week I tried stronger tape, and still they came loose. When I arrived one day I discovered a nurse had hung them from the top of his IV pole. Perfect. But still they wouldn’t hang right. The slightest air current in the room twisted the angels this way and that. Invariably their backs were turned toward my father. We straightened them constantly to keep them facing Dad, but they seemed to have minds of their own. * They were still moving every which way that December night when I got to Dad room. “Mom was exhausted,” my brother told me, “and I convinced her to go home.” We were all exhausted. In my years as a nurse I’d seen many people die. But this, of course, was different. This was my father. * Dad groaned each time he moved. His once strong hands were now limp and swollen. His face, always so filled with kindness, was now ravaged with pain. Somewhere between two and three o’clock in the morning I looked at Michael standing across the bed from me, and said, “We should pray” My brother and I held hands and shared prayers of thanksgiving for our father life. My words at the end were the words of our friend Grover. “Thank You,” I said, “for the angels who guard him, one at each corner of his bed.” * My father eyes were cloudy What does he see? I wondered. Touching his face, I whispered, “It’s okay, Dad. The angels are with you.” I pointed at the shiny brass figures hanging from his IV pole. Slowly he turned to look. Suddenly my father’s expression became animated. He shifted sideways in bed, his gaze fixed on the angels twisting and turning in the air. Then, eyes half open, still staring at the shiny brass ornaments, he fell asleep. He seemed to be peaceful for the first time in days. * I lay down on the couch in the corner, pulling a sheet around me. Michael sat at Dad’s bedside. Dozing in and out of sleep, I felt someone walk past me. Moments later I heard Michael calling, “Sheila come quick.” * I jumped to my feet. Michael was standing with his hand on Dad’s chest. “I think he’s gone,” Michael said. Dad’s eyes were slightly open, but he wasn’t breathing. I felt for a pulse, but there was none. We called the nurses. * My father was just as I’d seen him before I went to sleep, his body sideways, his gaze fixed on the angels at the top of the IV pole. I closed his eyes. Michael made phone calls to our family, and we sat together to wait. * As I looked at Dad and then at the brass angels, something caught my attention. The four figures were motionless, their faces turned toward my father. The angels who had constantly twisted this way and that were now perfectly still, their gazes fixed. I felt goose bumps on my arms. “Michael,” I asked, “did someone come into the room just before you called me?” * Michael shook his head. “No one.” * Except Dad’s angels. He’d seen them after all. And I would have loved to hear him tell that story too. TEXT ENDS -->