Angelic Pathways (15 page)

“Look down right in front of you.” I heard her voice softly, and to my amazement, there was the most beautiful iridescent rainbow pen I had ever seen. I beheld it like Indiana Jones would a sacred treasure.

“Heh, funny,” I said to myself and grabbed two pens, one for the boys and one for Britt. That evening at the funeral home, I spoke to Britt quietly about the rainbow sign and showed her the pens while handing her the engraved one and leaving the plain one out for everyone else to use. I laughed off the coincidence, but could have sworn I felt Ella’s eyes bore holes right through me. But what was I to do? It was a pen that just so happened to be the color of a rainbow. No big deal, right?

Clutching a handkerchief tight in one hand and my purse in the other, I entered the church on the day of Ella’s funeral to a corridor full of Ella’s friends and family. There was no question that the woman was deeply loved, but the gathering had a dual atmosphere. We all were mourning the loss of one of the most incredible women we would ever know, but at the same time we were scared witless of the power she now possessed on the other side. Many of us spiritual slackers who didn’t live up to Ella’s standards while she wasn’t looking were about to pay dearly, and I knew I was one of them. After all, at how many funerals do you get the comment, “We are so screwed now that Ella doesn’t have to sleep or stop to eat and can move at light speed. She’ll never know a day’s rest and neither will we.” We all wept in sadness and groaned in dread of the fire Ella was about to light under all of us. Not only did the women of the tea shop realize this, but so did Ella’s children.

We all joked about it as we stood in the corridor before the funeral, but suddenly her second-eldest son said, “Chantel, take a few steps back.”

Caught off guard by the request, I frowned, shrugged, and stepped back. “What? Hop on one foot now?” I playfully teased.

“No, you’re standing in a rainbow.” He and his fiancée chuckled and pointed. I looked straight up at a stained glass window overhead as the sun was shining directly through the center of it, casting rainbows on the floor all around me. I chuckled back, “How cute,” and quickly excused myself to find the ladies of the tea house.

“Did you guys tell anyone about the rainbows?” I whispered as we stood in line to enter the chapel.

“No, did you?” they all whispered back to me. The rainbow sign was certainly no secret, but I didn’t know whether to dismiss the second rainbow as another coincidence or just as one of Ella’s sons playing a joke.

The service in the chapel was a tearful one. The procession was led by the Eagle Scouts, for Ella was a den mother and avid supporter of her boys. A sermon from the pastor soon followed, his message focusing on being of service to others, something that came as second nature to Ella. The pastor recounted his visits to Ella while she was ailing.

“Pastor, what will that moment be like?” Ella had asked him. As I sat in the church pew, I couldn’t help but shudder in fear. Ella had been my adopted mother and spiritual mentor for several years. It was under her tutelage that I had been able to hone my natural gifts of intuition. It was her wisdom that had brought to me the deeper understanding of Reiki. And it was her love that had helped me to have faith in myself as a child of spirit, a child of God.

So to hear the pastor on the day of her funeral lay bare her fears of death was a bit disconcerting. Other than my mother—who could go up against a raging bull with a terry-cloth dish towel and win—Ella had been one of the strongest women I’d ever known in mind, body, and spirit. She was a power to be reckoned with, and if ever my life had felt like a supernatural Hollywood movie, it was during the times I had spent with Ella up at her tea shop. Those times were many, and I had grown to respect and love her. I cherished every wise word she had said.

“Ella,” the pastor spoke, “I know that when that moment comes, all of God’s angels will be there to receive you.” He then chuckled through his tears and said, “Ella leaned close to me, eyed me with scrutiny, and whispered, ‘How do you know?’” The sadness in the crowd momentarily broke with the sound of laughter. Yep, that was Ella, all right. She was one tough cookie.

The pastor then looked at each of us with a lingering gaze and began to unfold his pastoral towel.

“A lot of people call this a scarf, but it’s not, actually. We call this a towel and we wear it in semblance of Jesus’s service to his disciples. It actually represents the towel he used to wash the feet of his disciples. I haven’t worn this one in a very long time, but for some reason, I felt that it would mean something special to you all.” The unfolded towel revealed a large rainbow across its midsection. He ceremoniously placed it around his neck, smoothed it out, and then looked at it lovingly. “Yes, I think Ella would have liked this one best.”

It was at that moment that all of us ladies from the tea house looked to each other in complete disbelief.

“Did you see that, or am I dreaming?” whispered one of the tea shop regulars as we walked down the corridor toward the church dining hall after the service.

“I think a little bit of both,” I said, feeling ill. Seeing a third rainbow was beyond coincidence; it was just plain freaky. And if that weren’t enough, when all of us entered the dining hall, we came face to face with a huge rainbow painted on the wall. None of us at the tea shop had ever been in this church before, which was obvious by the look of astonishment on all of our faces.

“Oh, isn’t that rainbow beautiful? The children just finished painting that the other day,” said a parishioner who was passing by, leaving us standing there in a cloud of awe and wonder.

As a medium, I’ve connected with those who were in the process of passing, those in the twilight, and those who had already crossed over, but I think that no encounter was so pain-filled as that of my father during what I can only surmise was his twilight. Unlike my mother and Ella, my father chose to contact me in a very different way upon his passing in November of 1997.

The spring morning was sunny but still carried with it the bitter chill of winter. As I sat in the car to let it and my hands warm up with the revving engine, I meditated on the windshield wipers as they cleared away the morning’s dew from my window.

“Now, baby, you take care of her and she’ll take care of you. Always check your tires, and check your oil every three thousand miles, okay? Make sure your spare has air in it, and always keep spare change for a phone call,” my dad rambled on as he pointed to every relevant gauge in yet another short course in car care. Yeah, as if I hadn’t gotten it all the first few hundred times.

Dad was an older gent, his eighty-five years to my twenty-four at the time, and I was his only living child. He had had a family before he met my mom, but had lost his daughter to suicide, his son to friendly fire in Vietnam, and his wife to colon cancer, all within a three-year span. So when my parents met and I showed up as an unexpected bonus to their growing love, my dad married my mom and showered me with everything a young, spoiled urban princess could ever want. My pampered childhood was lush and glorious, but then came puberty, boys, and a loathing for my dad’s smothering tendencies. There wasn’t a moment when I didn’t think I would die of sheer suffocation from the man’s overprotection; my every departure from the house was preceded by questioning that could rival Homeland Security protocol.

Dad had just been finishing up his auto checklist when a white sedan pulled up beside us. A bearded man emerged from the driver’s side and began to approach our car, hailing my dad’s attention.

“Stay here,” my father said, cautiously placing his hand on mine. With that, he exited the car and met the bearded man halfway. I turned off the engine to better hear their conversation, only to hear my father bellow curses that bounced off the bricks of the neighboring houses. Composed, the stranger returned to his car and departed. My heart pounding in fear for my father and for the man he had just verbally accosted, I emerged from my car and stood on the sidewalk.

“Dad, you can’t just go around cussin’ people out these days. Folks got guns, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I got a shotgun.”

“Who was that, anyway?”

“No one.”

I stared at my dad a long moment, shrugged, and then headed up the driveway to the house. Dad was on my heels the whole time, grumbling angrily. He had a temper that could make the Devil break a sweat, so I continued walking and was not about to press the issue further.

Ominous storm clouds crept in somewhere between the first step into the house and the fourth step up into the kitchen. Bewildered, I lifted the curtains over the sink and gazed out. The sky had been so serenely blue only moments earlier.

“You sure you have to leave?” my father said, still standing at the door and looking out to those rolling clouds as well. The question sent a chill over my shoulders. Dad was a strong, overbearing man with a deep, resounding voice, but at that very moment with that very question, he sounded more like a frightened toddler.

“Yeah, I’m late, Dad.” I glanced at the clock on the stove. It was eight thirty. Oddly, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was headed. My response had been automatic. After years of tolerating the demands of an elderly man who now couldn’t remember if he had already asked me the same question four times, I had made it my business to just not be home anymore. Whether it was school or overtime at work, there was always one reason or another for me to leave at eight in the morning and not return home until well past midnight.

“Oh. Well, okay. I love you,” he muttered, and I turned to find him standing behind me with his arms open. I blinked hard once and then again. Afflicted with Alzheimer’s, Dad was hardly affectionate anymore. Sure, I remember bouncing on his knee when I was a little girl, but those days were long gone and the most affection we ever exchanged was the typical “be careful” and “see you later.” Regardless, I slipped into his arms, and they were warm—warm, strong, and protective like I remembered from my childhood. That hug was what I wanted from him more than anything, not his all-points checklists on cars, nightclubs, or boyfriends. I just wanted his affection again. Better late than never, I supposed.

He kissed me on the forehead and turned away, heading back out the door. “I love you, Chantel.”

“I know. I love you too, Dad.” I could barely get out the words as I forced back tears. I looked to the clock on the stove again. It was still frozen on eight thirty.

And then I woke up. When I glanced at the clock, it was more like ten to nine and I was grossly late for work. I sprang from bed, grabbed my clothes, and whipped past my mother with an “I’m late!” instead of a kiss good morning. Shower be damned, I dressed as quickly as I could, cursing the whole time. To make matters worse, my half-brother wanted to vie for the bathroom I was in because the second upstairs bathroom at the back of the house only had a tub without a shower.

“What!” I barked in response to his pounding on the door.

“Call in late. The nursing home just called. They sent Buddy to the hospital.” That’s what my half-siblings called my dad, “Buddy.” He had told them that he would never try to replace their father, but he did want to be their friend, and so “Buddy” it was. I called my dad that too, but if I wanted something, princess mode kicked in and it was always “Daaaddyyyy.” And like magic, my dad would automatically reach into his pocket for his wallet and ask, “How much is this gonna cost me?”

That’s exactly what I was thinking as I raced to get ready for work: how much it was going to cost me to miss a day at a job that was only two months old. “Can’t you go? I can’t call in late!” I shrieked back at my half-brother.