Shouldn't…but Do

Note from the peanut gallery: Warning essay ahead…

“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.”
~John Milton, Paradise Lost

Disguise is a prevailing wind in our day. In literature, arts, cinema and life, disguise features prominently. Disguise speaks to illusion and to the elusive. We are all the wiser for the adage “things are rarely what they seem.”

Perhaps disguise speaks to a fundamental doubling of human nature. Like dreams that show us our backs, there is often something we cannot discern, but that exists, had we been looking from a slightly different angle.

Below that doubling of ego and environment resides a quieter domain. Original spirit is perhaps the real truth, the sine qua non, behind the doubling, disguise and elusiveness – timelessly – affected by and affecting all that we do, feel and accomplish. The flutter of wings, of heaven or hell, that brush our face from time to time.

Crossing paths with that energy, we look out of ourselves and sometimes attribute it to the passing of what we call an “angel.”

Of course, agreeing on a precise definition of an angel is about as useful as disputing the number of them that can dance on the head of a pin, but most folks apparently feel or hope they exist.

And they do. Why, I encountered one in a big-box grocery store some moons ago. Arriving early on a drizzly day, I was mulling over my own lack of vision, the loss of direction in my life. I shopped to my list, carefully scrutinized my fistful of coupons, assayed the sales and arrived at the check-out in time to join the queue waiting in the one open lane.

An older man wheeled up behind me, his cart stocked with frozen dinners and soda pop. There is a moment in this type of encounter, when one understands that a stranger needs to talk – whether it is on a plane, on the street – or in a big-box grocery store. A decision is always made – either to politely demur or politely listen. It also happens that individuals of this type sometimes continue to talk despite a polite refusal – but that is not this story.

As mentioned, my own energy was dim that day. The man spoke quietly and sadly without pause, about his wife of many years who had passed away three winters ago. She had battled cancer for a decade. The story of the progression of her illness kept time with the progression of the grocery line.

As I listened I physically turned to face him and he seemed to realize at the same moment how he was talking and said a bit sheepishly, “sometimes it just helps to talk about it.”

As I began to unload my produce onto the checkout belt, his story picked up again. He seemed to have a pressing concern about the once happy house he now lived in alone. In the years since she passed, it seems the fellow felt his wife was still present in the house. He sometimes heard a piano tune that only she played, sometimes heard her voice as if at a distance, sometimes noticed small things rearranged.

The canned goods were bagged, only the cereal was left and he asked me somewhat urgently the question that had been on his mind all along. He had made plans to sell his house and move north, closer to relatives, but now was afraid to, afraid he would leave her behind. Did that sound strange?

I took time answering, the steady beep of the grocery scanner seemed distant as I looked him in the eye. The question was there. I slowly told him that I was certain that she was in the house, and that I was just as certain that when he moved – she would move right along with him – that neither of them would ever be left behind again.

He looked at me for a bit and something shifted, or maybe I just thought something had passed through or passed by. By then it was time for me to ante up my money and crumpled coupons and close the deal. I turned again before I left and wished him a good day. At the same time, we both said “it was good talking to you.”

I trundled my cart away to hear him greet the check-out clerk with a hearty “and how are you, young lady?”…

Any onlooker could easily have found his story sympathetic and my patience admirable. But as I wrestled my cart out the door I realized there was a warmth present in my heart that I had noticed missing earlier that day, earlier that week. Encoded and disguised in a loving story was energy, a field, a data stream or precisely-timed random occurrence that I needed.

In myth or lore this would have been the encounter with the marginalized old man or woman asking for help from the dummling, or youngest brother, who unquestioningly gives what he has, realizing only later that his act of kindness saved his life or his quest.

How lucky I was to encounter this soul willing to share, able to give me this gift. Would he feel any different? I’ll never know, but the glimmer in my heart told me angels come in many guises – isn’t it so that help sometimes comes from the most unexpected places?