Angels in My Hair

by Lorna Byrne

  I thanked God and the angels that he was all right. Again, my angels had helped me to help someone.

  As I have said before, your angels are there to help you, and as you start to acknowledge that they may exist, you will start to feel their touch in your life. Angels have, in fact, been touching you all along; willing you to realise that they are there. They want you to know that there is much more to life than there might seem. We do not live our lives on our own: we may be in a human body, but each of us has a soul that is connected to God. Angels are connected to God too; as soon as we call God's name we empower the angels.

  In other words, we empower them to empower us. God has given us free will and the angels will not overstep that. If we tell them to go away, if we say we don't want help, then God and his angels will step to one side. But they will not go away completely: they will wait somewhere nearby.

  Have you ever had an experience when you are heading off somewhere and you go right instead of left? Deep inside you knew that you should have gone left, and later you kick yourself for it. That would have been your angel whispering in your ear, telling you that you should go left. Angels are all around us, unseen and waiting to help. However, angels need to be asked for help. By asking we allow them to help us thus making the connection stronger between a person and their angel.

  I realise now, after all these years, that I am an interpreter between angels and man, and as such I am frequently called in to intercede. While I have a particular role, all of us have the power to ask the angels to help at any time.

  I have often asked the angels for help for my family. Things weren't easy when I was growing up; by the time I was six, Mum had three more babies – two girls, Helen and Aoife, and a boy, Barry – so there were five children. On top of this, Mum was often unwell and was frequently in hospital. When she went into hospital, the family was divided up and sent away to her relatives.

  I was four when Emer and I first went to stay with my Aunty Mary. She lived with her husband and three children not too far away from where we lived, but although it may not have been many miles away, to me it was a world apart.When I first saw their house I thought it was a palace: it seemed enormous compared to our home. Everything in it was so luxurious and beautiful and it was warm, whereas our house felt damp and cold much of the time; here I could run around in my bare feet on the soft carpets. Mealtimes were incredible – loads of food served on a beautiful table laid with matching cups and plates that seemed to be so delicate I was afraid I would break them. Every meal was like a feast – there was so much food to choose from. One day I was asked if I would like a fry up for breakfast, and I couldn't believe what I was given: sausages, fried egg, rashers, black pudding, tomatoes and toast – all for me! Nothing was halved or shared like at home. The best thing of all was the bathroom. I had a bath filled with hot water right up to the top of the bathtub – I felt like a princess.

  This trip was the first time that I realised quite how poor we were.

  While we were staying at Aunt Mary's, Mum's parents came to visit and I was made to put on my good dress – a grey blue one with smocking across the front. I always loved wearing dresses and this was one of my favourites, so I was happy to put it on. I had only met my grandparents on a few previous occasions and I was very shy of them. They were both tall and looked like giants to me. Although they were both big, Granny was fat too, and she walked with a walking stick because she had had a stroke some years before.

  Sometimes when Mum was well, if the weather was good, we would go off and have a picnic in the Phoenix Park – an enormous wide open space on the outskirts of Dublin, with deer and all kinds of wonderful things. It was about two miles from home so we could walk there without too much problem. One Sunday, when I was seven, we all set off. Da pushed a bike with the picnic on the back carrier and Mum pushed my little baby brother, Barry, in the pram. Emer and I walked and my two younger sisters, Helen and Aoife, alternated between walking and sitting up on the pram.

  We had a great picnic of tomato and jam sandwiches and apples from the next door neighbour's garden and Da boiled up a billy can and made hot sweet tea for us all. After lunch I played football with my sisters and then I wandered off on my own among the big old trees. I loved playing among the trees there; the energy of certain trees – not all trees – would pull me towards them. It felt wonderful; a tingling, magic feeling which drew me towards the tree as if it were a magnet. I used to play a game with the trees, running around until the energy of a particular one grabbed me and then I would escape from it. I could play like this for hours. On this afternoon, though, my sisters came over and asked me what I was doing. I just said I was playing: I didn't bother to explain – they wouldn't have understood.

  At the end of the afternoon we were exhausted from all the running about and were looking forward to getting home and having supper. However, even before we turned the corner into the Old Kilmainham road, where our house was, I knew something was wrong. Two very big angels were walking up the road towards me and I knew from the way they approached that something terrible had happened. When they reached me they each put an arm around me, and as we walked up the road they told me that the roof of our house had fallen in. I was shocked.

  When we got to the house I was horrified by what I saw. I couldn't take my eyes off it: a large part of the roof had collapsed. My Da tried to open the door but he couldn't get it open, and when he forced it with his shoulder a cloud of dust came out. Inside nothing was recognisable – it was just rubble. When the roof collapsed it had brought the ceilings crashing down. To my child's eyes the house was all broken. I remember thinking, where are we going to sleep now? We climbed in over the rubble, and to my little child's legs each bit of concrete or stone seemed enormous. There was dust everywhere and everything was broken into smithereens – all the furniture, all our toys, all mum's precious things. I saw her crying as she picked up things from the ground and I stood in shock just watching Mum and Da try to salvage things. I remember Mum picking up a little dark brown milk jug with a cream stripe and saying, 'This is all that's left in one piece.'

  That jug was all that was left of her wedding presents – she had so little, and now all she had was gone. I still remember seeing the tears in her eyes. It made me cry, too, in fact all of us cried, except my Da. He told us not to cry, that he would make things all right. Somehow, Mum and Da cleaned things up a little and Da propped the roof up a bit so we could sleep there that night, but it was very dangerous. I slept thinking about the fact that our house had fallen in and wondered, what will we do now, where will we go?

  We were homeless, now, and Da had also lost his livelihood.

  Chapter Three

  Stairway to Heaven

  Thankfully, my cousin Nettie came to our rescue. She lived in a big house on her own even though she was hardly more than a child herself. A year or two earlier, at sixteen, she had inherited the house when both her parents had died. I don't know quite how it was agreed, and if we paid rent, but we went to live with her in her house in Ballymun on the north side of Dublin City – miles from Old Kilmainham.

  At first I felt miserable moving – I loved Old Kilmainham – but when I got to Ballymun and saw the big garden and the big rooms I was happy.Most importantly, this house was solid and I knew it would never fall down. It had three bedrooms upstairs and, a real luxury, an indoor loo and a bath. Downstairs there was a lovely long kitchen at the back overlooking the garden, a front room and Nettie's bedroom, which had probably originally been a dining room.

  The house had a magical garden; no garden since has ever seemed as big to me.We had so many adventures there. There was even a hay stack and, when there was a birthday party, sweets would be hidden in it. When he had time, Da grew vegetables – rows and rows of vegetables – everything you could think of, including peas, which we loved to pop, and he built huge strawberry beds.

  At that time there were five children in the family. My brother Barry was only a baby, and b
etween him and me there were two girls, Helen and Aoife, and then, of course, Emer, my older sister. I didn't play much with my brother and sisters; I only played with them when there was a birthday party or something like that. I suppose I had different interests to them. I saw the world with different eyes.

  At first my new life was a little lonely, but I soon made new friends. I got to know the little girl, Rosaleen, who lived on the other side of the wall along the back of all the gardens. It was a wonderful big wall that ran the length of the road and Da built a ladder for us so we could get up on it without destroying our shoes. It was a great wall for walking – good and wide so we could move along it safely – and this was how we travelled from one house to another, or to the fields down the way. I loved that wall, and all I could see from standing on top of it.

  Rosaleen became my best friend. She lived in a big posh house at the other side of the wall, about six houses away, and most of the time we visited each other via the wall, rather than going the long way around. She came from a large family, too, but some of her siblings were already grown up and had left home. I knew her little sister Caroline and her brother Michael, who was eight years older than her. Rosaleen was tall and skinny with long dark straight hair and she was full of fun and laughed a lot. I love spending time with her and her family, and, in fact, I spent more time with them than with my own family.

  Rosaleen's father was German, I think, and a big strong man with dark hair which was starting to go grey. He was away on business a lot of the time, but when he was there he was very good to Rosaleen and her brother and sister – and to me. On a Sunday he would buy a little bag of sweets for each of the children and I was very pleased and proud that he always included me – he included me in everything. There might only be six or eight sweets in the bag, but they were gorgeous and I'd try to make them last as long as possible.

  There was another Sunday ritual in Rosaleen's house that I loved: her mother would read us a story. We'd all go to her bedroom and sit on the bed and sometimes it would just be Rosaleen, Caroline and I, and sometimes Michael or one of my sisters joined us, too. Rosaleen's mother was wonderful at reading stories, and we would all sit and listen enraptured for an hour or so before she would send us away. Sometimes the books were very long and it would take weeks for her to finish reading it. One of my favourites was A Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

  There was a big wooden swing in our garden, which Da repaired so it went really high. I played on that swing for hours on end, and while I was sat on it the angels taught me a lot of simple lessons about life and living. In fact, often while I was there in body, I was in another world. As I sat there the angels showed me some wonderful and very magical things.

  Sometimes when I was alone on the swing one of the angels would say, 'Lorna, stretch out your hand, we have something to show you'. Then the angel would put something tiny in my hand and, as the little thing touched my palm, the angel would take away her hand and a light would start to materialise there. Sometimes this light looked like a little star or a daisy, then this would start to grow, almost as if it were coming alive. As it grew and grew it started to glow and a bright yellow light came from it. The light rose up from my hand and went upwards, getting brighter all the time until it partially obscured the sun which allowed me to look directly at the sun without squinting or hurting my eyes. Then I would see a most wonderful sight reflected back, as if it were a mirror – a beautiful face, like a human face, smiling down at me.

  The first time this happened the angels told me that this was the Queen of the Angels. They liked to use terms that made sense to me as a child: they reminded me of the fairy tales I knew and that the Queen was like a mother, just as my mother was like the Queen of my family. The angels explained that this person was the Queen of the angels, the mother of the universe, the mother of creation, the mother of all of the angels. All of a sudden, the yellow orb in which I had seen the face exploded into millions of little pieces and fell like golden streamers coming from the sun.

  Over the years the angels have regularly given me this gift, even as an adult, particularly when I've been in need of some reassurance.

  The move to Ballymun, of course, also meant a new school. My three sisters and I went to a small national school for boys and girls; more than half an hour's walk from home. My sisters took the bus, but I preferred to walk most of the time. On my way to school I had to walk fast and keep hurrying, otherwise I'd be late and get into trouble, but coming home I could take my time.

  Located on the same piece of ground was the school which was on one side; the church, which was in the middle and the parish hall, which was on the other side. There were only three classrooms in the school, which wasn't enough, so the parish hall next door was used for two classes. For my first year there I was in the hall; the two classes were held at either end of the hall, with no wall between them. Mr Jones was my teacher and he treated me very badly; as far as he was concerned I was a dummy and it really irritated him that he had to have a child like me in his class.

  One morning, the angels told me that something special would happen at school that day which would make me feel happy. The angels were right, as always: what happened did make me happy at the time, and it still does when I think about it! We were doing Irish and Mr Jones announced a one question quiz with a prize of half a crown for the child who got it right. He wanted to know what the Irish word 'crann' meant in English, so he asked each child in turn, starting over on the right – he sat me on my own across to the left. He went through the whole class, one by one, and no child knew the answer. As usual, he didn't ask me. Sitting in my desk all on my own, I knew that I knew the answer. I was all excited, I couldn't stop fidgeting in my seat, I wanted to jump up and shout the answer at him. The angels had a hard time holding me still. 'Angels, tell him to look my way, please, tell him to ask me.' I was nearly crying with excitement.

  'Don't worry, Lorna,' they said, 'he will ask you.'

  Mr Jones was shocked at his class and kept saying, 'Come on! What's wrong with you? This is easy!' I laugh when I remember the expression on his face – his eyes getting bigger, his face redder. He was dumbfounded. He asked the last child but me and then announced, 'Well! It looks like no one has won the half crown.'

  Hosus was standing right beside Mr Jones the whole time, pointing in my direction, but of course he couldn't see him. I wanted to shout at Hosus to grab the teacher by the hand and bring him over to me. The whole class stayed silent, not a child made a sound. Despite the angels' assurances it looked as if Mr Jones wasn't going to ask me after all. He walked towards his desk. Still there was complete silence in the room. Suddenly, Hosus and Mr Jones's guardian angel took him gently by the arm, turned him around and led him over in my direction, all the time whispering in his ear. 'I know there is no point,' he said, 'but I'll ask anyway!'

  So he did ask, and in a confident and happy voice I said, 'It means "tree".'

  His face dropped. It was the right answer. The whole class laughed and clapped, they were delighted. He had to give me that half crown, and I'll always remember him putting it into my hand as I said thank you.

  I had never had so much money of my own before – a whole half crown.

  Most children hurried home after school, but I preferred to take it slowly and spend time on my own playing with the angels. Walking home from school could take me hours; I would walk along the big bank at the side of the lane so I could look over the hedge on the far side into the fields and the grounds of the big house that was there. Sometimes I would skip along the bank with the angels and we would laugh and joke with each other. Sometimes they would show me things; they would pull back the overgrowth and let me see a hole in the bank with a wasps' nest in it, and because it was the angels who were pulling back the camouflage, they were able to do it without disturbing the wasps, so I could stand there for ages watching the insects without fear of being stung. I remember going back to look for that wasps' nest later, only
to discover that adults had found it and poisoned the wasps, which made me sad.

  The angels also often used to show me the cattle in the field beyond the bank. They taught me to look at things differently to the way others do; I wouldn't just glance at a cow, I would really look to see everything about it: every line, every little bump. The angels would make each detail glow or stand out more than normal, so that I could really notice it. The angels would also allow me to see into animals' eyes; even if they were a long way away I could still see deep into those eyes. I was being allowed to see things that most people never see. It was fascinating. I could see all the light and energy and things that were going on in and around the animal; sometimes it looked as if there were balls of light dancing round the animals, other times the energy would be flashing on and off. I would see a calf in a cow's belly; sometimes I could hardly make it out, and then the angels would tell me to look more carefully and I'd see it. Sometimes, being honest, the calf looked like something all gooey and moving – a bit like the jam my mother used to make.

  I was so fascinated by everything the angels showed me outside school, it's no wonder I had little time for what was going on in the classroom. When the angels explained something to me as a child I would think I understood their answer fully, but as I grew older I began to get a deeper understanding of what they meant.

  One of my friends at school was Marian, although I never saw her outside of school. Whenever we left the hall to go to the school building or to the church she would insist on walking beside me. Even if the teachers paired her with another girl, she would find a way of walking beside me and she always wanted to ask questions. She used to wonder how I knew so much, but I couldn't tell her about my angelic teachers. One day, as we were walking through the playground towards the church, she asked me to tell her about God. I was so surprised I could hardly breathe. I looked at her and didn't know what to say. Eventually I said, 'The teachers and priest tell us about God, so why are you asking me?' I was trying to get out of giving an answer, but she insisted 'I want you to tell me.'