Angels in My Hair

by Lorna Byrne

  As a child I didn't know who or what he was, I just knew that he was a completely different order of being.

  'You're here!' I laughed with delight.

  'I never leave you,' He said, 'I'm always with you. Don't you know that? Don't you feel me? I ruffle your hair a lot. Why do you hide from me?'

  He was right: I did hide from him sometimes – even to this day I try at times because he is so big and so powerful. I remember turning and feeling his powerful force on my left side, moving alongside me. I replied, 'Because you are so much bigger than me and I am so small.'

  He laughed and said, 'Lorna. Don't hide anymore. Come, let's go for a walk now and I will take away your fear of what you have to do for me in this life.'

  We continued until we reached the woods. In a gap between the trees, overlooking the lake, there was an old wooden chalet and we sat down there in the sun to talk.

  'You know I'm afraid,' I said to him.

  'There is no need for you to be afraid, Lorna, I will not let any harm come to you,' He said. 'People need you and so do their souls, just as I need them.'

  'Why me?' I asked tearfully.

  'Why not you?' he replied, 'You may be a child, but you know more than most people out there in the world. You are my human angel, here to help people and their souls. Shed your tears freely my little one, my Bird of Love.'

  I looked at him. 'Why do you call me your "Bird of Love"?' I asked.

  'Because you carry love like your little bird did. You are pure in your soul; you are my little bird of love and I need you, and so do others.'

  'You know I don't like being different from other children,' I replied tearfully.

  He wiped away my tears. 'Lorna, you know I am always beside you,' and he put his arm around my shoulder and held me tight.

  The two of us walked back through the forest and cut through the fields and back towards my grandmother's house. All of a sudden he had gone. I continued up to my grandmother's house and my Mum was there, helping Granny bake apple tarts and make the dinner. I just watched them and listened – that's something I did an awful lot of. I always let others talk, but I would listen and I would hear the words they were not saying, the words that they wanted to say, the words they kept in their heart – their joy and the happiness, and also their pain.

  We had four or five very enjoyable summers in Mountshannon, but when I was about eleven or twelve, Granny had a heart attack and was unable to continue in her job so she left the house and we never went back to Mountshannon on holidays again.

  I never saw Sally again, either. Years later I was told that she had died all on her own, up there in that cottage on the mountains, but I know she wasn't on her own, the angels were with her. After my father died, no one was able to find any proof of my father's ownership of the land, so none of us ever fulfilled Da's dream and built a house there.

  Chapter Five

  Elijah

  I have been given visions on many occasions throughout my life.When I was about ten I was out in the fields walking along the river and the angels said, 'Just up here we are going to meet Elijah.'

  'Who's Elijah?' I asked. I laughed at the name Elijah; I had never heard it before and I thought it sounded lovely.

  The angels weren't laughing, though.

  'Elijah is going to show you something, Lorna, you must try and remember, because this is part of your future.'

  An angel walked towards me across the river from the far bank. It's hard to describe him; he was a rusty colour – that rusty, amber colour which has a little red in it – and absolutely beautiful. He seemed to shine and his clothes were long, draping over him as his sleeves did over his hands, and yet, when he raised his arms, the long sleeves seemed to roll back so gracefully, as if they were a part of him. Elijah's face even seemed to be that same rusty amber colour.

  I was fascinated to see Elijah walking on the river; he was coming towards me, but his feet were not touching the water.

  'Can I do that, too?' I asked. He just laughed at me.

  The ground was uneven on the river bank, with big tufts of grass. Elijah invited me to sit down then sat beside me and smiled. 'I'm glad to see you are not nervous of me,' he said.

  'No, they told me you were coming,' I replied.

  As I looked around I realised that all the angels that were usually with me had disappeared except my guardian angel.

  'Where have they all gone?' I said.

  'They have gone away for a while,' he said. 'Now, I'm going to hold your hand, Lorna.' He held out his hand to me and I put my hand in his, and all I can say is, it was as if my hand got lost in his, as if my hand became part of his hand. 'I don't want you to feel afraid,' he said, 'because there is nothing to be afraid of. This is something that you can look forward to when you grow up; something that will happen to you.'

  'Why do I need to know it now?' I said.

  He didn't answer my question and instead said, 'You will see someone and we will tell you about this person you are seeing.'

  Then, it was as if a curtain was pulled back and I was watching this big huge screen in the middle of the river in front of me. In the vision I could see a pathway surrounded by trees; I seemed to be sitting at the far end of the pathway, and I could see a figure in the distance starting to walk through the trees along the path. I looked at Elijah beside me and said, 'I can't see very well.'

  'Keep watching!' he replied.

  As the figure got closer, I could see it was an extremely tall young man with red hair. He was very, very handsome, as far as I could make out. Then Elijah started talking again. 'You can see him quite clearly now.'

  I turned to the angel sitting beside me and nodded.

  'Keep looking,' he said. 'We want you to remember what he looks like. We won't show you any more, but what I need to tell you is that this will be the young man that you will marry. You will recognise him from this vision the first time that you see him, many years from now – you have to grow up first!'

  I smiled and giggled at the idea of being in love, or married, and asked Elijah, 'Is he big like that now?'

  'No,' Elijah replied, 'he is only a young boy, too, a few years older than you are.' Elijah continued talking, 'You will be very happy with him – he will love you and you will love him. You will have ups and downs, good times and not so good times. You will have healthy children and they will all be very special, too, but you will end up looking after him and God won't leave him with you forever. You won't grow old together.'

  I turned and looked at him and said, 'What do you mean, Elijah, "looking after him"?'

  'His health won't be the best,' Elijah replied, 'God will take him one day, when he is still quite young.'

  'I really don't want to know that,' I said.

  But Elijah continued, 'Lorna, don't get cross, we just want you to remember. We're preparing you for the future, preparing you to be strong. Think of all the love and happiness that you'll have. Just look at how handsome he is, you said so yourself.'

  I looked again and I could see him, and I said, 'Yes, he's nice.'

  Then the vision was gone and Elijah asked, 'Will you remember that?'

  'Yes,' I replied, 'I will remember, and I understand that he won't be staying with me forever, and that I will have to look after him.'

  I turned around to Elijah and, despite my young age, said, 'I will be strong.'

  Elijah took my hand again; we got up and he walked with me. After a little while he stopped and said, 'Don't think too much about this now: just put it to the back of your mind, you will recognise it the day it happens.'

  Then Elijah was gone and, of course, the vision did happen one day, some years later. In the process of writing this book, I asked my angels for more information about Elijah, and I was told that Elijah was an Old Testament prophet – a man with the soul of an angel.

  My family was on the housing list with Dublin Council to get a house. It was a real fight but, eventually, after a long, long wait, we were given a rented c
ouncil house in Edenmore. It was a lovely house in a brand new estate of several hundred houses. All the homes were more or less the same: three bedrooms, semi-detached, with small front and back gardens. There was another estate next to ours, but the area wasn't completely built up and there were fields and open spaces around us. Everyone there was new; most people were in their own house for the first time – having perhaps lived with their parents or in old tenements in Dublin city centre. It was a friendly place, and I liked it immediately.

  So at last we had a house – even if we didn't own it. Things were improving, but it was still tough for my parents. Da was working as a deliveryman for a big petrol company, which was hard, physical work that had him out long hours, and Mum went out to work the night shift in the local chocolate factory. Every evening after school Mum would give us our dinner and then leave the older children to mind the younger ones until Da came home – which was often quite late.

  Edenmore was a long way from Ballymun, so the change meant new schools and new friends for all of us. There was no school nearby so we had a long walk every morning: through the housing estate, down into the old village, then past the church to the main road. The school was directly across this busy road. My class was in a prefab which was very crowded, with the desks packed tightly together. In the morning it was a hard squeeze to get to your desk – you practically had to crawl over your classmates.

  I was very happy in Edenmore; I didn't have any particular close friends, but there was one family of neighbours, the O'Brien's, with whom I spent a lot of time. My real favourite in the O'Brien family was their wonderful Alsatian dog, Shane. I used to take Shane for a walk three times a week and it was on one of these walks that I met another special angel.

  I call this angel 'the tree angel' because she always appears in a tree. I have seen her many times since and still do to this day. She's all the shades of emerald green, emerald gold and emerald orange that you could imagine – the colours are magnificent. She seems to be alive in every part of the tree, and yet I can see her so clearly. Her hair is curly and full of waves, and when she moves, every part of her moves and her eyes sparkle like gold dust. She stretches out her arms and holds her hand out towards me and as she does so, the tree moves with her. I have often spoken to her and her voice, when she speaks back to me, is like a whistle; it is as if her voice rustles amongst the leaves of the trees.

  I remember one day I was out walking with Shane. We had crossed the field and were about to go back in towards the estate when Shane stopped and started to bark at this big tree on the left. I looked at the tree and saw nothing; I laughed at Shane, asking, 'What are you barking about?'

  Then I saw her. There was the tree angel – Shane had seen her before me. I laugh at that when I think of it. It amazes me, animals see angels so easily.

  Sometimes, on the way home from school, I played in the quarry with the other children. One day, instead of playing with them, I tried the gate of the monastery next to the quarry. It was a place we weren't allowed to go in to, but I lifted the latch and peeped in. I saw gardens full of vegetables and fruit; it felt so peaceful that I wasn't afraid. I walked round watching the monks in their brown robes busy in the gardens. They took no notice of me, it was as if they didn't see me. I sat down on an old tree trunk and watched.

  It definitely was a holy place, a place where lots of prayers had been said. All of the monks shone so brightly – they were so clean, and not just in their bodies, but in their souls, too. They prayed as they worked and I noticed the angels were praying with them. I felt very much at peace there; I wanted to stay, but eventually my angels dragged me out of there. They kept telling me to go home, that my mother would be worried. I did as they told me. Although it was getting dark, the angels lit the way for me. Mum had already gone to work when I got home, so I didn't get into trouble.

  During that year I must have gone to the monastery at least twelve times or more. Only once, the last time I visited, did a monk speak to me. He was picking gooseberries off a bush and I walked right up and stood beside him. He glowed so brightly, and his angel stood beside him was also dressed like him. He looked up at me – he was very young – and said, 'Hello'.

  I asked him his name. He told me it was Paul. He spoke very softly and asked me mine. I told him.

  He offered me some gooseberries, asking me why I came there so often. I answered him, 'Just to watch you all pray. I need your prayers.'

  'I will always pray for you, Lorna,' he replied.

  I said goodbye, knowing that I would never go back to the monastery again.

  One of my favourite outings on a Saturday morning was going shopping with my mother. This involved a trip to Moore Street, a busy street market in the centre of Dublin which had stalls down both sides of the street and women with broad Dublin accents crying out their wares. I would pull the shopping trolley along behind me while Mum chose which fruit and vegetables were best to buy.

  One Saturday, as we turned into Moore Street, an angel pulled at my shoulder and whispered in my ear, 'Let your Mum walk ahead of you – she won't notice.' I took two steps backwards and my Mum walked on, looking at the fruit and vegetables on sale. As I stood and looked down Moore Street, the view changed. Suddenly, Moore Street was like a golden palace: everything was a golden colour, even the people. Then the colours changed and other colours appeared – vibrant brighter colours, much brighter and more vibrant than normal. These colours started to flow from the fruit, vegetables and flowers, like waves full of energy. Then these waves became balls of colour which bounced around the street, from one side of the street to the other, bouncing off the stalls and even off people; but no one seemed to notice.

  The street was not just full of people, it was full of angels – many more than usual. Some of the angels were dressed like the woman selling fruit and vegetables and were busying themselves in helping. I thought it was very funny to watch the angels imitate every move that the women made – angels are such wonderful mimics. They were singing too – it was as if they were humming in time to the street life going on around them.

  I had been in Moore Street many times before, but I had never seen anything like this; perhaps it was especially for me, to make me laugh, or perhaps it happens every day there, but this was the first time I was allowed to see it. I found all the hustle and bustle so exciting.

  Suddenly, my mother, who was about three stalls ahead, noticed I was not standing by her side.

  'Lorna, wake up. Come here with the shopping trolley.'

  I thought everything would change back to normal, but it didn't. I stood beside my Mum and my angels whispered in my ear, 'Watch the lady selling fruit.'

  I did as I was told and I saw her guardian angel standing right behind her. Her guardian angel looked like her and dressed like her; she was full of light and had a wonderful smile and she winked at me. Mum asked the woman for some apples, pears and bananas. As the woman put the fruit in the brown paper bag her angel attracted my attention, shaking her finger.

  I realised that the woman had put bad apples among those Mum was buying and her angel was talking to her, but she was not listening. Her angel continued wagging her finger. I couldn't keep a straight face and I giggled out loud. The woman glanced sharply at me. I could see from her eyes that she knew I had seen what she was doing. Suddenly the bag broke and the fruit went everywhere. The woman tried to catch it and she did grab an apple – it was rotten! I know this wasn't by chance, her angel and my angel allowed it to happen, which made me laugh even more.

  Mum noticed the rotten apple and said, 'I hope you're not giving me bad fruit.'

  The woman denied it as she filled a new bag and glanced guiltily at me. Mum paid her and I put the bag of fruit into the trolley. As we walked away the woman called out in her broad Dublin accent, 'Hey, Missus!'

  Mum turned around and the woman was holding out a bag.

  'Here, Missus! Some extra fruit for your kids!' Her angel was standing behind her, smiling – f
inally she was being listened to.

  I have been down Moore Street many times since, both as a child and as an adult, but it has never again come alive to that extent. I know that just because I don't see something, it doesn't mean it's not happening. The angels know they cannot allow me to see everything that is going on all the time; if they did it would be too much for me and it would make it impossible for me to live my daily life – I would be too distracted.

  The angels taught me a lot about the idea of choice, too, and one afternoon they helped me to understand that it is never too late for us to change our minds and make the right choice, and also how much angels can help us to make the right choice – if we choose to listen.

  I enjoyed doing messages for Mum as I could be alone and free to talk to the angels. I enjoyed skipping with them and watching the birds and trees. On this particular afternoon, I was about halfway to the shops when the angels told me, 'Stop, Lorna! We want you to have a look at something that is going on in another street, so we can explain some things to you. When you get to the main street, instead of going left for the shops and crossing the road, we want you to go right and just keep walking straight on.'

  So that was exactly what I did, and when I got there I saw loads of furniture out on the footpath and a police car and people gathered around. There was an old man coming out of his hall door and walking with the help of a walking stick, and all his furniture and belongings were there on the street. I was very shocked; that sight has stayed with me all my life.

  'Angels,' I said, 'what is happening to this poor man?'

  I stood there on the footpath, looking across the street at all this happening. Then the angels started to talk.

  'Lorna, the old man has lived in that house all his life. It's his house, but as he got older he became stubborn and refused to pay his taxes. He had a choice: he could have paid – he has the money – and none of this would have happened. If he was still talking to his family they might have helped him to make the right choice, but because of his stubbornness he is not speaking to them. He is on his own, for now.'