Proof of Angels

by Mary Curran Hackett

  And I guess the idea of a service dog for Sean came out of not only my love for my dog Chief, but in part after observing one of my neighbors, who is blind, for the past eight years. His yellow Lab walks beside him to the bus every day. The love that dog has for my neighbor is absolutely visible. I am sure not a moment goes by that my neighbor doesn’t think of his dog as a guardian angel. I can’t help but think of it every time I see the two of them together.

  The real Chief, the “mayor” of our neighborhood, coming home when called for dinner.

  Storytelling is such a strong part of the Irish heritage, and your Irish background clearly influences your writing. Who are the writers—Irish or not—you love to read?

  I have too many to count. And my favorite writers—or even genre—seem to change annually. Every week I am discovering someone new to love. Of course, I love the classics. I cut my proverbial reading teeth on Dickens. I read and read and then reread his books. My favorite of his to this day is A Tale of Two Cities. And then Dickens led me to the Russians—Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. And of course, what self-respecting female reader didn’t fall in love with Austen, the Brontës, Alcott, and Eliot at some point in her high school years? Those were the books I grew up on and loved. When I got to college, I became obsessed with Irish writers—I began with Joyce. I think I must have read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man five times one year. I ended up reading all of his works, except Finnegans Wake; it was impossible for me then, as it is now. Then I moved on to Shaw, Beckett, Behan, and Friel, and read everything I could from each until I discovered the contemporary writers—and that’s when I fell in love with Roddy Doyle. (I ended up writing my master’s-degree thesis on him.) Then one day at the library, quite by accident (I received someone else’s book order), I discovered Edna O’Brien and my mind was blown! Blown. That’s the only way to describe it. Here was this Irish woman, writing about sex and love and life and I could hardly breathe or put it down. It was just magnificent. There was something about the Irish voice that resonated with me. It was an old-fashioned way to tell a tale, spin a yarn, whatever you want to call it, but it came with a bite. It always came with a bite. And I loved it. It sounded very much like my own kitchen table. And I also love William Trevor and Colm Toibin. (I actually named my son, in part, after him. I was reading a New Yorker story by him when I was pregnant with my son and said to myself, “That’s a cool name,” and the more I learned about St. Columcille and what Colm meant in Gaelic, the more I was convinced I needed to name my son Colm.) I also adore Colum McCann. (He spells his Colum with a “u,” and McCann himself tried to convince me to add a “u” to my son’s name one night when I spoke with him after one of his lectures.) His book Let the Great World Spin is probably one of my all-time favorites, though his recent TransAtlantic is magnificent. And I love Mary Karr, Billy Collins, the late Frank McCourt, and Seamus Heaney. I have taught Irish and Irish-American literature, poetry, and drama on and off for the past ten years, so it is impossible for me to list all of the stories, plays, and poems that have informed my writing and my soul (mostly my soul, my writing will never measure up to any of them). I try to stay current and read as much as I can, and I rely on the recommendations of my various book clubs, Goodreads, New York Times book reviews, and my most trusted source, my siblings, to read what is “hot” right now. My favorite book last year was The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman. Occasionally, I will read a historical biography, but it is rare. (Lauren Hillenbrand’s Unbroken was the last one I read and it was fantastic.) I love poetry, too, and try to follow various journals to see what is new. I also think of music as a form of reading. So much of writing is about following a tune. When I write, I often feel a rhythm and I realize it often reflects whatever music I am listening to. When I listen to John Prine, Steve Earle, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Mumford & Sons, the Avett Brothers, or Alison Krauss, I am listening to the story they are telling me as well. In my mind I see the story play out, just as I would if I were reading a book, and there is something beautiful and magical about that. Whether I am listening to the radio, reading a book, or watching a film or a television show, I am always on the lookout for a great story. I read using every single kind of media you can think of. I download e-books from my library, iTunes, or Amazon: I have at least two e-books going at any one time. I also borrow audiobooks from the library, some of which I keep on my iPad and listen to while I am at work or lying in bed. I carry an MP3 with me everywhere with an audiobook loaded on it, and I always have a library book or purchased book in my purse, by my nightstand, and in my car. I also make a point to stop by Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati and look for my favorite bookseller, Audrey, who I like to think of as my very own “personal bookseller.” She has never steered me wrong. I ask what I should read next and she always gives me the best books.

  Chief and my brother Sean posing. Chief was photobombing before all the cool kids were doing it.

  No matter where I am or what I am doing, I try to squeeze in reading. When I sit at the Y and watch my son’s swim practice, I often have an audiobook playing. When I go on walks I take the audiobooks with me (and I’ve been known to walk and read an actual book at the same time). I read before bed and when I get up. I sneak writing in here and there, but my first love will always be reading. I love it so much that when I think of hell, I don’t think of it as a place of fire, but as a place devoid of books. And when I think of heaven, I envision an infinite bookshelf with no shortage of overstuffed couches near sundrenched windows, hot cups of coffee, and bowls and bowls of M&M’s. In so many ways, I think of books as my own guardian angels, showing me the light time and time again and leading me in the right direction.

  What is the story behind this story? How did you get the idea to write it? Have you always thought about angels?

  I saw the image above for the first time in an art book and became mesmerized with those little thinking angels who sit at the bottom of the larger Raphael painting. I loved the image so much, I ordered a print and hung it my college dorm room. (I know what you’re thinking: How many college kids have angels hanging on their walls? If it makes me sound any less lame, I hung it just above my posters of Bono and U2.) I was totally captivated by these winged creatures—not just Raphael’s treatment of them, but the notion of angels themselves.

  Though I was raised a Catholic and we prayed to angels as children (“Angel of God, my Guardian dear . . .”) and I had seen angel pictures and statues in abundance in my childhood home—especially around Christmas—I really had no idea what these things were. I always thought that when people died they became “angels” who then watched over us here on earth. I later learned from a supposed expert on angels (yes, there are people who claim such expertise, I discovered, to my surprise as well) that the term angels suggests that they are not nor have they ever been earthlings, rather they are thought to be messengers from heaven. They also don’t always appear with wings. They can be radiant light, breath, and only sometimes appear with wings. They also only take on human form when necessary. (Duh! Explains Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life then!) According to this expert, the “laws of angels” makes it impossible for angels to interfere with human destiny unless instructed to do so (just like Clarence!). Makes sense (if this sort of thing makes sense to you to begin with). Angels are assigned various tasks, too, such as fighting evil; protecting humanity; safeguarding and watching over children; inspiring beauty, art, and poetry; healing; and even helping humans cross over to heaven. Almost every faith has angels—Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all do. And recent surveys have shown that over 80 percent of Americans believe in some form of angels. Angels like Raphael the archangel are mentioned in the Jewish Torah (in Deuteronomy), in the Koran, and in the many texts of the Christian Bible. According to some angel experts, each of us is assigned two and both guide us from life to death and only interfere when, according to God’s plan, it is “not our time.” Good to know all that fuss,
“to leave space for your Guardian Angel,” when I was a kid in church was not for naught.

  Good to know, sure, but in the end, to be honest, I just thought the poster was pretty. Eventually, like all of my college days’ fleeting passions (boyfriends included), the poster didn’t last long. I went on with life. And soon my nineties faddish obsession with angels disappeared along with my grungy plaid shirts, Birkenstocks, and bottles of ck one (thank God).

  Fast-forward twenty years: I am no longer a college freshman. My novel Proof of Heaven is released and I am visiting book clubs and attending signings. Everywhere I go (it’s really not many places, only from St. Louis to Connecticut to D.C. and places in between), the people who were kind enough to read my book want me to write a sequel to Proof of Heaven. The only problem is: I don’t want to write a sequel. I have no intention of doing so. Nevertheless, readers want me to tell them what happened to Colm. But I don’t want to tell anyone anything. That wasn’t my goal. My goal was for people to decide for themselves where Colm went (or didn’t go). I wanted people to go on a journey with him and come out on the other side a little closer to what they believed—not what I believed.

  Then one night while I was at a book club sipping wine and laughing with a bunch of women, a reader turned to me and said, “You should write about Sean. I want to know what happens to him. You should follow up with all the characters.” As most writers will tell you, after writing, rewriting, editing, and proofing, and then talking about the same characters for years, you’re over it. You want to move on, explore other stories. I said, “Thank you for the suggestion; I’ll definitely keep it in mind,” and moved on to the assorted cheese tray, forgetting about it by the time I shoved the warmed Brie in my mouth.

  Meanwhile, something was happening to me—to my marriage, to my life. The year leading up to the publication of my novel was, to put it mildly, one of the worst years of my life. And let’s just say, I’ve had some doozies along the way. So that is saying something. And it was made all the more terrible because I didn’t tell anyone how awful I felt, how miserable, sad, scared, lonely, and depressed I was. Everyone around me was telling me: Wow, you’re getting published! All of your dreams are finally coming true! You’ll be rich and you can retire on the Riviera! Some others, more passive-aggressive types, would chime in, Must be nice to have all that time to write and chase your dreams. I always just smiled and nodded while thinking, Yeah, by “time,” do you mean the hours I spend writing when you’re sleeping? No, I didn’t actually say that. Uncharacteristically, I bit my tongue. I was having a really, really crappy year. I was working around the clock—at not one, but two jobs—an editor by day at a nonprofit and an underpaid, overworked adjunct professor by morning and night. I was writing, quite literally, in the middle of the night, whenever I could sneak away, all the while being a wife, working every day, and raising my two kids. I honestly didn’t think life could get any more difficult or more lonely.

  Then the phone rang.

  My daughter Brigid’s school had called to tell me that my daughter was paralyzed on her right side. What? You’ve got to be kidding me? She could not move the right side of her body. She was having difficulty breathing. This is unreal. She was due to go onstage for her first school play that night, so I immediately thought: She’s just panicking. She’s fine. She’s suffering from stage fright. She’s going to be just fine. Only she wasn’t fine. After a day and a night in and out of the hospital and exam rooms at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, a doctor sat my husband and me down and showed us a film with what appeared to be a Ping-Pong-size mass growing in Brigid’s lung. I was incredulous. I sat in disbelief, shaking my head. My husband and I looked at each other. We thought the same thing at the same time:

  No. No. No.

  We asked the doctor what we should do. When in doubt, get it out. He told us the only way to know what it was was to either operate and remove it or conduct a bronchoscopy to extract and biopsy the “neoplasm growing in her lung.” A euphemism, we would soon discover, for, The stuff we have no idea what to call that is growing in your daughter’s lung.

  At some point in the days that followed, I said to my husband, “Greg, the doctor is right”: when in doubt, get it out. He knew I was referring to the large black mole that was spreading on his arm. He’d assured me he’d have it removed once already and the test had come back saying the mole was benign. I asked him, for me, to go and get it checked. We didn’t need to take any more chances or test fate anymore.

  On April first, like some sort of cosmic April Fool’s joke, Greg received a call from his doctor, who explained that the lab she had sent his skin biopsy to a year prior had made an error. It was not benign after all. After a few days, we got another call. Greg had, at the least, stage 2, possibly stage 3, malignant melanoma. Anyone who has gone through a melanoma diagnosis knows what this means. If it’s stage 2, you’re saved; if it has spread beyond the lymph nodes, you have months to live. A couple of years if you’re lucky. We both felt like we’d been punched in the stomach. Greg needed to have a large section of the skin and tissue on his arm removed. He needed to have a sentinel biopsy and the lymph nodes removed. More than anything else, he needed to have the uncertainty and fear of impending death removed. But that, we could not take that off him with a scalpel. His own mother had died, under similar circumstances, of cancer when he was a child. She had had her breasts removed and had been told she was cancer free, but the doctors had missed the cancer growing in her lungs and she had passed away soon thereafter. Needless to say, Greg was rightfully overcome by fear and anxiety. There is no way to overstate the black hole he was in.

  We scheduled his surgery.

  To say the next few days went by in a haze is an understatement. I still had to work. I had edits due for my book. I had kids to feed. I had a husband who very well could die if his cancer was not caught in time. A daughter who wheezed at night and cried in pain as we tried to rid her of what was growing in her lung with antibiotics, antiviral, and antifungal meds—for what turned out to be not a bacteria, virus, or fungus after all. I honestly didn’t think life could get any harder. (Though, thanks to ample amounts of literature and the nightly news, I knew that life could always get harder. Life has boundless opportunities within it to get even harder still. So it’s not that I was comparing it to others’ tragedies; it was, for me, as tough as it gets.)

  We scheduled my daughter’s bronchoscopy and biopsy, too. Greg and Brigid were both operated on within weeks of each other. On the day of Brigid’s procedure, we woke at 3 A.M. and dressed in old bridesmaids’ gowns and tiaras, and sipped tea while we watched Princess Kate and Prince William marry in Westminster. She told me she would grow up to marry Harry, and I wished for all the world for that to be true.

  In the days that followed, waiting for results from both procedures, I can honestly say I came very near to complete physical and emotional collapse. I had never felt so alone and so terrified in my life. My fate rested completely in the hands of fortune or God or chaos. It made no sense to me whatsoever. If tests came back any way other than negative for disease, I very well was facing a world without half of my family. Honestly, I never said it out loud, but I felt it over and over: I just can’t do this. I am not strong enough to do this. Please take this cup from me. I prayed. I bargained. Give me cancer instead, God. Let me be the one to die. I felt somehow at fault. Blindsided. I had written a novel about a boy who dies and causes his mother immense heartbreak. Was life imitating art? Had I conjured this up? Caused this? Was my fixation and anxiety over almost losing my son Colm several years earlier causing me to now pay by losing my daughter and husband? Did the universe act in such a way? Could God be so vindictive? I admit it, I thought it. I am not saying it was right or good, but I felt totally responsible and yet totally powerless at the same time.

  I couldn’t sleep at night. Neither could Greg. He paced. We didn’t speak to each other. The gulf between us was growing wider and wider. We learned somethin
g monumental about each other that we hadn’t known until true crisis befell us. When our fear response in our amygdalas kicked in, he was all flight and I was all fight. He wanted nothing more than to go to our room, close the door, and lie in bed for hours. I wanted nothing more than to face everything and everyone head-on. I thought if I made enough phone calls, looked up enough facts on Web sites, made enough dinners, folded enough laundry, wrote enough words, I would somehow defeat cancer—defeat this black cloud that had descended on my family. I thought if I stayed busy—made sure everyone got to where they needed to be, every blogger got their article I was writing to promote my book, everybody I worked for during the day received my assignments on time—then all would be well.