Angels in My Hair

by Lorna Byrne

  But despite these occasional acts of kindness from a few people, I grew up an outsider. People could see that I was different and they just couldn't understand it. That aspect of my life has been very, very hard – and it still is today. People say I'm too trusting, too truthful for this world, but I cannot be any other way! The strange thing is, that to be truthful in every way – in how you think and in how you speak – and to be truthful to those around you is hard and it does tend to isolate you.

  The way people think about or look at me does affect me greatly even now. Even though they may not know me, or know what I do, they know that on some level I am different. If I go out with friends and meet someone new, who knows nothing about me, they will often report back to my friends that there is something unusual about me, something that they can't quite put their finger on. This can be difficult to live with.

  However, my life at school was made much more bearable by one particular angel, called Hosus. One morning I was running to school, trying to keep up with the older girl who was with me, when suddenly I saw a beautiful angel hiding behind a lamp-post. He made a face at me, and from that day on Hosus used to appear most mornings on my way to school. I still see him regularly today.

  Hosus looked – and looks – like an old-fashioned school teacher. He wears a swirling robe which is blue most of the time (but can change colour), and a funny-shaped hat and he carries a scroll in his hand. His eyes are radiant and sparkle like stars and he looks like a young professor: a man full of energy and with great authority and wisdom. Hosus always looks the same, unlike some of the other angels who surround me. Michael, for example, adopts a human appearance most of the time – something I asked him to do, because I find it easier – but he changes his appearance frequently, depending on where we are or the message he has to give me.

  To me, Hosus represents knowledge: he looks very serious, and he can be, but he is also wonderful at cheering me up when I feel a little down. It was Hosus who would comfort me and tell me to ignore the other children when I felt ridiculed at school, or when I saw adults talking in a huddle and then turning and looking at me. Hosus would say to me, 'They know nothing.'

  At the beginning I didn't know this angel's name, and he didn't actually talk to me. Hosus would appear in the classroom; mimicking the teacher or another child or playing games in the classroom, or doing something else to make me smile. Sometimes, on the way home, he would be waiting at the school gate or on the far side of the road. I remember the first time I spoke to him: I had no one to walk home with that particular day, as my sister was going dancing and had left early, so I took my time coming out of school and wandered slowly through the playground. I made my way towards the big gates at the entrance to the school in the hope that I would see Hosus and be able to talk to him, so I was thrilled to see him peeping around the pillars. He shouted to me to hurry up: 'You've got to get home before it starts to rain.'

  I stopped at the gate and looked around. There was no one nearby so I asked him his name.

  'Hosus,' he said. I just giggled in response. I skipped home from school and he skipped along with me and all I can remember is laughing most of the way.

  Chapter Two

  The Gatekeepers

  Da didn't make much money out of mending bikes – in fact, no one had much money to spend in that area, so they were always asking him for help and promising to pay 'next time'. My Da was a good-hearted man, so we frequently went hungry. The meals we had were often bread and margarine, or bread and jam, but I never complained of pains in my tummy because I knew that Mum and Da were stressed enough. Eventually, though, I started breaking out in sores and so I was taken to the doctor. He told my parents that I was vitamin deficient and they needed to give me fresh fruit and vegetables every day. But with all the pressures on money I rarely did get fruit and vegetables, other than when our neighbour – who had a big garden – gave us some. For clothes we depended a lot on parcels coming from relatives in the United States, and whenever one arrived we thought it was marvellous. Things were tough for us, as they were for so many others.

  Da's shop was a dark little place and behind it was a lean-to with a tin roof which was his workshop. It was full of benches and tools – all kinds of things – and it smelt of oil and grease. Sometimes, before Da came in to the house for his tea, he would call me into the workshop and get me to help him by holding the tin of grease he used to clean his hands. It was black and sticky and smelt horrible, but it did the job. After rubbing the grease into his hands for a few minutes he would wipe them with a dirty old cloth and rub them hard. Then he would go into the kitchen and wash them with cold water (the only way to have hot water was to boil a kettle on the fire); after all this his hands would be all clean again. I loved helping my Da – even just to hold the tin for him – and sometimes he would ask me to stay in the shop while he was having tea with Mum, in case someone came in.

  At school, Hosus would sometimes sit in the teacher's desk when the teacher wasn't there. The first day I saw Hosus in the classroom my eyes nearly popped out of my head: and I asked aloud 'What are you doing here?' The teacher heard something and turned and glared in my direction. I had to put my hand to my mouth to stop myself from laughing.

  The reason I was surprised was that while there were always guardian angels in the classroom Hosus was different. He was not a guardian angel. The guardian angels of the children were extremely bright, extremely luminous, like bright lights. Hosus looked completely different, much more human; his robe would brush against the desk. Hosus looked different to help me differentiate between guardian angels and special angels given to be a part of my life. As a child, I had to learn how to differentiate between different types of angels.

  Different types of angels have different skills. Just as I and every child had to learn to differentiate between a teacher and a doctor, I had to learn to recognise different types of angels so as I had some idea of how they could help me and others.

  Frequently Hosus made me laugh and I once asked him, 'Do you think they think I am simple, or that word I've heard them use, "retarded", because they see me smiling and laughing so much and don't see what I am laughing at?What do you think they would think if they knew you were sitting there on the teacher's desk dressed like a teacher?'

  Hosus laughed, 'They would run out screaming that the place was haunted.'

  'Wouldn't they know that you were an angel?'

  'No. They don't see us the way that you do.'

  As I say, I had always thought other children could see and talk to angels as I could, and it was only then when I was about six that I started to notice that this was not always the case.

  'You know, Hosus, I know some children can see angels.'

  He replied, 'Yes, of course they can, but only when they are very little and then they grow up. By the time they are your age most children don't see us anymore; some stop seeing us when they are as young as three years old.'

  In fact, all babies see angels and spirits, but at about the time a child starts to talk they begin to be told what's real and what's not real, and so if things are not solid like their toys, then that they are only pretend. Young children are conditioned and lose the ability to see and experience more. Because education starts earlier nowadays, fewer people are talking to angels; and this is one of the reasons the angels gave me when they told me I had to write this book. This is something I am scared about doing because I don't want to be ridiculed, but I know I have to do it; I always do what the angels want eventually . . .

  There are millions of angels out there – they are impossible to count, like snowflakes – but many are unemployed. They are doing their best to help, but they can't always get through to people. Imagine millions of unemployed angels hovering about! They have nothing to do because most people are working hard at getting through their lives and are not aware that these angels are there to help them, and that they are everywhere.

  God wants us to be happy and enjoy our lives, an
d so he sends angels to help us. We have so much spiritual help waiting for us to grasp, and while some of us do reach for help, many of us don't. Angels walk beside us telling us they are there, but we are not listening: we don't want to listen. We believe that we can do everything ourselves.We have forgotten that we have a soul and we believe that we are simply flesh and blood. We believe that there is nothing more: no afterlife; no God; no angels. It is no wonder that we have become materialistic and self-obsessed. Human beings are much more than flesh and blood, and as you become aware of this and start to believe that you have a soul, your connection with your angel will blossom.

  As you sit there reading this – whether you believe it or not – there is an angel by your side: it is your guardian angel, and it never leaves you. Each one of us has been given a gift: a shield made from the energy of light. It is a part of the guardian angel's task to put this shield around us. To God and the angels we are all equal; we all deserve to be protected, to be cared for and to be loved, regardless of what others might think of us – good or bad. When I look at someone I can physically see this shield around them; it's as if it's alive.

  Your guardian angel is the gatekeeper of your body and your soul. He was assigned to you before you were even conceived: as you grew in your mother's womb, he was there with you at every moment, protecting you. Once you were born and as you grow up your guardian angel never leaves your side for an instant: he is with you when you sleep, when you are in the bathroom, all the time – you are never alone. Then, when you die, your guardian angel is there beside you, helping you to pass over. Your guardian angel also allows other angels into your life to help you with different things; they come and go. I call these angels teachers.

  You may find all this hard to believe; if you don't believe, you should question your scepticism. If you are cynical, question your cynicism. What do you have to lose by opening up to the possibility of angels, by opening up to your spiritual self and learning about your own soul? Ask the angels to start to help you now. Angels are wonderful teachers.

  As a child I had the angels with me so much of the time, teaching me and showing me things, that I was very happy to be on my own for hours on end. One of my favourite places was the cosy little bedroom that I shared with my sister Emer. The ceiling was low and sloped and the window was low down so I could kneel or crouch on my hunkers and watch all the comings and goings on the street. I would watch neighbours passing in the street below and sometimes I would see beside them what I now know was their guardian angel – it was as if there was a beautiful, bright person with them. Sometimes the guardian angel seemed to be floating, but at other times he looked as if he was walking. Sometimes he even seemed to have become a part of the person, or was behind them with his wings wrapped around them, as if in a protective embrace.

  These angels also came in all kinds of sizes: sometimes they would appear as a spark which would then grow and open up to full size; sometimes they would be massive, much bigger than the person they were minding. The guardian angels were radiant and were often dressed in all gold or silver or blue, or wore a variety of colours.

  At other times I would see a spirit – just as I saw my brother Christopher. One neighbour, who lived at the top of the hill, used to pass the window sometimes with her children hanging on to her – a baby and young child in a big old pram and two older children who were hardly more than babies themselves – and I would see an old man walking alongside them. One day this neighbour was with my mum in the shop and I heard her saying that she missed her father, who had died recently. I knew then that the old man I had seen was her father and the children's grandfather. I smiled because even though she was missing her father, he was still there with her – she just couldn't see him. He loved her so much that his spirit had stayed with her to offer her help and consolation, and would be with her until she was ready to let him go.

  At first it was easy to confuse the appearance of these spirits with humans – I had done it myself with Christopher – but over time the angels taught me how to recognise the difference between a spirit and a real person. It's a little difficult to explain: a spirit looks just like one of us, but more luminous – as if they have a light inside of them. They can turn this light up and down; the higher the level of the light the more translucent and transparent they are. If the spirits have their lights turned down (which they do occasionally to make themselves less obtrusive), it's possible to mistake them for real flesh and blood. In simple terms, it's as if you say hello when you walk past a neighbour on the other side of the road, then a few minutes later it dawns on you that it was Johnny you had greeted, but that he died six months ago. It might only be then that you realise that Johnny looked brighter than normal people.

  One of the other things I loved about watching from the windows was seeing the energy flowing around people.

  Sometimes I would see one of my friends' mothers and I would see swirling rays of light coming from her – shiny, sparkly mauve, purple, red, green or turquoise – which derived from a central point, like a whirlwind. It was an energy that was different to the woman's energy, and it always fascinated me. Sometimes, later, I would hear my mother say that this woman was going to have a baby and I would smile to myself.

  In the same way, I also could see if people were ill, even if I didn't understand what I was seeing. A flowing dark shadow would move around the person's body, showing me that something was wrong with their blood. Sometimes a bone would flash and I could see that the bone was damaged or not forming properly, and I would know instinctively that something in their body was not right, even though I had no words to explain it.

  One day I was sitting crouched at the window and I saw a man cycling down the road on a big black bicycle with his little daughter on the back carrier. The angels told me to keep watching them and not to take my eyes off them as they passed the window. I didn't ask them why; as a child I would do what the angels told me to without questioning them. I knew I was being asked to help this father and daughter, so even when they were passing my window I was praying for them. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I asked that it mightn't be too bad.

  As the man and his daughter passed in front of the house everything seemed to slow down, like a film in slow motion. While they were cycling along a big double-decker bus overtook them, and the next moment, the little girl let out a scream and the man started to fall. Somehow, though, the child didn't fall off the bike. She had caught her foot in the spokes. I watched the father carefully disentangle her little foot and leg from the buckled and bent wheel with his shaking hands. He carried the crying child – she was gently sobbing rather than screaming – to the footpath just below the window where I was watching. Adults ran to help, including my mother. I dashed down the stairs and out the door to see if she was okay. As usual, no one took any notice of me. The little girl's shoe had come off and her foot was all raw and bloody; she'd taken the skin off the sole of her foot, but there was nothing broken. I asked God and the angels to help her still.

  Even then, at five or six years old, I felt that I had a role to play in helping people. I believed that, because of my watching and praying as the father and daughter passed, something worse hadn't happened. Maybe she would have fallen under the bus, or fallen off and hit her head, but in the end she had only hurt her foot and, thanks be to God, she was all right. From then on there have been many occasions when I have felt I was put in a place to help; to prevent something happening or, if I couldn't stop it happening completely, to make the situation a little better. This was part of the training that my angels were giving me: I may have had problems learning in school, but I had no problems learning from the angels.

  One day I was able to use this gift to help a friend's da. Josie was my best friend. She lived up the road from me and I liked her because she was different too – she had a stammer. In fact, she stammered quite badly, but when she was playing with me it practically disappeared, and then it would come back if anyone else
joined us. She had long, straight-reddish hair and green eyes and she was taller than me and very skinny. Her Da had a garage down the road – it wasn't like a petrol station, or the garages we have nowadays, it was an enormous yard full of wrecked cars and car parts. Her Da was always telling us not to play there, but there was a little space to the right as you went in the gate which hadn't much in it, and eventually he said we could play in there on the condition that we never went anywhere else in the yard.

  One lovely sunny day, a Sunday, we had our clean clothes on and were trying not to get them too dirty. We were playing with our dolls in this little place in the yard and we were laughing and joking. I remember feeling the angels talking to me all of the time and telling me to listen. I thought they meant that I should listen to them, but that wasn't what they meant this time. Finally, they touched me to get my attention. I remember stopping playing and listening. I thought I heard something, but I wasn't sure. When I asked Josie, she couldn't hear anything. So we went on playing and the angels again said 'Listen!' I listened again and got a strange feeling – I can't describe it, it was as if I went into another time and space. I felt disorientated. As I listened I could hear Josie's father calling for help very faintly in the distance. Josie, however, couldn't hear anything.

  We were afraid to go down among the wrecked cars, which were stacked high, because we knew that we were strictly forbidden from going there, but I decided to go anyway, and Josie followed me. As I followed an angel down through the wrecked cars, I remember repeatedly saying 'Please God, please angels, please let her Da be all right!'

  We found Josie's father; a car had fallen on him and there was blood everywhere, but he was alive. I remember running off to get help and I think Josie stayed there. I'm not sure where I ran to: their house or my own. Everyone came running. They sent us away because we weren't allowed to be there when they were lifting the car off him, but I remember the ambulance coming. The hospital, St James's, was only up the road. Afterwards he was all right, he got better.