by Lorna Byrne
Then I stopped and said, 'I hear a cry, that's the sound you want me to hear, isn't it? It's like someone crying.'
I walked on through the woods; the trees seemed to get taller and it got darker and I said, 'Oh, angels, it's too dark in here, can you not lighten it up for me?'
'Don't be afraid,' they said, 'follow the cry; follow the sound you hear.'
So I did, and the cry brought me out into an opening. I stood there listening and I could hear the cry again. I knew it was so, so close. It was to the right of me, so I walked back into the trees to the right, where there were thorny bushes. I got thorn scrapes on my legs and on my hands. There was no sound of crying now, which made it really difficult to find. The light was behind me and it was dark amongst the brambles and the bushes.
'Angels, I can't see anything,' I said. With that, a light appeared at the bottom of a tree.
One of the angels said, 'Look at the light over there by the tree, just where the little gorse bush is, that's where you will find it.'
And that's where I found it. It was a bird, not an ordinary bird but a bird of prey – I later learnt it was a sparrow hawk. It was maybe the scrawniest, most horrible-looking thing, but to me it was beautiful. I picked it up and looked up into the tall tree from which it had apparently fallen; I could never climb it to put the bird back. As it moved within my hand I saw that it was hurt – its two legs were deformed and crooked and its neck was cut, probably from the fall. The angels told me that its parents didn't want it, that they had thrown it out of the nest.
'It's a gift from God to you,' the angels said, 'for you to look after this summer holiday and the next summer, but it won't go home with you after that.'
Sometimes the angels would say things to me that I didn't understand; I would just take it that what they said was true. So I took the bird and walked back home through the woods and the fields and found an old hat and a box for the bird to live in.
My bird slowly grew strong, but it still couldn't walk properly, so I carried it everywhere. It couldn't fly well either, as it couldn't land on its legs. Da and I taught it to stretch its wings and fly briefly when we tossed it between us.
Feeding it was a problem, too, because it needed bloody raw meat, but I wasn't going to go out and kill something to feed it. I knew the meat had to be fresh, and what made it more difficult was that the bird would only eat such a tiny amount at a time. My parents couldn't give me a penny or a halfpenny to buy a bit of raw meat for the bird, so I'd say to the angels, 'You really make it hard.' I remember going into Killaloe, some miles away, with the family. I went into a butcher's shop with my bird and told the butcher I needed raw meat from him, but that I didn't have any money. I hated having to beg, but he was very nice and told me to come in any time during the holiday and that he would give me the raw meat. It sounds simple, but it wasn't – my parents hadn't the money for petrol to come up and down from Mountshannon to Killaloe.
I didn't, and still don't, understand why my parents wouldn't provide more for the little bird: it's something I still fight with. People who didn't really know me helped to feed the bird, but my parents didn't. When my mum was cooking I might look for a little raw meat – just a teaspoonful – but the response would be hmms and haws. I was willing to go without my share to have it for the bird, but she wouldn't let me and so I was put into a situation where I had to beg. I always felt that if one of my brothers or sisters had had the bird, it would have been provided for. It was very hard. But the bird got fed somehow, and it grew strong.
One day, when I was feeling sad, Hosus said, 'We know your heart is sometimes heavy and you are such a little thing, but you have to remember that God made you different and this will always be your life. You will have special work to do.'
I replied, 'But I really don't want to. Why couldn't God pick someone else?'
Hosus just laughed at me and said, 'One day you will know why for yourself.'
'I'm afraid!' I replied. 'It makes me want to cry.'
'You will have to cry,' Hosus said, 'because it is your tears that souls need to set them free.'
I didn't understand what he meant at the time.
My grandmother, like many others, thought I was retarded in some way, so it was rare for her to talk to me. But one day she did and that day I learnt a lot about her and my family. She invited me to help her clean and dust her bedroom– something she had never done before. I had only been in her bedroom once or twice before, and even then it was just to look and not touch. This time she was inviting me to help her dust!
Granny gave me a cloth and asked me to dust a table while she cleaned a cabinet, carefully picking up all the precious things on it and dusting them. I watched as she picked up a photograph in a big oval frame, and I could feel a great sadness within her. She must have felt me looking as she turned and brought the photograph over to me, sat down on the big, old, high bed and patted the space beside her. I pulled myself up onto the bed and sat with my legs swinging. She showed me a beautiful old photograph of a little girl about the same age as me, in a ragged dress with bare feet and tossed hair. Beside her was a little boy who was down on his hunkers and playing with a stick in the mud and the puddles. 'These are my two little children that God has taken and who are now in Heaven with him.'
As she said this, her eyes filled with tears. I said to her, 'You will see them again; you know that, don't you, Granny?'
'Yes Lorna,' she replied, 'I hope I see them again some day soon.'
I asked what had happened to them. She told me they had been extremely poor and her little boy – Tommy was his name – got sick, probably because he didn't get enough of the right food. I could feel this great sadness, this great heaviness when she was saying it. Her little daughter, Marie, had had a growth on her throat and my grandfather carried her on his bike for miles and miles – from where they lived in Wicklow – to a hospital in Dublin. His enormous effort wasn't enough, though; she died before the doctors could operate. Granny told me that when she looked at my Da, with his dark good looks, she always wondered what Tommy would have looked like, had he grown up, and that she looked at me and my sisters and wondered what her daughter Marie would have looked like. 'I know that someday I will hold them again in my arms, and I can't wait for that day,' she said. I could feel the terrible hurt that she felt: the hurt over what had happened to her and her children.
She then said, out of the blue, 'You know, Lorna, don't be afraid. Spirits cannot harm you or hurt you in any way. Even when you are afraid you just have to say one little prayer, just say "Jesus and Mary, I love you. Save the souls."' She smiled at me and didn't say another word about the subject, then or ever. I would have loved to have told her then what I saw; to share with her the pain and the joy I felt; to ask her about what she saw and felt, but the angels had told me it wasn't allowed. I always felt that Granny understood that I saw more of the world than most people – but she never said anything more to me about it. She got up off the bed and continued dusting and then, when she was finished, she walked out of the room. I followed her and closed the door.
My grandmother went back to the kitchen and I went into the bathroom and prayed.
'Thank you God and the angels. Please, will you help my grandmother – she is sad and hurting.'
Later that summer I did get a further insight into what happened with Marie. It was a bright sunny afternoon and my Granddad was polishing his car in one of the coach houses. I peeked in at him and he sent me off to get him a cup of tea. When I came back he asked me to sit down beside him in the yard. We sat there watching the swallows flying to and from their nests with food for their chicks. It was very unusual for me to be sitting beside Granddad like this. The only other time I had spoken to him was that first day, helping him to feed the baby swallows. This time it was different. I asked the angels, 'What's happening?'
'Just listen,' the angels said, 'he needs to tell you about Marie and bringing her to hospital.'
Granddad described that d
ay for me.
'It was a chilly day but the sun was shining; your Gran got Marie ready for the journey. She wasn't well and we knew that she needed to go to hospital urgently. I was shaking as I got the bike ready, knowing the bike would not last the whole journey of more than twenty miles, but there was no other way to get her there – there was no one around to help, no one with a horse and cart, no one to share the journey with me.'
At that he smiled down at me, 'Only you, Lorna, you are the first person I've ever told about it.'
'I tied a bag with sandwiches, an apple and a canister of water to the back carrier,' he continued. 'I was scared that Marie would die on the journey. I hugged your Gran; she was in tears because she couldn't come with me as she had to mind your father and your uncle, who were little more than babies. I took Marie from her arms and carried her over to the bike. I balanced her on the bar and held her close to my chest and cycled off. I could not even turn around to your Gran to say goodbye. It was very difficult cycling along with Marie in my arms and with my wooden leg – I was scooting along, really, rather than cycling. I cycled a long way. Many times I stopped and gave Marie some water on my fingers – she could not eat or even drink properly because if she tried, she might die, because the lump on her throat might move. After some hours – it must have been about lunchtime – I was feeling hungry so I stopped and ate the sandwich and drank a little water. I cycled a bit more, but then the bicycle got a puncture and that was the end of the bike. I abandoned it there and I walked on, carrying Marie in my arms. I held her close; I could feel her heart beating and her breath so shallow. It was dark when I eventually got to the hospital. Somehow they knew we were coming; I walked up the steps of the hospital, exhausted, hardly able to take a further step and a nurse came towards me and took Marie from my arms. I didn't want to let her go. I sat down on a chair and waited and a doctor came out and told me they would take her into surgery first thing the following morning.'
He looked at me with tears in his eyes. 'It was too late!'
The little lump in her throat had moved and blocked her windpipe as they brought Marie down to surgery and she suffocated. Granddad turned around and said to me, 'I became very bitter after that – having lost Tommy and then Marie, I just didn't believe in God any more. I have made life very hard for your Granny.'
As I looked at my Granddad, with tears coming down his cheeks, I saw Marie and Tommy standing in front of him, reaching out to him and touching his tears. I told him what I saw. Granddad, Marie and Tommy are with you right now, don't cry.'
He gave me a big hug, and in a choking voice said, 'You'd better not tell anyone your Granddad was crying.'
'Don't worry,' I said, and smiled at him.
At the same time the angels whispered in my ears, 'It's a secret.'
I told Granddad, 'I will never tell anyone,' and I never have, until now.
While he was talking to me, the light around Granddad became much brighter, like the light around other people. I realised then that his hurt and anger at the death of his two young children had made him so bitter that it had quenched his joy for life. Granddad got up and went back into the coach house to work on his car. It was as if he had never spoken to me. He changed back to his normal self, the light around him became very faint, and I never again saw him with that brilliant light around him.
I was very little to be told this story, but I knew that I was working for the angels again, this time helping them to help my grandfather.
I very much enjoyed my summer in Mountshannon and hoped that the following year we could holiday there as well. The year passed quickly, and when the days got longer again I couldn't wait for the holidays, to go back down to Mountshannon.
This time we didn't stay in my Grandmother's house, though. We drove past her house and down through the village of Mountshannon and stopped on the outskirts, outside a big house with a wild garden. The house was almost completely empty – I think there was a table, a couple of chairs and a cooker, but no beds or anything else in any other room. This didn't matter to us; we thought it was a great adventure and we slept in sleeping bags on the floor.
That summer, while we were staying in the empty old house, a lovely old lady called Sally gave my Da a small piece of land near Mountshannon. It was high up in the mountains and a hard climb up a mountain road to get there, but I loved it. The piece of land was next door to the little cottage where Sally herself lived. The cottage had a traditional-style door and the top half of it was always open. She would hear us coming and would be standing there with a big smile; sometimes she would have a cat in her arms. She made us feel so welcome, giving us tea and biscuits or apple tart. I loved sitting there at the table with her, drinking tea and listening to her stories of growing up in County Clare. She loved having company and when, after hours of listening to her, I would eventually leave, she would ask me to come again tomorrow, or encourage me to get Mum and Da to come and visit her.
Sally was very lonely there, up in the mountains on her own, and this was the reason she gave my Da the piece of land at the gate – she hoped that he would build a little house there and then she would have company. She used to say to me that maybe in the future I would come and live there with my children. At eight, children were very far from my thoughts and I would giggle when she said this.
Sally had lots of cats and there were always kittens everywhere as well – they kept her company, she said. The cottage may have been full of cats, but it was spotlessly clean. The little house was packed full with furniture, but there was never any dust, no piles of papers, and it always smelled clean and homely.
I loved Sally very much, and I enjoyed all those childhood summer visits to her and her little cottage; I loved that mountain and the nights that we slept out in a tent with a campfire and owls hooting nearby. Of course, my bird enjoyed these nights up the mountain very much, too. He was getting bigger and stronger now, but it was strange that, with his big dark beak, he never once pecked my fingers or scraped me with his long claws. One afternoon I picked him up, as I often did, and took him for a walk with me. I brought him down the mile or so to my Grandmother's house and showed him all around the gardens.
As we were walking, the angel Michael appeared beside me, and he walked all around the garden with me and the bird.We walked through my grandmother's kitchen and dining room without my being seen (sometimes the angels do things so that people won't notice me) and into the beautiful bright corridor with the wonderful flowers and the big windows.
'Your little bird is growing so big and so strong. You never named it?' asked Michael.
'No, it didn't need a name,' I said, 'my bird is just "Love", that's all.'
Michael looked at me and said, 'One day you will understand why you called it "Love".'
I just looked at him. Michael's eyes were so bright it was as if you could see for miles and miles inside of them; as if you were going down a long, long road; as if you were passing through time itself.
I always had my bird with me. Don't think I ever forgot him, even for one moment. On the last day of the holiday I was up on the mountain with my Da. We had the tent and we had lit a fire, even though it was a great sunny day. I looked at my bird sadly. The angels had told me when I found him that he would not be going home with me at the end of this holiday.
I stood behind the tent holding my bird and talking to him gently.
'How am I going to live without you? I'll miss you so much.'
Da called me over and said, 'Come on Lorna, that bird needs to exercise his wings more.'
I picked him up sadly. He was so cheerful and flapped his wings and let out a loud squawk.
My father called and I whooshed the bird out of my hands up into the air. Da caught him and he flapped his wings in Da's hands. Da whooshed him up into the air back to me. But, three-quarters of the way across, his body fell to the ground. My bird was gone! His spirit flew away: his wings seemed enormous and he seemed to turn golden. He turned his head to me; hi
s eyes were so bright that they smiled back at me. He wasn't an ordinary bird; he was a gift from God and the angels.
I felt happy and sad in the same moment. I was happy for my bird – he was perfect now and he was soaring like an eagle – but I knew I would miss him terribly.
My father rushed over, he was so upset, 'Oh Lorna, I'm sorry, I know you didn't want the bird to fly further, you didn't really think he should.'
'It's all right, it's okay,' I said. Da felt so sad, so hurt and so guilty and I couldn't comfort him because I couldn't tell him what had happened, that it wasn't his fault.
Michael had been very clear. 'You can never tell him. You are different, Lorna, he can only see its body there on the ground. He wouldn't understand. Don't you know how hard it is for man to understand God as it is?'
I begged, 'But my Da is so hurt, Michael.'
'No, you can't tell him,' he said, 'one day you will tell him some of what you know, but not now. Don't worry, little one.' Michael would always call me 'little one' when he was trying to comfort me.
Da and I never discussed the loss of the bird again, but I think that for a long time after he felt guilty about it.
One sunny day I was walking up the lane to Granny's from the empty house and smiling to myself; I felt enormous strength and confidence because I knew that someone very special was close by. My angels told me not to continue up the lane but to go through the fields instead. I climbed a gate and as I was walking through the long grass towards the woods, He ruffled my hair.
He has an extraordinary presence, too powerful to manifest in physical form. Instead, when he's present it feels like a powerful force swirling around me. He has a habit of ruffling my hair, which makes it feel all tingly. I feel so special and so good when he is near me.
