by Natalie Dekel.
Every day, as I walked to school, I felt his presence next to me. Midnight blue wings touching my hand as we walk. In silence we looked at the stars above shimmering in the frozen dawn like jewels across the sky. We played this game of observing. And then comparing our observations. I would show him what it is like to see the sun waking up as I was skiing along at my PE class 7am at minus 30 degree temperature. My breath are puffs of air that make my frozen frosted eyebrows ring like xylophone in the effort to keep up with other students in my class.
He would show me the infinity of the sky, glimpses of past, present and future. Sometimes he showed me rainbows of colours that shimmered round every object and sometimes he would share the emotions of other people at certain situations. I did not understand everything but I enjoyed the game and I was not alone.
And this mattered to me. Because otherwise I felt so totally alone… lost in this world for which I came with the reason that has been forgotten.
He held my hands at the hospital visits. His wings shielding me from harm on my lonely walks in the early mornings, surrounded by snow and cold.
I did not know that there were others until the day I was drowning.
‘Breath of Angel’ (image copyrights © Gil Dekel)
Following my brother to the deeper waters of the lake where he swam. The older boys enjoying comparing their skills as they dove under the metal tubes on which the wooden paths that created a shape of the rectangular pool inside the lake. I did not know to swim then but I admired my brother greatly, and so I followed him in to copy him. However as I got under the tube, my long hair swirling round me like a black curtain in the murky water, I ran out of air. I did not know how to get out, nor did I know what to do next. I could not ask for help and so I did the only thing I could – I played the observer again while dimly accepting what IS.
I saw people splashing around me, voices, images of bodies that carried on living without taking any notice of me. I have noticed the beauty of the water and the time ceased to exist. And just as my chest grew tight and I felt like giving up the struggle that seemed pointless by then, I saw a beautiful being of Light in front of me. No wings then. But the light of his presence illuminated all around him. We were isolated in a world that no other beings around us noticed. It was so quiet that the silence rang loudly in my ears. My heartbeat drumming a song of existence in my throat. He smiled though I could not tell his gender as such – his strength alone let me decide he was a He thought he could have been a she too.
The beauty and the calmness he brought was like a breath of fresh air for me. He spoke straight into my mind, showing me images of what I need to do next in order to get out of the situation I was in. He showed me how to swim, how to hold my air and what to do with my hands. Behind him waves of inhuman beauty, the Light of the World that most humans forgotten weaved Love through me into me, healing me. I looked longingly behind him to the Light, wishing to go there with him. Who wants to go back to loneliness and pain and suffering the years ahead of me? But he shook his head and told me that I cannot go back yet. It is not my time and on every minute I stay looking into the Light I will be staying a year longer in this world doing what I came to do, what I must do.
So sighing deeply I followed his lead, feeling the light brushing my shoulder for support with warmth and Love that I have never felt before or after. He led me until my head broke water.
I waded up the shore, water running from my ears, nose and mouth, spluttering and coughing and yet feeling happy as I still felt His presence with me. Then I saw my dad who was worrying where I have been for the last half an hour or so. I was bewildered. How can this reality compare to where I just have been and how strange that I was touched by Light and yet no one saw it or felt it. I shrugged and sat down to have something to eat, so I could feel a physical body again, slowly drifting to the ground. I am alive.
19 Jan 2013. Uploaded 6 March 2013.
© Natalie Dekel.
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