Two years ago today, I was flying up in the air away from the Dallas area & back to Portland. I had given the eulogy at my mother's memorial, which I wrote about here. My mother had died the previous September but because of the pandemic we had to wait a few months to gather.
Someone asked me today if I am "visited" by my mother in any form. Since I don't believe in anything supernatural, I wouldn't see a ghost or a spirit or anything like that. I don't think such things exist. But I do occasionally hear her voice, accompanying a memory, & since I spoke to her every Sunday for most of the last twenty years of her life, I will sometimes reflect on her on Sundays.
This is a story I've probably told before, but in 1974, when I was six years old, my mother took me & two of my brothers to Germany to visit family there. I had no real sense of what Germany was, how far away we would travel, anything like that. What I did know what that I was going up in a plane above the clouds, & I was going to see what I knew for a fact would be there: angels.
It's true. I thought angels lived on top of the clouds. I worried a bit about the plane hitting them, but figured they knew how to avoid them. & when I looked out the window - I told no one about my expectations, having learned that my family often called me "stupid" or worse when I said something as fact that wasn't so - I was shocked & disappointed that there weren't any angels there.
It was crushing. Once we got to Germany, I think I was still a bit sad to find out angels didn't live above the clouds. & it might've explained some of my reaction to the experience. But that's a story for another time.
It would be twelve years before I got on a plane again, on a short flight to Austin in the summer of 1986 for college orientation. Looking out the window to see the clouds is always a highlight. How much more amazing are they now without the expectation of anything silly as angels.
Someone asked me today if I am "visited" by my mother in any form. Since I don't believe in anything supernatural, I wouldn't see a ghost or a spirit or anything like that. I don't think such things exist. But I do occasionally hear her voice, accompanying a memory, & since I spoke to her every Sunday for most of the last twenty years of her life, I will sometimes reflect on her on Sundays.
This is a story I've probably told before, but in 1974, when I was six years old, my mother took me & two of my brothers to Germany to visit family there. I had no real sense of what Germany was, how far away we would travel, anything like that. What I did know what that I was going up in a plane above the clouds, & I was going to see what I knew for a fact would be there: angels.
It's true. I thought angels lived on top of the clouds. I worried a bit about the plane hitting them, but figured they knew how to avoid them. & when I looked out the window - I told no one about my expectations, having learned that my family often called me "stupid" or worse when I said something as fact that wasn't so - I was shocked & disappointed that there weren't any angels there.
It was crushing. Once we got to Germany, I think I was still a bit sad to find out angels didn't live above the clouds. & it might've explained some of my reaction to the experience. But that's a story for another time.
It would be twelve years before I got on a plane again, on a short flight to Austin in the summer of 1986 for college orientation. Looking out the window to see the clouds is always a highlight. How much more amazing are they now without the expectation of anything silly as angels.
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