An Angel's Wings

I sit above the white puffy clouds, waiting for my time to come. I see people down back on earth.  People of all types, sad, happy, black and white. Everyone is going about as normal. No one notices the colorblind person in the back of the room or the deaf man that sits inside avoiding the world. No one notices the girl that screams for attention or the boy who stays silent but is crying within. People don’t second glance at the prison or the apartments….. It’s ok. I never did either but now I do.

                I remember when I would look up to the sky wondering what it would be like to touch an angel’s wing. The softness of the feathers and the pleasure of the angels kiss on my cheek. I never imagined what it would be like to turn into an angel myself….

                It was in December. The ground was covered in fluffy snow. Kids were playing outside but I stayed in with a bad cold. During my sleep that night I took my last breath. No one saw it coming….but I guess it was my time. Do you know that state of mind when you are in a deep sleep and you don’t dream, you just feel heavy in black? That’s similar to what it felt when I died. It’s like an eternal forever black deep sleep. Instead of seeing the golden gates of heaven and an angel kissing my cheek with its feather wings, I found a frozen angel like stone on the ground. She was cold. Her wings were not soft. When I touched her, she disintegrated. I was confused. Where were heaven and the other angels? I felt a flutter on my back and realized I grew wings myself. My wings were plush and smooth. They were not white but rather grey. My eyes adjusted to where I was. I knew I was above the clouds but when I looked down the earth was not in color but in black and white. Who would have guessed that angels are colorblind? My mind drew attention to a small boy in a hospital bed. He was obviously a cancer patient. Not many more months to live. He was to take my place as an angel. And when he did I will become nothing but a pile of dust in the clouds embrace. I noticed all the things I missed. People were yelling, screaming, crying and dying. I didn’t see as many smiles as frowns.

                You see, when you are born an angel is born and that angel becomes yours. It watches over you and sometimes gives you advice without you even realizing it. It’s like your conscious, it communicates through dreams but you never see nor hear your angel, your angel just guides you. Now when you die, your angel dies and you take place of that angel and you are given to someone who was just born. So it’s a big cycle, whenever an angel dies a new angel is born and it keeps continuing.  As angels you cannot physically feel anything, you can’t see colors but you can feel emotions, pain, happiness, sadness, anger, every type of emotion you feel. And as an angel those emotions are intensified so you feel them greater than people. Your mood changes as the person you connected to changes. I became the angel of this boy in the hospital, at first I was upset and neglected him but then I realized that this is what happens when you are dead, there isn’t anything you can do about it. I started to notice everything, every tear, every smile, and all the sounds that occur on earth. I felt what my little boy felt all the way to his last breath.  With his battle with cancer I wasn’t much help, even angels can’t fight disease, we only pray and guide the person as best we could.  When the little boy died he was asleep much like I was and he felt no pain or emotion, he was numb. Although when he died I did place a tender kiss on his cheek hoping that he could have one last emotion before he took my place, it was gentle and the only physical contact I had with him, but being an angel I wasn’t able to feel his smooth skin beneath my lips, so I too was numb. As the boys breathing slowly stopped I felt myself become stiff, like a stone I fell to the ground and became hard. I remember feeling like a caterpillar encased in a hard cocoon but it was suffocating. I couldn’t move or struggle. I couldn’t breathe and soon my colorblind eyesight was gone and my ears flooded with silence. I became nothing. I finally knew how it felt to be that blind person who children mocked or that deaf guy who sat and cried not able to hear the beautiful sounds of his child’s music. I became nothing but nevertheless felt the emotions of everything. It was overwhelming, I became cold and unable to speak I couldn’t scream, and just like the angels in the past I disintegrated, down down down into ash.

                I look back now regretting what I did, but I also feel thankful for it. Without all the pain and emotion I wouldn’t have been able to understand, I wouldn’t have been able to make it to heaven.  Yes, in the end after I was consumed by my tight encasing, I finally shifted up into heaven. But it’s not what you think it is, there are no golden gates or white castles up in the sky that represents heaven, heaven is just your state of mind when you are dead. After you suffocate you are overwhelmed by an intense happiness that you can’t contain and you are left in that dreamlike state of mind with happiness. There is nothing or no one there but you and your happiness. God never showed but neither did the devil, but you feel tickled by the angel’s presence.  And that is what the kiss of an angel feels like, immense pleasure and happiness, that’s the state you are left in for eternity and that’s where I may be, along with everyone else…so don’t be scared to die, do not be scared to overlook things, and do not be scared that in the end you still won’t be good enough because we all end up with the same colorblind eyes and the same happiness in the end, we are all the same angels, we are all the same language and the same pile of dust that blows into the wind. Our existence and memories may last with those who are living but when you are dead all that is left is the hollow sound of silent laughter and the presence of an invisible smile.