Angels in My Hair (6 page)

I never saw Sally again, either. Years later I was told that she
had died all on her own, up there in that cottage on the
mountains, but I know she wasn't on her own, the angels were
with her. After my father died, no one was able to find any
proof of my father's ownership of the land, so none of us ever
fulfilled Da's dream and built a house there.

I have been given visions on many occasions throughout my
life.When I was about ten I was out in the fields walking along
the river and the angels said, 'Just up here we are going to meet
Elijah.'

'Who's Elijah?' I asked. I laughed at the name Elijah; I had
never heard it before and I thought it sounded lovely.

The angels weren't laughing, though.

'Elijah is going to show you something, Lorna, you must try
and remember, because this is part of your future.'

An angel walked towards me across the river from the far
bank. It's hard to describe him; he was a rusty colour – that
rusty, amber colour which has a little red in it – and absolutely
beautiful. He seemed to shine and his clothes were long,
draping over him as his sleeves did over his hands, and yet,
when he raised his arms, the long sleeves seemed to roll back
so gracefully, as if they were a part of him. Elijah's face even
seemed to be that same rusty amber colour.

I was fascinated to see Elijah walking on the river; he was
coming towards me, but his feet were not touching the water.

'Can I do that, too?' I asked. He just laughed at me.

The ground was uneven on the river bank, with big tufts of
grass. Elijah invited me to sit down then sat beside me and
smiled. 'I'm glad to see you are not nervous of me,' he said.

'No, they told me you were coming,' I replied.

As I looked around I realised that all the angels that were
usually with me had disappeared except my guardian angel.

'Where have they all gone?' I said.

'They have gone away for a while,' he said. 'Now, I'm going
to hold your hand, Lorna.' He held out his hand to me and I
put my hand in his, and all I can say is, it was as if my hand got
lost in his, as if my hand became part of his hand. 'I don't want
you to feel afraid,' he said, 'because there is nothing to be afraid
of. This is something that you can look forward to when you
grow up; something that will happen to you.'

'Why do I need to know it now?' I said.

He didn't answer my question and instead said, 'You will see
someone and we will tell you about this person you are seeing.'

Then, it was as if a curtain was pulled back and I was
watching this big huge screen in the middle of the river in front
of me. In the vision I could see a pathway surrounded by trees;
I seemed to be sitting at the far end of the pathway, and I could
see a figure in the distance starting to walk through the trees
along the path. I looked at Elijah beside me and said, 'I can't
see very well.'

'Keep watching!' he replied.

As the figure got closer, I could see it was an extremely tall
young man with red hair. He was very, very handsome, as far
as I could make out. Then Elijah started talking again. 'You can
see him quite clearly now.'

I turned to the angel sitting beside me and nodded.

'Keep looking,' he said. 'We want you to remember what he
looks like. We won't show you any more, but what I need to
tell you is that this will be the young man that you will
marry. You will recognise him from this vision the first time
that you see him, many years from now – you have to grow
up first!'

I smiled and giggled at the idea of being in love, or married,
and asked Elijah, 'Is he big like that now?'

'No,' Elijah replied, 'he is only a young boy, too, a few years
older than you are.' Elijah continued talking, 'You will be very
happy with him – he will love you and you will love him. You
will have ups and downs, good times and not so good times.
You will have healthy children and they will all be very special,
too, but you will end up looking after him and God won't leave
him with you forever. You won't grow old together.'

I turned and looked at him and said, 'What do you mean,
Elijah, "looking after him"?'

'His health won't be the best,' Elijah replied, 'God will take
him one day, when he is still quite young.'

'I really don't want to know that,' I said.

But Elijah continued, 'Lorna, don't get cross, we just want
you to remember. We're preparing you for the future,
preparing you to be strong. Think of all the love and happiness
that you'll have. Just look at how handsome he is, you said so
yourself.'

I looked again and I could see him, and I said, 'Yes, he's
nice.'

Then the vision was gone and Elijah asked, 'Will you
remember that?'

'Yes,' I replied, 'I will remember, and I understand that he
won't be staying with me forever, and that I will have to look
after him.'

I turned around to Elijah and, despite my young age, said, 'I
will be strong.'

Elijah took my hand again; we got up and he walked with
me. After a little while he stopped and said, 'Don't think too
much about this now: just put it to the back of your mind, you
will recognise it the day it happens.'

Then Elijah was gone and, of course, the vision did happen
one day, some years later. In the process of writing this book,
I asked my angels for more information about Elijah, and I was
told that Elijah was an Old Testament prophet – a man with
the soul of an angel.

My family was on the housing list with Dublin Council to get
a house. It was a real fight but, eventually, after a long, long
wait, we were given a rented council house in Edenmore. It
was a lovely house in a brand new estate of several hundred
houses. All the homes were more or less the same: three
bedrooms, semi-detached, with small front and back gardens.
There was another estate next to ours, but the area wasn't
completely built up and there were fields and open spaces
around us. Everyone there was new; most people were in their
own house for the first time – having perhaps lived with their
parents or in old tenements in Dublin city centre. It was a
friendly place, and I liked it immediately.

So at last we had a house – even if we didn't own it. Things
were improving, but it was still tough for my parents. Da was
working as a deliveryman for a big petrol company, which was
hard, physical work that had him out long hours, and Mum
went out to work the night shift in the local chocolate factory.
Every evening after school Mum would give us our dinner and
then leave the older children to mind the younger ones until
Da came home – which was often quite late.

Edenmore was a long way from Ballymun, so the change
meant new schools and new friends for all of us. There was no
school nearby so we had a long walk every morning: through
the housing estate, down into the old village, then past the
church to the main road. The school was directly across this
busy road. My class was in a prefab which was very crowded,
with the desks packed tightly together. In the morning it was
a hard squeeze to get to your desk – you practically had to
crawl over your classmates.

I was very happy in Edenmore; I didn't have any particular
close friends, but there was one family of neighbours, the
O'Brien's, with whom I spent a lot of time. My real favourite in
the O'Brien family was their wonderful Alsatian dog, Shane. I
used to take Shane for a walk three times a week and it was on
one of these walks that I met another special angel.

I call this angel 'the tree angel' because she always appears in
a tree. I have seen her many times since and still do to this day.
She's all the shades of emerald green, emerald gold and
emerald orange that you could imagine – the colours are
magnificent. She seems to be alive in every part of the tree, and
yet I can see her so clearly. Her hair is curly and full of waves,
and when she moves, every part of her moves and her eyes
sparkle like gold dust. She stretches out her arms and holds
her hand out towards me and as she does so, the tree moves
with her. I have often spoken to her and her voice, when she
speaks back to me, is like a whistle; it is as if her voice rustles
amongst the leaves of the trees.

I remember one day I was out walking with Shane. We had
crossed the field and were about to go back in towards the
estate when Shane stopped and started to bark at this big tree
on the left. I looked at the tree and saw nothing; I laughed at
Shane, asking, 'What are you barking about?'

Then I saw her. There was the tree angel – Shane had seen
her before me. I laugh at that when I think of it. It amazes me,
animals see angels so easily.

Sometimes, on the way home from school, I played in the
quarry with the other children. One day, instead of playing
with them, I tried the gate of the monastery next to the quarry.
It was a place we weren't allowed to go in to, but I lifted the
latch and peeped in. I saw gardens full of vegetables and fruit;
it felt so peaceful that I wasn't afraid. I walked round watching
the monks in their brown robes busy in the gardens. They took
no notice of me, it was as if they didn't see me. I sat down on
an old tree trunk and watched.

It definitely was a holy place, a place where lots of prayers
had been said. All of the monks shone so brightly – they were
so clean, and not just in their bodies, but in their souls, too.
They prayed as they worked and I noticed the angels were
praying with them. I felt very much at peace there; I wanted to
stay, but eventually my angels dragged me out of there. They
kept telling me to go home, that my mother would be worried.
I did as they told me. Although it was getting dark, the angels
lit the way for me. Mum had already gone to work when I got
home, so I didn't get into trouble.

During that year I must have gone to the monastery at least
twelve times or more. Only once, the last time I visited, did a
monk speak to me. He was picking gooseberries off a bush
and I walked right up and stood beside him. He glowed so
brightly, and his angel stood beside him was also dressed like
him. He looked up at me – he was very young – and said,
'Hello'.

I asked him his name. He told me it was Paul. He spoke very
softly and asked me mine. I told him.

He offered me some gooseberries, asking me why I came
there so often. I answered him, 'Just to watch you all pray. I
need your prayers.'

'I will always pray for you, Lorna,' he replied.

I said goodbye, knowing that I would never go back to the
monastery again.

One of my favourite outings on a Saturday morning was going
shopping with my mother. This involved a trip to Moore
Street, a busy street market in the centre of Dublin which had
stalls down both sides of the street and women with broad
Dublin accents crying out their wares. I would pull the
shopping trolley along behind me while Mum chose which
fruit and vegetables were best to buy.

One Saturday, as we turned into Moore Street, an angel
pulled at my shoulder and whispered in my ear, 'Let your Mum
walk ahead of you – she won't notice.' I took two steps
backwards and my Mum walked on, looking at the fruit and
vegetables on sale. As I stood and looked down Moore Street,
the view changed. Suddenly, Moore Street was like a golden
palace: everything was a golden colour, even the people. Then
the colours changed and other colours appeared – vibrant
brighter colours, much brighter and more vibrant than
normal. These colours started to flow from the fruit, vegetables
and flowers, like waves full of energy. Then these waves
became balls of colour which bounced around the street, from
one side of the street to the other, bouncing off the stalls and
even off people; but no one seemed to notice.

The street was not just full of people, it was full of angels –
many more than usual. Some of the angels were dressed like the
woman selling fruit and vegetables and were busying themselves
in helping. I thought it was very funny to watch the angels
imitate every move that the women made – angels are such
wonderful mimics. They were singing too – it was as if they were
humming in time to the street life going on around them.

I had been in Moore Street many times before, but I had
never seen anything like this; perhaps it was especially for me,
to make me laugh, or perhaps it happens every day there, but
this was the first time I was allowed to see it. I found all the
hustle and bustle so exciting.

Suddenly, my mother, who was about three stalls ahead,
noticed I was not standing by her side.

'Lorna, wake up. Come here with the shopping trolley.'

I thought everything would change back to normal, but it
didn't. I stood beside my Mum and my angels whispered in my
ear, 'Watch the lady selling fruit.'

I did as I was told and I saw her guardian angel standing
right behind her. Her guardian angel looked like her and
dressed like her; she was full of light and had a wonderful
smile and she winked at me. Mum asked the woman for some
apples, pears and bananas. As the woman put the fruit in the
brown paper bag her angel attracted my attention, shaking her
finger.

I realised that the woman had put bad apples among those
Mum was buying and her angel was talking to her, but she was
not listening. Her angel continued wagging her finger. I
couldn't keep a straight face and I giggled out loud. The
woman glanced sharply at me. I could see from her eyes that
she knew I had seen what she was doing. Suddenly the bag
broke and the fruit went everywhere. The woman tried to
catch it and she did grab an apple – it was rotten! I know this
wasn't by chance, her angel and my angel allowed it to happen,
which made me laugh even more.

Mum noticed the rotten apple and said, 'I hope you're not
giving me bad fruit.'

The woman denied it as she filled a new bag and glanced
guiltily at me. Mum paid her and I put the bag of fruit into the
trolley. As we walked away the woman called out in her broad
Dublin accent, 'Hey, Missus!'

Mum turned around and the woman was holding out a bag.

'Here, Missus! Some extra fruit for your kids!' Her angel was
standing behind her, smiling – finally she was being listened
to.