CHAPTER 15
DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME JUDGING
THE MESSENGERS…
(I open parenthesis here to share this real-life story with you now. I once was working as a delivery woman for a courier company. Well, not exactly. My ex had his own delivery service so on one especially busy day, he asked me for a favour. I had to deliver a package downtown on Dorchester Street (it was before it got renamed René Levesque boulevard in honour of a famous ex-prime minister) ...
Unlike my dad and my brother who have (had for my dad) a phenomenal sense of orientation, I, on the other hand, suck at it. And these were the years before the GPS was invented so we had to rely on actual paper maps! Not kidding kids! So, I ended up parking on the opposite side of a busy four lane boulevard.
Upon my return, there were two young men near my light blue Colt with bird drawings on the side. My dad got me that car then at the mechanic shop he worked at.
When I got close to my car… they pointed a gun at my chest!...
“What the hell do you want with your little toy, boy?” said I.
“The keys for your car lady!”.
“Do I look like a girl who has a purse on her boy?
[in those days, large purses which looked more like school bags were in vogue but luckily, these guys knew nothing about female fashion, thank God as my purse was right there on the floor on the passenger side!].
“And anyways, I don’t know where I left my car keys, I was just looking for them as a matter of fact”…
[Said I, as I heard my car keys tinkle in my pocket...].
“Come to think of it, please wait there, I’ll go get my purse as I WANT to give you my car, it’s a bloomin’ piece of crap if you want the truth, you’ll do me a big favour by taking it, please!
But make sure you fill up since I forgot to do it when I left”, said I, while the gun was STILL directly onto my stomach…[much smaller back then…].
Well, after that comment, they decided to just leave the area without saying a word. They probably I was crazier than they were?!
Scared you say?
Totally!
And those days, mobile phone didn’t exist so I had to tell my then boyfriend on a CB (like a walkie Talkie, no? Ok one of those radios’ security guard use? Ah you got it. Well, he just wouldn’t believe me...
[He was laughing out loud instead! He said, if you were driving a stage coach, the Dalton’s would have stolen your whole shipment while at it!
SO, I looked for a phone booth, which I only found like 10 blocks away and called my uncle who was a policeman. He said that it probably wasn’t the best strategy to say what I said…No, you think?...
Back then, I was a scout leader and it just so happened that I had their non-perishable food for the weekend camping trip. What would I have told them?
So I was less brave than a bit innocent:
With my experience, teenager didn’t really worry me so, I knew how to handle them (minus the gun) ...
I really thought it was a toy gun (call me naïve or dumbum, your choice).
I was watching way too much action movies.
So, I was saying…
Don’t waste your time trying to judge or even understand the messengers, the message is the only important thing here, we are not.
After those words appeared on the page, I had no recollection of what I had written [but, as I told you before, I wasn’t high…]. My eyes were half closed, then they kinda closed themselves and right away I felt like a great warmth invade my whole being. And not a warmth like when a menopause flash hits you like I experienced the previous autumn and winter where I had a little electric fan that followed me everywhere even more than my dogs!
Believe me, I have not worn any socks on my feet until February this year! I even published the exact date on my Faceboob page [my hormone treatment started in December but had to stop in July as I had too many side effects so…
bought another fan!
So, after those five words had been laid on paper, I was overwhelmed by that comforting warmth a bit like when you are under a warm blanket which irradiated your entire body. And, instinctively, it felt like an embrace, like they wanted me to know that they protected me somehow. It felt good, it felt soft, just like a very long embrace. 10 minutes? More? I sort of lost the sense of time for a while. Then, I opened my eyes and I immediately put on paper what I had just felt.
But it had really shaken me to my core.
I was really puzzled.
Should I confide with my local parish priest?
Or was it special enough that it would warrant a letter all the way
to the pope?
Should I insure it and send it Express Mail?
I am not really a decisive woman. I live day by day; I have trouble deciding what we will end up eating for dinner just about every night… Oh and don’t get me started with ordering at a restaurant: I always end up with 2-3 choices and I often end up not liking the one I chose anyways…
And I hate to argue with people as I respect everyone’s opinion.
But wow!
A message from the other side, probably originating directly from the big boss!
I can’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed...
These things normally don’t happen to me on a regular basis, honest! Our interactions are usually limited to interesting but not life changing subjects of conversation like this…
Believe me!
“Above all be happy with your life, such is life, death they said now:
THERE IS US AFTER THIS…
And for the rest, do not worry, you believe in God, you live a good life… “She’ll be right” as my brother likes to say in is Land Down Under!
[After all this excitement, I was glad when my starving husband arrived home and offered to take me out for diner, I agreed right away
[especially that it will be my very first outing since I came back from my last hospital visit so I was more than happy to oblige
[and I felt like having some more mashed potatoes. Do they still serve them in restaurants these days?! Umm, I wonder? LOL].
Oh, and not any food joint, no, I was treated to some juicy and inviting hot dogs with some fries! I was in heaven...
I was still under shock, so I decided to confide in my husband. Let’s just say, he was less enthusiastic than me on the subject.
Sunday evening however, when my son came back from his weekend, I was still euphoric, and the fact that I had just smoked a joint didn’t harm… My son hates it then when I have had a joint, I get it, I am usually way more emotional then, especially that evening where I was particularly prone to tears when I told him about all that happened to me while he was away…
Well, it didn’t really go as I expected. Normally, he is attentive and empathetic but that night, he was especially tired and as a result, he sort-of panicked a bit… I guess I didn’t choose the right moment. He was emotional too that night. Poor kid, you come home and see your mom half dead in her bed and furthermore, she
A bottle of champagne got uncorked, letting all the stories of my youth escape…
But at that time, I was taking a selfie with my fuchsia pink mobile phone. I tried to add a bit of humour by using items surrounding me. First my garden, then my house…
Then an archangel flew by and revealed a few words which have changed everything…
That night, I decided to read to my son, passages from my book, then, as if it took all his strength away, he went back into his basement lair and collapsed exhausted.
Because that day, I chose HIM to be my confident.
I chose him yesterday in fact. The moment he stepped in the house. Between “mediums” (in our case XL but hey, lol) we have an innate ability to understand each other instinctively.
Because that gift, that special talent runs in the family. My father had it, my aunt also, even my mom whose little finger often spoke to her (in this last case, I think it was mostly her maternal instinct…).
Then there was my grandmother Blandine; dad’s mom. She used to tell us that she had been reading cards forever. She also had that special ability to find herbs and plant in the forest which, somehow always turned out to be the appropriate remedy to treat her many kids (more than a dozen) when they were sick without any botanical knowledge whatsoever. She just knew.
She made me a gift just before crossing over…
I went to visit her at her north shore hospital near where my brother recently lived for a few years before returning to Australia. She was suffering in silence laying on her back, I was softly caressing her well-groomed white hair, as if she had just been to the hairdresser.
“I can see a light”, she suddenly said...”and Gerry and Raphael (she was naming some of the children she had lost over the years, Raphael being the first one, Gerry, one of the last). Then, it had not been long since I had lost my little girl never to be. She spoke about Raphael which she had the pleasure to hold in her arm at least a few years before he departed.
“A miscarriage, no matter how many months you carried him, your belly felt him but not your hands nor your eyes. It hurts less, believe me”, she said as to console me.
…Then she started naming all the other family members that were extending their arms toward her as to welcome her to the next life.
“Go towards the lights”, I whispered in her ear with all the love I had for my father’s mother. But, in my mind, I was hoping that she didn’t leave us right away…
I didn’t really know what to say then. I felt like I was an actor in a movie just reciting a line. I was young and naïve then, still living with my parents. Then, she looked like she simply fell asleep… without seeing all her remaining family members one last time…
She had just decided that it was time for her to leave, as if I had to be the last one to guide her across…
Now, every time I speak with the archangels, she is always there as if she was supervising the proceedings. Maybe that was meant to be all along…
(Like “Mamie Sanne” in the arms of her “Vinvin”…).
(I thought then, that we didn’t really choose the moment of our death, but sometimes we might decide not to fight it anymore… I this case thought, as I learned later during a conversation with the angels, that before we are born, we actually decide whether to live or not the life we are presented with before reincarnating (oh yeah this too I learnt that we do, many time if we decide to (or are asked to), my brother as had a long series of reincarnations, many of which were people that made history in their time)…
It reminds me of an old poem called “the neighbours and death” by Alphonse Beaudet.
(Didn’t remember all of it so checked online, nothing. So, I had to resort to going to the local library. Oh my… Well, since then, I’ve started to dabble in poetry and rimes myself… Worth it!).
So she left us not much longer after, midway through a scouts’ camp in 1989.
At that time, we were in the middle of nowhere. Far from all the basic necessities of modern life, such as toilets for the scout leader to sit on… At I don’t know how many hours of march… Luckily, it was in my previous life, before I discovered the total perversion of the four-star hotels…
One night, as we were warming up around a campfire, I suddenly felt my dad’s presence who was somehow, trying to warn me. He was still alive then.
He even contacted the police, who, when they arrived at the base of the hill leading to our camp, decided to turn back, thinking they were lost. I told him not to come to our camp since we weren’t enough leaders to enable me to leave. Yet, somehow, the message he tried to deliver got to me while my worry-free teenagers were happily singing under the stars.
Then, I told them the story of the Bonhomme La Misère (the miserable old fellow).
After I finished, I slowly got up and stepped away where I could be quiet, and started praying for her soul.
My beloved dad’s mom. My fondest memories of her were when we all played a card game called Bridge.
She was invariably always partnered with me since I never could understand that game, therefore she was allowed to give me pointers out loud during the game. Our beloved grandma who, each time she went to the toilet, magically ended up with a near perfect selection of cards
(and she used to go to the loo rather often…).
Dearest beloved grandma. Hundreds of your descendants now think of you fondly and pray for your soul. I am sure you are with all your ancestors now, probably still paying cards. Are you still as “lucky” with cards since, I assume, there most certainly is no need for toilets where you are now…
At the end of the camp, dad came to see us to break the bad news. He also informed us that a local Indian tribe, the Mohawks, decided to forcibly block an entire bridge, one of the few bridges Montréal has to cross to the South Shore, as well as a road leading to a North-Shore town called Oka.
The Oka crisis had begun.
“You surely must be joking dad! I don’t believe you that such a thing can happen these days…”. Well, it did.
A soldier got killed in the process. A dark page of our history was being written that summer…
During the days that followed, I was moving into my very first and very own apartment. Luckily, a bunch of newspapers had been accumulating on the pavement near our door. Ideal to protect the floor for painting. I opened the first one, at random. It was the obituary page: there she was, a picture of my son’s grandma who was smiling to me, as if she was saying, it will be alright.
“The loss of a mother is the first major grief where we must without her to console us”…
***
We are several in our family to have THE GIFT.
(We learnt later, during my weekly written encounters with the archangels, why that was…).
We never talk about it between us (except for my aunt Micheline with whom I had a close relationship, she was like a mentor to me regarding these things. She was somehow teaching me to master my skills.
She passed away suddenly a couple of years later. It felt like she somehow knew she had to fully prepare me, as if I was destined for some kind of cosmic mission somewhere in the near future.
I have spoken to her many times since.
She is still teaching me the ropes, but from both sides now…
Yet, I know what to do now when I need support. I contact my brother on the other side of the planet, through the magic of new technologies like Messenger.
Since I share the message the archangels gave me for him, he has been a very useful partner in this wonderful venture I am currently in. I however need to learn to that Australia is on the other side of the globe and as such, is a full twelve hours (thirteen hours for half the year since his state doesn’t believe in having daylight saving for some weird reason).
I stuffed up on many occasions, and yet, not once has he complained, even on night where he was working the next morning.
What a trooper that man!
Yet, it just occurred to me right now, like a pie in the face, that the one I should really be calling is MYSELF!
Come on old friend,
You have a whole lot of work still to do,
Forego of your daily pain,
Forego of your fears,
Negative energies from other,
your past,
Your past lives and whatever else you think could interfere in your creative process,
Get off your fat arse and get on with the task at hand!
Bloody f”$% hell! It hurts! Dammit…
Feels better now! Remember, I am a Québecer after all!
New authors thoughts:
my mother just called me on my little fuchsia mobile phone.
(I had just updated my “Faceofgoodnews” with a status which was, somehow, way too positive for a girl who, just a couple of days ago, was apparently just about to pass away, which, of course, got her worried like the good mother she is. I told her the whole story. She believed me, thank God. She was just relieved to hear, from the sound of my voice, that I was healed).
Then, I got a call from my good friend Élodie with whom I also confided as if I would never stop talking. As if, talking about it somehow was relieving me from some of the pain and fear. We spoke on the phone many a times in the past, yet today, things were different.
Élodie is almost from my generation and nearly the same hair colour number than me so…
I ended up ranting all the way to dinnertime, when, thankfully, my little honey bear climbed up from his basement lair, not to ask me to get him some food but, oh so wonderful, to ask me what I WANTED to eat! My little baby is growing so fast!
***
Today, 5 little words had appeared from nowhere in the notebook of a larger than life woman, who just wanted to write a story to bring laughter to her close friends, in order to thank them for helping her stay alive throughout her latest illness.
For me, feeling the paper caress me while I drop words upon it is an exalting sensation, unfortunately a feeling which has almost completely disappeared since the arrival of the computer keyboard.
I only want you to remember the message I am forwarding to you from beyond. The messenger is irrelevant now. No matter what lurks in my closets, it doesn’t matter anymore…
***
I always wanted to take my husband’s name when I would get married. When I was a little girl, in my head, it was quite clear that I would one day, take my husband’s name. It was common practice at the time.
The rest of Canada is still doing it to this day.
However, one day, the government decided, in order to make it fair for the ladies, that the practice had to change. I thought, they will bring a law where woman would decide whether to change or not their name, it was common sense. Well, I guess common sense and government did not go together then because the geniuses decided that women in Québec would, from now on, keep their name after they get married!
What the…? Worse still, the only way they can change their name now is to make a formal request to the government for a change of legal name!!! Talk about a major stuff up!
Furthermore, when my husband and I got married, he decided he didn’t want me to take his name anyways! My husband is more of a feminist than me it seems…
His mother worked for Bell, Canada’s national telephone company, when the company was at its beginning. She gravitated the ladders thanks to the fact that she had a higher education, which was ratter rare in those days. Therefore, one day, my husband had a governess to help his busy mother around the house. His father also worked hard, sometimes working two jobs at a time. Not for long however as his wife steadily climbed the corporate ladder.