Читать книгу An Angel on My Shoulder - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 18

‘Where are my spectacles?’ my dad said, looking confused.

‘They’re on the top of your head,’ I replied. ‘You just pushed them there a moment ago, remember?’

Dad shrugged his shoulders, slipped his spectacles onto his nose and buried his head again in the paper. I bought him a cup of tea and he pushed his spectacles on his head to drink it. I went back into the kitchen but turned back again as he was shouting for me.

‘Grace! Grace! Have you seen my spectacles?’

‘Dad!’ I replied. ‘You just asked me that. They’re on the top of your head, just as they were a moment ago.’

Dad nodded, but he still looked puzzled, and this worried me. Although he was only in his early sixties ever since he had retired he had started to forget things. I’d read about memory loss with age so I decided to encourage him to do some crosswords every day. I also thought about buying him a Nintendo for Christmas so he could do some brain-training exercises.

Then a few weeks later I asked him to pick up my sons, Tom, eleven, and Jack, six, from school. I phoned him in the morning to remind him and he promised he’d be there, but at 4 p.m. I got a phone call from Tom’s form teacher asking when Tom and Jack were going to be picked up. I phoned Dad and he was at home listening to the radio. He couldn’t remember speaking to me in the morning.

A month or so later I got a phone call at work from my next-door neighbours. They had spotted my dad sitting on the floor in our local shopping centre. When they had gone up to him to ask if he was OK he’d had no idea who they were and had started to shout abuse at them. It was terrible seeing my dad deteriorate like this.

It wasn’t long before Dad was diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s. There were days when he was completely normal but there were also days when he would leave his house and just wander for miles with no idea where he was going. I was concerned for his safety and so he moved in with me and my husband Ben. This arrangement just about worked for 18 months but then Dad started to behave really erratically. Night times were the worst. He would drift around the house rearranging the furniture. He also became incontinent and started to shout at the children and call them names.

I staggered on for the next two years as best I could, but by the time my dad was 65 I was getting desperate. My biggest concern was for the safety of my children, especially now that Dad was lighting matches for no reason. I asked for help from my doctor, but the more I asked, the more tests my dad was sent for and the more forms I had to fill in. I felt trapped.

By this time my dad found it hard to even remember my name. He’d look at me as if I were a stranger, or an enemy. One night when I was trying to get him to rest he started shouting and accusing me of kidnapping him. It took four hours to settle him and I fell into bed in the small hours of the morning, totally burned out. I was so tired that I couldn’t sleep and I just lay there crying. Ever since I’d left school I’d been busy working and earning money and raising a family. I’d stopped thinking about or believing in any higher power, but that night I begged for someone to help me and to help my dad.

All of a sudden I saw a light ball flicker beside my bed. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things and crawled to the bottom of my bed to take a closer look. Then I saw an angel. It was fairly small, about the size of a football, and it was just floating at the bottom of the bed. It had bright golden wings and a long gown that sparkled with light. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and as I gazed at it in wonder the most amazing feeling of peace came over me.

The angel floated towards me and I felt all the tension leave my body and warmth come over me. The angel hovered in front of me for a few minutes and then it vanished. I knew then that everything was going to work out fine.

My husband was asleep the whole time. I know it wasn’t a hallucination because from that night onwards it felt as if a weight had lifted off my shoulders. The next morning social services called and I was told that a home help would be visiting for a couple of hours every day to give me a break. It meant I could start to get my life back together again.

For the next three years Dad’s condition got steadily worse and in the last six months of his life he didn’t recognize me at all. Despite this I still felt that there was a strong connection between us and sometimes he would look at me as if he knew what I was thinking. I also felt his love for me. The day before he died he woke up and raised his arms towards me. When I came over he looked at me and said my name. I longed for him to say more, but really my name was enough. My dad had remembered me at last. The next day he slipped into unconsciousness and passed away gently in his sleep.

Although my dad’s illness weighed heavily on his family, my guardian angel gave me the strength I needed to cope when I was at my lowest. She opened my eyes to the world of spirit and this made losing Dad so much easier to bear.

Life can certainly bring us many challenges, and at times these challenges can seem impossible to bear, but it isn’t just during times of danger or extreme crisis that angels can make their watchful presence felt. In the remarkable stories that follow angels appeared spontaneously in the most ordinary but unusual ways. Let’s begin with Martin’s experience.