Naked Angel

“If you take your own life that God gave you then you will suffer greatly with the eternal flames of Hell.” Sister Dominique said soberly to the sixth grade class in front of her during Religious Instruction which was scheduled after lunch. 

What I heard as these words came from her lips was, “You mother is suffering right now in those eternal flames of Hell.” 

We never talk about it at home.  There is guilt and shame and I am told not to mention it.  It would upset my father is what I am told by Marsha.  Marsha is his second wife and my step mother.

But I wanted to talk about it.  I want to know why I keep having these dreams about a naked angel who haunts my sleep.  

Jurden Comstock returned from Vietnam.  His younger brother Demond told me about it during lunch.  

“He’s all screwed up in his head.” He professed. Sister Marie shot him a warning glance since “screwed” was not a word we were supposed to be saying in open conversation.  

Restriction is always the answer.  It was something I learned by watching the news on television from Walter Cronkite about Vietnam.  Protesters, or hippies, as my father called them, were met with the authority of policemen’s night sticks and tear gas. Then in a flash, we were transported to the jungles of South Vietnam where boys not all that much older than me were shedding their blood in battle. 

“Dad, what is going on?” I asked,

“Nothing.” He grunted from behind a newspaper. “Turn something else on.” 

Restriction is what is used to keep us in line.  Restriction is what they use to keep us from being un-American.  Dad served in Korea during the war.  He has never said anything about it.  It is one of the things we don’t talk about either. 

Monsignor Drake thought it would be a good idea if our class attended the small memorial service for Jurden Comstock.  So we filed out of the school and walked a block to St. Francis Funeral Home.  

There were three rows of folding chairs set in front of a close casket.  We were told under no circumstance were we allowed to even utter a single word.  Demond marched in as though this was his ceremony.  Monsignor Drake walked to the pulpit next to the coffin where Jurden lay.  Jurden was the oldest brother of the Comstock family which consisted of a dozen other siblings including Demond.  Mr. and Mrs. Comstock were there. Most of us knew Mrs. Comstock because she was president of the Parent Teacher Association.  Demond waved at his parents before sitting down. Neither of them waved back, instead they just glared at him for his lack of respect for the protocol.  

Monsignor Drake reminded us that God has set out time on earth and he may call us at any time, so we’d better be prepared.  He praised the Comstocks for raising a son like Jurden who was now resting at the feet of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

And the naked angel.

“He was always raising hell in high school before he enlisted with the Army.” Demond whispered in my ear glancing back to make sure his parents were not watching.  

I was still feeling somber at lunch when Demond plopped down in the seat next to me.

“I am going to be excused from school for next week.” He boasted.  I could tell when he was boasting as his round face was flushed with a pink coloring in his ample cheeks. 

“For Jurden’s funeral.” He shrugged, but his cheeks were still flushed.

“Lucky.  Sister Dominique is going to go over some grammar.” I rolled my eyes.  I contemplated on whether telling him about the angel or not, but since I had not told anyone about the angel, I figured I’d tell my best friend. “Hey, did you ever have any weird things happen in your dreams?  I mean over and over again.”

He appeared to let my question bang around in his head for a few minutes, before answering, “Naw, but I do have naughty dreams about Kim Lassinger.”

She was sitting with her close-knit friends at the next table. 

“No, not that.” I shook my head.

“Then what?” 

“I have this naked angel come into my dreams.” 

“Is she hot?” Once again letting his hormones get the best of him.  Sister Dominique warned us about impure thoughts many times. 

“No, I’m not sure if the angel is a he or she.” 

“How come, isn’t the angel naked.” Demond shrugged, “It’s pretty easy to tell if they’re naked.” 

“It’s not like that.” Wishing I had never mentioned it.

“Dad, what did mom look like?” I asked before dinner.

“She was pretty.” He hoped that answer would defray me.

“What else?” I asked, “What did she like to do?”

I could hear the restlessness in his sigh, “She like to paint pictures.  Whenever we went to the lake or the coast, she would get out her easel and paints. I gave the paintings to her mother.” 

“How did she die?” 

“Sorry bud, I don’t feel like talking about it.” He snorted.  Reluctantly, I handed me a black and white photograph of a woman who was smiling as she unpacked a picnic basket.  She wore a simple dress and a smile.  She was beautiful. 

The dream was always the same.  I woke up when I heard them yelling at each other.  I crawled out of my crib since I was only three-years old and went to the kitchen.  I saw them yelling at each other as I passed them unnoticed into the kitchen where I would have some fun with the pots and pans.

I heard a scream coming from the living room and so I got up to see what was happening.

She was lying on the stairs with her eyes wide open.

“Mom.” I reached out to touch her.

“Let her sleep.” The angel sitting a few steps up told me.

“She’s awake.  Her eyes are open.” I pointed.

“She is no longer here.” The angel explained.

“She’s right there.” I protested.

“She is with us now.” 

“Who are you?” I asked, but the angel began to fade until I could not longer see her.

I don’t remember much after that other than my father crying out, “No!  Please no!”  

“Rise and shine, sunshine.” Marsha pulled up the shade letting the sunlight  into my dark room. 

“Nooo.” I groaned.

“Time to get ready for school.” She gave me a tassel on my shoulder. I sat up but I wanted to go back to the dream. 

The angel was gone.  Evaporated in a haze of early morning sunshine, it would seem, but it was a school day.  I would put on my shirt and school tie after a morning routine of brushing my teeth and taking a shower including smearing on deodorant, something not all my classmates were doing regularly including Demond. 

Since I was considered mature, I was allowed to ride my bike to the school that was about a mile away from my house. It felt good to be part of the sixth grade commuter crowd.  Mr. Appleby made sure all of the commuters parked their bicycles in the proper place.  As a retired teacher, he made sure that his domain was in working order which made him seem pretty grouchy to the students.  I, on the other hand, had a soft spot for him, because he reminded me of my father.   He wore a baseball cap proclaiming he was a World War Two veteran. 

“Good morning.” Monsignor Drake said as I put the lock on my bicycle, “How are you this morning?” 

An impulse suddenly filled my head, “Monsignor?”

“Yes, what can I do for you?” He smiled down at me as I walked by his side into the school.

“I was wondering…do you believe in angels?” 

“Oh yes, most certainly.” He chuckled. 

“How about if they are naked?” 

He stopped in his tracks and glared at me for a minute. With a sigh, he asked, “Does this have anything to do with your puberty?”

He said “puberty” as if it was a foul tasting morsel in his mouth.

“No, not at all.” I decided I’d better come out straight forward with it. “I’ve been having a dream-”

“Ah, so it is a puberty thing.” He pointed his long index finger at the heavens. 

“No monsignor, it has to do with my mother.” I added quickly.

“Ugh, it’s worse than I thought.” He grimaced.

“No father, it’s about how she died.” I felt as if he was treating me like any other boy my age. I didn’t like it.

“Ah, I see.” He said, but I knew he did not see, “Your mother died by her own hand. And we know what happens.”

“What?” I stood there looking up at him.

“She has passed into the satan’s realm.” He coughed as he could not let himself say, “Hell.”

“She was a painter.  My father told me.” I shook my head.

“Painter?  What difference would that make?” He tilted his head as if I was a student asking for a hall pass. 

None apparently, but the naked angel told me she was at peace in my dream.  My mother was at peace.  It made me feel much better knowing that.  Grandma told me that she was a “smart cookie” and she had a lot of talent.  She had graduated from Syracuse University and got her teaching certificate.  

Their family story had been a sad and tragic one.  When grandpa was 52 years old, he passed away from heart failure.  He had been a very prestigious lawyer, but his retirement plan matured in two more years, so grandma who had been used to a life of privilege, was suddenly penniless.  Life became hard.  My mother loved her father very much and was broken hearted when he passed.  Then her cousin died of cancer.  They attended school together and were best friends as well as cousins.  My mother had no one to turn to.  My father was going through battle fatigue, or as we know it today, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, from his time in Korea.

No one talked about any of this.  Dad would not talk about the memories he brought back in his duffle bag from Korea.  He told me he did desk duty, but the two purple hearts hanging from his uniform in the closet told another story.

In his emotional reaction to my mother’s passing, he refused to have a headstone made for her grave.  

“There were things your mother neglected when you were an infant.” The angel told me, but would not specify.  I had felt my mother’s depression was so debilitating, not even the cries from her infant son would get her out of bed.

I was a prisoner to some extent as she was a prisoner to her own illness.  Grandma would tell me some of the stories that no one would.  

He denied everything until I told him the story the naked angel told me.  His face froze.  He closed his eyes.  In a voice that wasn’t his own, he asked, “Did your grandmother tell you this?”

“No, dad, I was there I remember.” I explained.

“How can you remember, you weren’t even three years old when she passed.” I could see tears in his eyes.  And it shocked me, because I had never seen my father shed a single tear before. 

I would never tell him about the angel, but I knew as I grew up, the angel was just a powerful memory I would always have of my mother. In keeping with what they were teaching me at school, it was my mother’s angel and the only way her story would be told.  

No one else, including Monsignor Drake wanted to hear the story the naked angel was telling me, so I would keep it to myself. It was after all a family tradition.  

My own father would pass away from congenital heart failure when he was forty-seven years old, just months from his forty-eighth birthday.  People line up around the block at St. Francis Funeral Home to pay their final respects to him.  I was only twenty years old at the time.  The following year, I would enlist in the United States Air Force where I would earn honor graduate at Lackland Air Force Base before moving on to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver.  

“Your father would be so proud of you.” Marsha told me when I called her about earning the honor at basic training. 

I had to wipe some tears away when I hung up.

I would later learn that everyone got together to get my mother a headstone with her nade and the dates of her short life in parentheses.  

While living in Arizona, my Uncle Ken came to visit me and tell me the story of what really took place back in 1957.  It was everything the angel told me about.  There were no surprises, but he would conclude by saying, “She was just a very confused and distraught young woman.  She loved you very much.” 

Within an hour, he had answered all my questions and told me she was a very talented woman.  This is what the angel had been telling me all along.  

Later that year, Ken would pass away as he watched television.

But he gave me the gift of verifying my mother’s story.  She did not take her own life of her own volition, but rather due to a mental condition, a symptom of her depression that no one could cure.  

The naked angel and I agree on this totally.  

“So, Monsignor Drake was telling me you had some questions.” Sister Dominique.

“No sister, I have no further questions.” I nodded as I took my seat in the classroom for Religious Instruction.  

“Very good.” She appeared somewhat relieved, “Now class today we are going to talk about Beatitudes.  Can anyone tell me one of them?” 

I raised my hand.