I don't know what
happens after death, but I love hearing about what others have to say. Really,
I'm undecided.
I don’t know what happens after death either, I’m really still
undecided too, but under my circumstances, I’m thinking about it a lot lately, and
I guess I’m more hopeful than ever before. I do have a story I can share with you,
perhaps it’s an angel story, I don’t really know how to interpret it, but I was
a skeptic when it happened, and still don’t know what to think about it, might
be best not to try to figure it out, but it’s certainly relevant to what you
are asking us about, or maybe not, you can decide for yourself. Before this happened to me, if someone had
told me it happened to them, I probably would not have believed it, so you can make
of it what you will.
So context: my screen name, Sidewalker is a term from
Therapeutic Horseback Riding (Hippotherapy), my passion for around 40 years in
which I have played every role from Sidewalker to program founder and President,
but I have always considered myself to be first and foremost, a Sidewalker. In Therapeutic Horseback Riding, there is a
horse with a disabled rider, and a therapeutic team that consists of a Certified
Therapist giving instructions and conducting the lesson, a Leader leading the
horse, and two Sidewalkers walking along side the horse, the Sidewalker’s job
is to physically support the rider when necessary, positively interact, help
with the lesson, and most importantly, protect the rider in the event of an
emergency. I was very good at it but in walking around an arena for hours at a
time, my mind tends to wander, I’d start to think about work, or something, and
get lost in thought and stop paying attention. At the time our farm had a
staging area with an open arena next to the parking area and barn, and then
about 150 yards out across a field is a covered arena, we do lessons in both
arenas, and the entire farm had an eight-foot chain link fence around it.
OK, so here’s what happened about ten years ago, I’m out at
the covered arena with a student, our barn manager and a volunteer are on
the open side of the arena against the fence watching the lesson, the rider is
a young autistic girl that is non-speaking and communicates with ASL. About half
way through the lesson I completely zoned out thinking about something else and
as I came around the corner I saw an old woman, maybe 80, standing a few feet
away from the other two against the fence. Seeing her startled me and all she
did was smile at me, but it was a profound smile that snapped me to attention
and I don’t exactly know how to describe it, it wasn’t verbal, but in that
smile I heard her say, “You know what to do” very clearly. Now, completely alert and in the moment, I looked back at the horse and rider and right at that moment
the horse stumbles and goes down head over heals landing on his back, it all seemed to happen in
slow motion and as the girl passed by me I grabbed her, pulled her off and
turned away from the horse to protect her. Everybody was shaken up but fine,
the other two who were watching ran out to help, after everyone was calmed down,
we got the girl back on the horse and finished the lesson (that’s imperative in
this situation) and I asked the others who that woman was and where she went, and
nobody else saw her, at least I didn't think anybody else saw her.
So, we finish the ride and go back to the staging area to
dismount the rider, she excitedly runs over to her mother to tell her what
happened, and in the meantime I’m asking people about the woman I saw, and still nobody
else saw her, which is perplexing because an 80 year old woman certainly didn’t
climb in and out over the fence and I don’t see how she could have come out to
the covered arena without somebody having seen her. So, Mom and daughter walk over and I’m
thinking Mom is upset and needs to be reassured about the incident, I tell her it was certainly
exciting but there was no real danger, and she tells me the reason her daughter is
so excited is because she thinks she saw her grandmother out there. I said I did too and asked where she went because
I want to thank her, and her Mom tells me the girl’s grandmother died two years
ago.
I don’t know what we saw but I do know we both saw it, and I
believe whatever I saw was protecting the girl like her loving grandmother
would want her protected if she was alive. I’ve always
believed that heaven and hell were metaphorical concepts, I think I still do,
and like I said, I would never have believed this story had it not happened to
me, and there are probably a lot of other explanations besides thinking her grandmother
appeared as an angel or something, but I know something did happen that is very hard
to explain.
I do have to believe that in some way, that girls grandmother protected her that day by making me pay attention at the
critical moment. The how and why is just
too much for me to unpack, so I don’t really try to figure it out, but as a
result I’m a lot less skeptical of the similar stories people tell, and on a
visceral level, my emotional feelings about the subject matter are a lot more
positive. I still don’t know what to make of it, but I have to believe in
what happened to me that day. It would have been my worst nightmare if that
girl had been hurt because I wasn’t paying attention, and to this day I want to
thank her grandmother for what she did, so I guess on some level, I believe I heard
from someone who had died two years before.
So there you go, that’s my angel story, from a guy that intellectually
doesn’t really believe in angels, but hey, as the Beatles said, “I've got a feeling,
A feeling deep inside, Oh yeah”.
