Where did the time go?

Angels, angels, angels ...


December 1996 - I found myself walking around in West Oaks Mall - totally lost. Not lost in a physical sense ... in every other sense you can imagine. It was the holidays, I needed toys for my kids and I was pregnant with a baby that I had been told was going to die as soon as she was born. I was so lost I didn't know if I would ever find my way back to normal ... or if I would even survive the next few months.

But the holidays - not my time of year anyway - and here I was just trying to breath in and breath out - sometimes that is all I could accomplish the fear and sorrow and pain were so intense I just concentrated on that: just keep breathing. Sort of became a theme for that wonderful time in my life.

So, here I was - trying to find a Disney toy that my daughter didn't already own, and what to get my dear sweet son - who was so worried about me - could pick up on the stress and was very stressed out ... and with me just trying to breathe, was not much help - I am sure he is scarred for life (yet again) because of that period of time. Christmas carols were playing, people scurrying about shopping and laughing as if not a care in the world - and then it happened: a panic attack starts up. My vision narrows to tunnel vision, the music dims, people are talking, but I cannot hear them and the panic is so unbearable I don't know how to even get out of the mall and find my car.

I am hyperventilating, trying unsuccessfully not to cry and rooted in place. I am in front of a Hallmark store - right by their display window. I am frantically looking around - where am I? How did I get here? Where is my home? WHAT AM I DOING?

I look up ... and I see her:

a beautiful cherubic baby angel hanging in the window. I am mesmerized by her - she looks like pure gold and such a peaceful look on her face. She is holding her hand out - if beckoning to me - to calm down. I calm down a bit - and the words 'Peace, be still' came to mind. My breathing slowly returned to normal, I remembered where I was and where my home was. The panic became manageable, and so I started walking - right into that Hallmark store - and bought that cherubic angel ...

... she became my Rachael. My angel baby - that I would never raise, or watch grow up or have a relationship with. I hung her at the top of my tree, as I do every year ...

So every year I buy an angel for my Christmas tree - there are 14 'Rachael Angels' in all (plus a few extras - because, for some reason - I now have a thing for angels ...) she would have been 13 this year - but that first one was in 1996 - she was born in 1997 - so 14 in all.

In some ways it seems like yesterday - but in most ways it is a distant, bittersweet memory that I have recovered from. Which is saying a lot - I never knew a person could be that lost, scared, in so much pain - so many things were so ... big ... Like a huge insurmountable mountain I needed to climb - I just didn't know how I was going to do it ...

... but do it, I did - and came out the other end ... eventually ... a better person.

For you, Rachael, baby doll - Merry Christmas: