Reflection On the Lady in Purple

So, I got a response from my website yesterday, asking if I had a chance to look up the lady in purple to see if she was a real nurse or, did I think she was my guardian angel. It’s a good question I intentionally wrote the story that way, to let you, the reader, decide. Sadly, they closed Wesley Rehab for budget reasons shortly after I was dismissed so I have never had a chance to talk to anyone from there. For me, I think there could have been two different ladies in purple; the first night nurse that introduced herself and told me she was going to watch over me and the one in the corner that did. I had never seen her during the day.  I told Deb about her and that she needed to meet her, but Deb never saw her.   What I do know is that for three nights when I needed comfort, she was there. Every time I woke and looked around to check, she was still standing there, every time. The fact that I never saw her interact with anyone, I only saw her at night and when she woke me up because my nose piece fell out, why did she insist that I needed to do it; why wouldn’t she physically help? Why did the other nurse not acknowledge her being in the room?  I still have lots of questions, but for me she was my guardian angel.

I will share another personal story from when I was much younger. I was not desperate or on drugs and I can honestly tell you this was real as well, but with fewer possible excuses.

I was twenty years old back home in Montana I had just returned from college for summer break. I had been logging with my brother, Ted, and we had just had a rough day. It had rained all morning and everything was wet and muddy. We had cut and loaded our first load and decided that was enough for the day. As we were trying to get out of the woods, Ted got us stuck and in the process of getting out the rear U-joint snapped.  

He looked at me and said, “You’re the mechanic, go fix it.”

My response was, “You broke it, you fix it.”

Ted just laughed, pulling his cap down over his eyes and sliding down in his seat to take a nap and said, “If you want to get home tonight you better fix it.”

Being the younger brother, I said a few choice words and got the toolbox and spare parts out of the back of the truck; I could hear Ted laughing from inside the nice warm cab. It was a mess, the rain was pouring down, and I was lying in a constant flow of water. It wasn’t hard and didn’t take too long but I was sure cold by the time I was finished. I got back into the truck thanking my big brother for all his help. He just laughed as I shivered all the way home. When we got back to the house I went right into the house and laid down in front of the wall heater. I grabbed a bunch of newspapers and put them down first because I didn’t want to get mom’s new carpet dirty and turned the heater on high. As I laid on my belly getting warm, Ted had gone to change into sweats and headed upstairs to make lunch.

“I’m going to make a sandwich; you should get up and one make one too,” he said.  

“In a bit, I’m good here,” I answered.

“Suit yourself,” Ted replied and ran upstairs humming a tune. I could hear Ted upstairs in the kitchen singing his stupid song and banging pots and dishes. I laid there with my eyes closed enjoying the heat trying to ignore Ted’s terrible singing, when I suddenly got a feeling that someone was watching me. I opened my eyes and laying just opposite of me was a man with dark, black hair and well-groomed mustache and chin whiskers. He startled me and I tried jumping up but couldn’t move.   Now, I was scared, I didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t dreaming. I tried to yell for help, but nothing came out. I could hear Ted singing upstairs and, in my head, I’m screaming at Ted to get his butt down here, but still nothing came out of my mouth.

He was dressed in a black, old-fashioned western suit with an unbuttoned vest revealing a white shirt. As I looked at him, a million thoughts were rushing through my mind, ‘Who are you? What do you want? Man, he looks like the devil.’ He threw his head back a little as if he was laughing and his mouth started to move, but nothing came out, all I could hear was Ted upstairs being loud, entertaining himself.  As his lips moved, I heard it. It was not verbal, but it was being spoken to me in my head. ‘No, I’m not the devil, I’m your friend, I’m here to help. It’s going to be okay.’ I suddenly got a feeling of complete calm and peace; I liked it. I felt safe. About that time Ted hit a terrible high note, and the man turned his head in disgust and back towards me, shaking his head with a disagreeing grin. Again, I heard, ‘It’s going to be okay, I’m watching over you.’  I could hear Ted coming down the stairs quickly, the man turned his head towards the stairs and smiled, then turned back at me, ‘It’s going to be ok,’ he repeated. As Ted came rushing around the corner, the man disappeared instantly, and I immediately jumped to my feet.

Ted looked at me and said, “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I just looked at him for a second trying to grasp it all and said, “I’m taking a shower” and pushed past Ted to go to the bathroom. I can say I didn’t handle it well at first. I knew I wasn’t dreaming but I couldn’t figure out what had just happened. I looked into the bathroom mirror and slapped my face a couple times. It didn’t make things any clearer, so I just took a nice hot shower; that always helps.

It rained again the next day, and it took a couple days before we could get back into the woods; it was a nice, needed rest.  I did my best not to dwell on the fact that I might be crazy, so I just pushed my experience into a far, back closet and shut the door. In other words, I tried to forget about it.  The spot we had been cutting was still wet and mucky, so we went to a different area up on a nob on the edge of a steep slope. Ted and I spilt up to start our cutting. I picked the area of the steepest part of the slope; it looked like it had the biggest trees.  We had an ongoing competition over who could cut the biggest tree, and I thought this area looked promising. Right from the start I saw it. It was huge for a lodgepole pine tree; it must have had a base of 30-40” in diameter, maybe bigger. It was tall but it had a crook 30’ up, and a big widow maker in it slightly above the crook. I could tell that it was not going to fall where I wanted it to so I thought I would save it for later.  I went over 20 feet to the edge of the steep slope, almost a drop off and started cutting.  It surprised me, I had never cut a tree that was on that steep of a slope before. The tree didn’t fall; it jumped off the stump and landed at the bottom of the slope. It was cool to watch as it flew through the air. I dropped three side by side and they all landed at the bottom of the slope, so I started working my way down cutting trees as I went. 

When I reached the bottom, I started bucking them up to size. When I got to the last one it was jammed between two standing trees. There was no good way to fix this, to cut it out was going to be dangerous and to leave it, well, what fun is that? I decided to cut off the excess of the fallen tree on each side of the standing trees first. That was easy. The part that was left was twisted between the two trees forming a big bow waiting to pop. So, I cut the two standing trees down just above the wedged log, leaving the two stumps and the wedged log resting about a foot off the ground. I was getting ready to make the final cut to free the trapped log when I heard Ted’s screaming over my own chainsaw, I looked up to see Ted standing on the top of the ridge yelling down. Instantly I knew he cut my giant tree at the top of the slope. I never saw it, but I could feel the giant lodgepole closing distance. Run! I thought but where? There was nowhere to run between all the fallen trees on the ground and the direction the big tree was falling, I was trapped. I just ran in place as I was trying to find a safe exit. 

Then I heard him, the same voice from two days ago in my head, Casey, Stop! Get rid of your saw! Drop your head and get under that log! His voice was calm but forceful. I stopped, threw my saw far away and looked at the log that was still jammed a foot off the ground I dropped my head and started to buckle my knees to get under the log when it hit me. The force of the falling giant slammed me into the ground hard. It all happened so fast. When I opened my eyes, the world was moving in slow motion; I watched the pine needles fall and the dust rose from the ground with no sound. Then everything caught up, Bam! Needles and dust everywhere. The vibration of the giant tree banging against the log. I took a deep breath, hardly believing I was still alive and worked my way out of the debris of the fallen tree. When I got out, I stood up and walked to the cut end of the tree and sat down in disbelief at what had just happened.  

Ted came working his way down the steep slope cussing and calling me names, “You stupid SOB, why didn’t you get out of the way! What are you f@@#$@ stupid!”

I just sat there surprisingly calm, and said, “I left that tree because it wasn’t going to fall right, didn’t you see the crook and the widow maker? Do you ever think? You just fell a tree on me!” It was probably the calmest I’ve ever been, it was funny I didn’t grab part of the tree and start beating him with it.

Ted just looked at me and said, “Well, I thought I just killed you.” He sat down beside me and said, “Man, I hate this job!”

“Me too,” I replied and we sat there for a long time not saying a word. I finally got up and stretched a bit and checked myself out, I was a little stiff, but not even a scratch.

 I never thought much of it, just me getting lucky. A few months later a bunch of us were setting around telling stories, so I talked about the man in the black suit. My cousin Shad said, “That was your guardian angel, he was trying to tell you something.” That was when it all clicked.  For the first time I put it all together, the feeling of calm, the voice telling me what to do, coming out of that without a scratch!

So long story short, I believe in guardian angels, I believe I have been blessed to see one. Was the lady in purple one? I do not know, but I do know angels walk among us and she was an angel to me.