Calling All Angels

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."

~ Rumi

On the morning of September first, my friend Jaimi’s husband called. “I don’t know how to say this, Beth,” he said, “but Jaimi died a couple of hours ago.”

This is the call. The siren that wakes us at two in the morning. The distant scream of a child. The cackling of a coyote. The roar of a lion.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“They tried to get her on a helicopter to transport her to Tucson, but she kept crashing,” Braden said. “She didn’t make it.”

Jaimi was gone; the vacuum of grief gripped tight in my chest. “What can I do?”

“You were a good friend. Come get her plants. She would want you to have them.”

It was a random thing to say, but Jaimi loved her flowers. From the other side, a place I could not yet fathom, she knew they would die too if I didn’t take them. “I’ll be there soon. What are you going to do?”

“She’s still at the hospital here in town. I want to see her. The doctor said it was pneumonia and sepsis. I didn’t know, Beth. I didn’t know she was so sick.”

Jaimi was fifty-seven years old. She had a kind spirit, always looking for the good in people. She was delicate: thin fingers, small feet, and a tiny waist, but she was not frail. She beat throat cancer in 2017, and the battle scars of chemotherapy and radiation caused side effects she never complained about. No longer able to talk, we kept our phones handy for texting and explaining things. She had just opened a bakery after investing in products, equipment, and marketing, and she had bought tickets for her and Braden to see the comedian Gabrial Iglesias. This wasn’t in her plans. It isn’t in any of our plans.

I cried until my tears morphed into a battle cry, and I had to do something. Anything. I rinsed my face before heading to Jaimi’s to pick up the gorgeous potted plants she took such pride in.  

My friendship with Jaimi grew out of our mutual love of cooking, gardening, animals, and weirdly, our interest in the paranormal. “Have you seen spirits?” she asked.

“What?” I asked and pointed at her phone.

She texted Spirits. Have you seen spirits or ghosts?

I’ve had several encounters with spirits and other paranormal phenomena. Things I rarely talk about until I meet a kindred spirit. Jaimi and I settled in on the sofa in her living room that day and spent the afternoon sharing our experiences about the unexplained.

Before I left, she winked and texted, So, you believe in ghosts?

“I don’t think of the paranormal as something I do or do not believe in,” I said. “I think it’s simply part of our shared existence, of our time here and beyond.”

She excitedly signed the word Yes! And we hugged before I left.

Jaimi and I had stood on this side of the veil separating life here on earth and what lies beyond many times due to illness. This shared understanding and our conversations regarding the paranormal came flooding back that night after the tears and anger had taken their toll, gutting me, and I sat on the floor in the bathroom with Angel, a kitten I had rescued the night before while Jaimi lay in the hospital.

My granddaughter Ada and I had been outside feeding the feral cats that live on the porch and in our garage. As I crouched down to fill a cat bowl, a long-haired, bone-colored kitten maybe six months old, with streaks of fawn and black fur appeared and jumped into my lap, startling me. After rescuing dozens of cats, this was a first. It usually takes days to lure a cat into a trap using cans of tuna. “Well, hello darling, who are you?”

I turned to Ada. “What should we call her?” I asked.

“Her name is Angel,” she said.

“Yes, I believe her name is Angel,” I said, before scooping up the kitten and bringing her inside, knowing she was no match for the coyotes that cruise our neighborhood after dark.

Jaim’s gone were still just thoughts pooling around my grief, morphing into words. Into the truth. It had been a terribly sad day, and I hadn’t made time for the kitten. But now sitting in the quiet with this delicate, impossibly thin little girl on my lap who had Jaimi’s sea-blue eyes, I wondered if Jaimi knew the truth while in the hospital and had sent me a gift, knowing I would need a sign, something I could hold onto to heal. I held the kitten close to my chest and whispered, “I will love you always.”

Calling All Angels by Train