Straight Paths- Touched By An Angel

Touched By An Angel

Loren Hardin

The Ashland Beacon

This is part two of a two-part series about Chuck, a retired warehouse manager, truck driver and school bus driver. Chuck and his wife, Eva, had seven adult children and Chuck pointed out, “All my kids took after me. They’re all tall.”  Chuck was passionate about sports. He coached Little League for several years. And when Chuck was employed as a truck driver, he would drive home for ballgames and then drive back to Dayton to work the same night.

                 Chuck was seventy-five years old when he enrolled in hospice services, but Chuck’s physical decline really began after open-heart surgery four years earlier. Chuck recounted, “I even died once, and I wish they had let me go. I left my body, and I crossed over a dark valley, but I wasn’t afraid. Then I came into a bright light, and I saw a crowd of people standing together like they were waiting for me. I had to come back but I didn’t’ want to. I never shared my testimony at church because I didn’t think people would believe me. I should have but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, I got too tenderhearted, and I couldn’t talk.”

                 Eben Alexander III, M.D., obtained his M.D. from Duke University Medical School and completed residencies at Duke, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard in neuroendocrinology. Dr. Alexander served fifteen years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School as associate professor of surgery, with specialization in neurosurgery. He wrote in his book, “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’ Journey into the afterlife”, that his neuroscience career taught him that near-death experiences are “brain-based illusions”, “mere fantasies”, until a near death experience of his own left him dumb-struck.

                 At age fifty-four Dr. Alexander was suddenly stricken with a rare illness and thrown into a coma for seven days. He wrote: “The place I went to was real… something beautiful emerged through the darkness. How beautiful it was! Filaments of white-gold light; then I heard a new sound, a living sound, like the most beautiful piece of music you’re ever heard…I found myself in a completely new world, the strangest most beautiful world I had ever seen…My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave. More importantly it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us.”

                 Now back to the focus of this week’s story. Fast forward to Chuck’s enrollment in hospice services and admission to our inpatient hospice room at Southern Ohio Medical Center. Amy and Kathy, Chuck’s daughters-in-law, shared the following story. Amy went first: “Chuck wasn’t doing well, so all the kids were staying in the room with Chuck. Everyone was sleeping except me and Kathy and Chuck’s daughter, Robin. Chuck was breathing really hard, so I stood by his bed watching him. Then I felt something brush against me and someone rubbing my back like they were trying to comfort me. I looked back and no one was there, but I still felt it. Then I looked back again and still didn’t see anybody. We were all so tired that I thought I was freaking myself out. So, I left the room for a while to walk around and get myself together. When I returned, Kathy was wide awake and sitting in the chair. Her face was all flushed, but she didn’t say a word to me, and I didn’t say anything to her about what had happened to me, but I knew she’d felt it too. Kathy ran out of the room and said, ‘I’m not coming back’.”

                 Kathy explained, “I felt someone brush the side of my face when I was sitting in the chair that night. I also saw a misty haze that I could see through. I thought I was losing my mind because we hadn’t gotten much sleep. So, I left the room to put some wet clothes on my face. And I didn’t want to go back into the room. It wasn’t until afterward that we remembered that when Chuck was in the hospital before he was admitted to hospice that the preacher had prayed for dad, that his guardian angels would watch over him.”  Amy added, “I told Chuck’s son, Mike that there was someone watching over his dad. They were right there beside his dad’s bed. I only wish we would have known at the time what it was. It wasn’t spooky, it was comforting.”

                  “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.” (Albert Einstein)

                 “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true” (Soren Kierkegaard).

                 “Be not forgetful to entertain angels, for some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:1-2).

                  Loren Hardin was a social worker with Southern Ohio Medical Center Hospice for twenty-nine years. You can contact him at 740.357.6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can purchase a copy of Loren’s book, “Straight Paths: Insights for Living from Those Who Have Finished the Course”, from Amazon.