My Mother's Angels

“A person always exceeds and resists the limits of a story about them...”
—Catherine Lacey, Biography of X

When the angels came to my mother, they were not, as might be expected, wielding flaming swords to avenge all wounds. Mostly, they were singing show tunes.

In her last few years she lived alone near my brother and his family in a house of which every surface had become a canvas for her self-expression. An antique bookshelf held cookbooks, stuffed animals, a styrofoam mannequin head in sunglasses, and assorted vases and charms; a kewpie doll wore WWII pilot goggles on its head and a political button on its dress; a life-sized cardboard stand-up of Eddie Fisher stood in the corner drinking a Coke. My grandmother’s china kept counsel with Japanese lacquerware (from when my stepfather was stationed on Okinawa), Native American-themed posters and rugs (from decades in the Southwest), and a steamer trunk full of our childhood school papers. She would write her opinions on news clippings and stick them on the fridge between family photos.

Growing up, we always opened our gifts under a Christmas tree topped with a Star of David. In later years that display shrank to a small cross and star on a silver chain around her neck—not a statement of creeds (she distrusted organized religion) but another expression of her multitudes.

When she started going deaf, it was the world that had to bend. Instead of getting hearing aids, she taped a sign next to the front door in her graceful script, “Doorbell Broken!” When begged to see reason, she blamed us all for whispering.

Phone conversations were possible because she could max out the volume. When I called from across the country, the radio was usually blaring some angry voice that incited her outrage. She’d rail against a wide range of villains, past and present—most reliably Hitler and “that man, your father.” She couldn’t sleep some nights, fretting that her ex-husband would get off “scot-free” for old transgressions and God might forgive Nazis.

“Even if they’re truly sorry for what they did?” I’d ask.
“I don’t care if they’re sorry. I want them to be punished!”

By then she was yelling directly at God as I stretched out my phone arm to spare my mortal ear.

Worried about her living alone after an illness in which she’d lain in pain for days before anyone knew, two of my brothers stealthily rigged up her house with motion sensors that allowed them to keep vigil from apps on their computers. Luckily, she never found out that her worst suspicions had come true: she was being surveilled.

Above the talk-show hosts peddling conspiracies at top volume, she began to hear other voices.

First, there was a voice that just said “Hello?” as if a neighbor had popped their head in to see if anyone was at home. She matter-of-factly named it the Hello Voice.

Another would call her name in a questioning tone, as if through the kitchen wall.

She’d pad to the front door in her slippers and check to see it was still locked. It was easy enough to confirm that nobody was peering in the window above the kitchen sink, too. She’d describe these experiences with the good-humored bafflement of somebody who found it weird and funny to hear disembodied voices—somebody, that is, who was not completely out of her mind—but pleas to visit a neurologist fell on deaf ears.

My younger brother on why he couldn’t let her babysit the kids anymore: “Because she can’t hear people who are in the room, and she hears people who are not in the room.”

Toys still filled her living room, waiting for grandchildren who’d long since outgrown them. A tiny wrought-iron child’s tea chair propped up her feet as she watched TV.

My mother’s living room, seen from the kitchen.

Then in 2015, our nephew died, and the angels came.

Next to him in his car was a note of which I know only the heart-shattering end: that he’d decided everyone would be better off without him. I thought I’d known what it meant for a family to break, but divorce and estrangement were trivial compared to the body-slam of grief that hit my older brother and his family and reverberated through the rest of us.

I’d never seen my mother laid so low. Losing a grandchild broke her open, and she hadn’t the breath to raise her voice above a murmur. There was no outrage, no talk of blame—just deep, uncomprehending grief.

“Why, why?”

I asked the same question over and over on long walks, amplified with f-bombs, but the only reply was my own voice echoing inside my head.

Then my mother called to say in a hushed voice, “I’m hearing angels! They’re singing, and it’s so beautiful. I wish you could hear them.”

The first song was a hymn sung in sweet, solemn harmony. The refrain was “all through the night,” and the choir in her head sang it until she knew the words by heart.

“I’ve never heard this song before,” she said.

She gave me a complete stanza to look up (she’d never gotten used to a computer), and I found the words in an 18th-century Welsh hymn.

All through the Night (Ar Hyd y Nos)

Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee All through the night; Guardian angels God will send thee All through the night. Soft the drowsy hours are creeping, Hill and vale in slumber sleeping, I my loving vigil keeping, All through the night.

While the moon her watch is keeping All through the night; While the weary world is sleeping All through the night. Over thy spirit gently stealing, Visions of delight revealing, Breathes a pure and holy feeling, All through the night.

Deep the silence round us spreading, All through the night; Dark the path that we are treading, All through the night. Still the coming day discerning, By the hope within us burning, To the dawn our footsteps turning, All through the night.

Star of Faith the dark adorning, All through the night; Leads us fearless toward the morning, All through the night. Though our hearts be wrapped in sorrow, From the home of dawn we borrow, Promise of a glad tomorrow, All through the night.

As time passed and the pain faded to bearable levels, the angels kept singing, but they switched to a mix as eclectic as my mother’s decor. Hymns gave way to a medley of popular songs and show tunes from her youth. One morning she heard a lively rendition of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” as she sipped her coffee.

The music was still beautiful—they were angels, after all—but she confessed it got a little annoying at times because she couldn’t hear her regular programs.

“Sometimes I just want to watch TV,” she said.
“Ask them to take a break,” I said.¹

Eventually, the choir went quiet, or she managed to change the channel. But when one of my sisters was visiting, she heard our mom crooning in the middle of the night, “I’m singing with my angels.”

Untreated hearing loss and a wide array of disorders may cause auditory hallucinations.

A broken-open heart lets the light in.

Love and mercy are unearned gifts.

On this winter solstice in a rare year when Christmas and the first day of Chanukah coincide, I still don’t know in what mixture those truths apply. I can't wrap it all up neatly and tack on a bow. I’ll just share one more detail that deepened the mystery, a gift that had my name on it.²

On a dark, cold day at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016—time is a blur—she called to say her angels had hummed one word over and over with wistful longing: Home. Then they told her, That was for Jody.

Happy solstice. On every dark path you tread, may you borrow from the home of dawn.

My mother, Johanne Reichel, second angel from right.

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P.S. In case you need it—I did—here is Sarah Neu’s angelic voice singing a version of “All through the Night.”

1. For the record, I said this without the slightest sensation of falling down the crazy well and pulling up a chair.

2. As my mom once exhorted, “Don’t bite a gift horse in the mouth.”