The Evergreen Journal – Strange Visitations (Memoir)
STRANGE VISITATIONS, MEMOIR
BY LYNDA MCKINNEY LAMBERT
As published in the Spring/Summer Edition of Magnets & Ladders.
Near the final days of 2007, our forty-two-year-old daughter, Heidi,
called to say she was just diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer.
She was in shock, and I was speechless.
Family members accompanied her when she visited the oncology surgeon. We told him, “We are Heidi’s support team.” We all heard the bad news with her.
“We found an additional problem. You also have kidney cancer. We never expected to find this but there is a tumor growing on one of your kidneys. We will have two surgeons working on her. First, the kidney surgeon will operate on her. After that, I will remove the ovarian cancer. The surgery will be approximately twelve to fourteen hours long.”
The room was silent. Later, Heidi told us that when she heard how many hours she was to be in surgery, she went blank and could not remember anything else that was said. We were all stunned because we all knew that ovarian cancer is deadly and Heidi had stage 3C. The future looked grim.
Several family members were with us for the day of waiting the long hours at the hospital during the surgery. When the first surgeon finished work on her kidney, he came into the waiting room.
“I removed a cancer that was the size of a quarter from one kidney. I filled the hole with fat from her body and I expect her to have a complete recovery from this surgery.”
This gave us some comfort, but we knew the next surgeon was now at work and it would be more hours of waiting.
After the surgery, Heidi was in the ICU. She was in excruciating pain and nothing brought relief She was agitated, and in constant pain. The staff worked to regulate her medications. A nurse was directly outside her ICU room watching Heidi through the glass wall. Someone sat at that computer almost constantly, regulating medications and watching stats.
After three days of intense pain and struggling to breathe, Heidi was exhausted It seemed like she was losing ground. The doctor made the decision that she had to be put on a ventilator to try to give her lungs some relief and a chance to recover. He came to see her day and night, and was perplexed as to what had caused her lungs to fail. He explained she had developed ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome).
Heidi remained on the ventilator and one week turned into the next. Since that time fifteen years ago, when I see a butterfly in a summer field, it brings back a specific memory. The impressions are still vivid when I think of the ICU that day as I sat quietly, watching my unconscious daughter, being kept alive by a ventilator. I was facing my own personal fears because I could not actually see Heidi.
My battle began a year earlier, in January 2007, when I suddenly lost the vision in my right eye. It happened quickly and without any previous warnings. I had Ischemic Optic Neuropathy, which kills the optic nerve and causes blindness.
I could not tell if it was day or might. And, it was just about this time that Heidi learned she was in trouble with Ovarian Cancer.
Like most people who go blind suddenly, it takes a long time for them to get help or know what to do. At the time of Heidi’s hospitalization, I had not yet found help or a rehabilitation program. I struggled to help Heidi, yet, I could not even see her.
I managed to figure out how to get from the waiting room to the ICU unit. I could go back and forth but I could not leave that area; I had no mobility training and did not know how to locate anything on different floors. I slept in the waiting room most nights, so that I could go and check on Heidi or stay with her as needed. When Heidi’s husband or another person came, then they would bring me something to eat and drink. It was a harrowing time in my life, but my concern for Heidi’s recovery by far outweighed my worries about my own problems.
Though I could not see, in the natural sense because of sight loss, on one particular day I watched quietly while two butterflies played together in the stillness of thin air. This strange visitation was just a couple of months after I lost most of my sight.
Tubes sprouted out of her body and up to the ceiling. Tubes were attached to machines on both sides of her bed. I felt like I was living in a netherworld. I seemed to be viewing my daughter through a sheer gray curtain that no one could pass through. I felt helpless. I sat in a chair at the foot of her bed. Soon, I realized that Heidi and I had two visitors that had not come in through the door.
Two enormous butterflies emerged from the atmosphere near her feet. I saw every detail in full color. I never saw such butterflies before that day. The vibrant pair flew gently, gracefully forward. They appeared to be playing with each other, as butterflies do when you see them gliding and hovering around the dancing blossoms in a field on a summer day. These butterflies were deep crimson red. Each graceful wing was the size of my hand. They were bright, velvety, and generously proportioned.
They were dancing together. This was a miraculous moment like something from another world. Heidi’s body became the field over which the butterflies zig-zagged back and forth. They moved so elegantly towards her head. I watched them for what felt like a long time, but I believe it was probably only seconds. The dance of the red butterflies was like an eternal moment when time did not exist.
The butterflies emerged at the bottom of her bed, at her feet. They flew gracefully above her and moved silently from her feet to her head. They were as real as anything I have ever seen. I was wide awake and I was an eyewitness to a silent and elegant dance performance. The strange visitation was comforting and peaceful.
The only thought I had during and after the event is that God was present with us. Heidi looked the same as before, but I was left with the feeling that a healing was taking place.
In the weeks that followed I remembered something I had read in Psalm 91:4 that says, “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”
It felt like, for a few seconds, God allowed me to see the spirit world and the beauty of it all.
I saw a mystery. The butterflies were harbingers of what was to come.
In my book, Walking by Inner Vision: Stories & Poems, I tell the story of this miraculous event. I am accustomed to tracing down ideas to their roots, so that we can comprehend the things that are around us in our world. In the story in my book, I do that with the imagery of butterflies: I share a number of cultural thoughts on the meaning of butterflies. And, across the ages and the cultures, there are many significant similarities to explain what I witnessed. This is true of everything, I believe. To understand our time, our Zeitgeist, we need to study the ages that proceeded ours to really figure it all out. We need to know history, and our place in it.
I think there is a very fine line between the physical and spiritual realms. Some people say it is a thin vale, and it is torn at times, for a person to see to the other side. I’ve been present when some of my loved ones died, and I could see it happen to them. In an instant, they saw something and they passed through with a deep, tender breath and a soft exhale. They were gone.
Before my sight loss, I had one other such supernatural event take place.
I was a motorcyclist, and I had been out all day riding my motorcycle with my husband and friends. Around 11:30 pm I was on my way home and we turned to go up the little hill to our house
Suddenly, my bike stopped and slammed me down hard into the middle of the road. My right foot was caught under the 500-pound bike. The weight of the bike, and the hot exhaust pipes were on my leg. The entire bike was on top of my body. I began screaming. I was aware that the hot pipes would burn through my clothing and into my right leg. I screamed, “My Leg. My Leg. Get me off this road. My leg.”
My husband saw me go down but he had to drive up the hill and park the bike before he could reach me. I was laying in the middle of the road under the bike. I knew that in the darkness if a car comes to the crest of the hill it will run over me. As I screamed, a very large man dressed in black appeared to my right. Instantly, I was off the road, standing beside my bike and he was gone. There was no conversation or words between us. Instantly, I stood there beside my upright bike. There is no way I would ever have been able to lift it up. Yet it was standing and I was standing and his hand was on the right handlebar of the motorcycle.
My husband recalls seeing the large man and me, standing there in the darkness as he was racing to get to me because there was a street light just up the road from where we stood. My husband also remembers that the enormous man vanished. He did not go up or down that road. And, the other things that happened that night is that the man disappeared to the right of the road. At that place, there is only a solid picket fence and no way anyone could go through it. He just famished in the darkness.
To my amazement, even though the dual pipes of the bike were on my leg, there were no burns in my jeans or my flesh. My foot was badly bruised and sore for weeks from the weight of the bike.
This is the only time I saw something that was supernatural and it was an extreme emergency when it happened.
Was the extremely tall, dark, man who came out of the darkness an angel? I have no idea. But I know he was sent to help me that night.
I know that an angel is not a human sized being with wings and silky gowns, as people like to portray them in paintings. I think those images are more reflective of Greek Mythology. In the bible there are a number of visitations by angels and in each situation the angel always says, “Fear Not!” for it must be that they look frightening to a human. And their stature, in Biblical texts, is larger than human size. They typically appear to give warnings or predictions about impending events. So, considering this, I would say that my experience that night on the road was certainly with something or someone who came to rescue me.
I will finish my story by telling you that I was in the waiting room, near the ICU, with my sister when we were told they were going to try to take Heidi off of the ventilator. Within moments, we heard her speaking in the distance. Her voice was so deep and she was talking continuously. In fact, from that time forward, they called her “The Talking Princess.” Heidi’s husband likes to say that from that time on, she has never stopped talking. Heidi recovered a few days after her visitation from the butterflies. But, when a person is on a ventilator and suffered from ARDS, the recovery can be a long time in coming. Heidi still has anxiety, flash-backs, This is normal for a person who had ARDS. Heidi weighed about eighty pounds when she was released from the hospital a month after the surgery. She needed a lot of physical therapy to bring strength back and to build muscles again.
Heidi and I call each other some days, as we are working in our studios. We take a break and discuss what we are working on. I am most grateful that she recovered and is enjoying a creative and good life.
I know there is an afterlife and that the decisions we make in this present life determine our path once we pass across that thin line between physical and spiritual worlds. I believe the Genesis story of the creation in the first chapter of Genesis where we see our purpose from before the time of creation. We are image-bearers of God.
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Photo:
American Poet and Artist. Lynda McKinney Lambert. Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Bio: Lynda McKinney Lambert is a retired professor of fine arts and humanities, Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. She taught courses in Humanities, Studio Art, and English Literature. Lynda also developed and taught travel/study courses each summer in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Czech Republic.
Lynda authored five published books that focus poetry and creative non-fiction essays, and memoirs.
Her writings are inspired by art, art history, music, European history and travel.
Lynda, is currently taking a Sabbatical break to do research and work on developing two new books.
In addition, she is creating a new body of mixed-media fiber artworks at her River Road Studio.
Lynda lives in rural western Pennsylvania in the village of Wurtemburg where she cares for her 2 dogs and 6 cats and tends her flower gardens. She is married to Charles R. (Bob) Lambert, and the couple have five grown children.
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© April 15, 2023. Lynda McKinney Lambert. All Rights Reserved.
Note: This story was published in Magnets & Ladders, Spring/Summer Edition, 2023.
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