Authors: Lorna Byrne
I could see the deterioration in Joe: the grey around his
internal organs that I had seen before we married had got
darker, and around the area of his appendix I could see a
swollen mass of red.
I gave out to the angels; I told them it was so unfair to see
Joe suffering like that for months and months on end. I begged
them to help. The doctor said he could do nothing; he
apologised to Joe but said that the hospital wouldn't remove
his appendix unless he was critically ill.
I miscarried at three months. For about a week before my
little unborn baby left, the angels kept touching my belly and
beams of light would flash straight out. Many times I asked,
'Can my little baby not stay?' But I was always told, no.
Sometimes Joe asked me why was I sad and I would tell him it
was just the hormones and to take no notice of me. I never told
him what the angels had said.
No matter how sick Joe was he always tried to help around
the house. On that fateful day, I had been helping Joe to stack
turf in the shed and I told him that I wanted to go in and lie
down on the couch, that I was tired. I fell asleep for a while and
Joe came in and said the job was done – all the turf was in the
shed. The children stayed outside playing. I was going to get
up to make tea, but Joe said he would make it instead.
Joe was only in the kitchen a minute when I started to feel
horrific pain; I could feel the life going out of my body. I called
out to Joe urgently. He came immediately and sat beside me on
the couch and said I looked very pale. He went into the
bedroom to get a pillow to put under my head.
I felt my soul holding my baby's soul and rising out of my
body, going towards a beautiful light. I knew my baby had died
and that I was dying too
.
I was rising towards the light, carrying my baby. The pain
had gone. I was travelling through a tunnel of silver and gold:
an enormous tunnel made of shiny white angels. I couldn't see
the end of the tunnel as its path curved. I knew without being
told that I was on my way to Heaven, and I felt no fear, just
tremendous joy.
I could see other souls on their way to Heaven, too. They
looked human in appearance and were dressed in brilliant
white robes. I call the colour white because I don't have any
other word, but it was much more brilliant than the colour we
call white. Through their robes, I could also see the light of
their souls, and this radiated up through their faces, making
them look more pure and radiant than they ever had been on
this earth.
When I got to a particular point, a beautiful angel stood in
front of me and stopped me from going further. I knew
without being told why she was blocking my way, but she
spoke to me in the sweetest, gentlest and most compassionate
of voices.
'Lorna, you should not have come with your baby. You must
return.'
'I don't want to go back,' I said to the beautiful angel, but
deep down in my soul I knew it was not my time to come to
Heaven.
'Turn around, Lorna, and look back down the tunnel,' said
the angel.
I turned and I could see Joe holding on to my still body lying
on the couch, trying to feel a pulse, a breath, shaking me,
saying, 'Come back, come back – you can't die on me.' He was
praying as he talked.
I turned back to the angel and said, 'No matter how much I
love Joe and the children, I still don't want to go back to the
human world. Why would I go? Here I am in the presence of
God. Here I am perfect in every way. I feel unbelievably alive;
I feel no pain and no sadness of any kind.Why do I have to go?'
'You have no choice,' said the beautiful angel. 'You have to
return, Lorna.'
I looked at the soul of my little baby in my arms. He smiled
at me; his blue eyes sparkled and he was radiant with life. The
beautiful angel in front of me put out her arms to take him.
A powerful authority entered my soul. I knew I had no
choice, that I had to go back, that I wasn't meant to be there.
I kissed my baby, holding him very tight and then, very
reluctantly, put him into the beautiful angel's arms. I really did
not want to let him go, even though I knew that someday I
would see him again and that in the meantime this beautiful
snow-white angel would take care of him.
As soon as I had handed over my baby, it was as if God took
hold of my soul and brought it back gently through the tunnel,
back to the house in Maynooth and to the couch where my
body lay.
My soul started to enter my body slowly, but the pain was
horrific. I felt every pore, every organ, every bone, every bit of
flesh and muscle. Life was being poured back into a body
which had been dead for a few minutes. It was horrific pain
but, for some reason I am unable to understand, I couldn't cry
out; I couldn't make a sound.
Eventually I heard Joe's voice.
'Lorna, thank God you are alive. I thought you were dead.'
I managed to give him a weak little smile.
I lay there for hours, with the angels holding me, and I
wouldn't let Joe leave me, even to call a doctor or an
ambulance. Deep down inside I knew I was going to live, that
I was meant to live. I never told Joe that I had died for those
few minutes; he did not need to know that and it would have
only frightened him more than he had been already.
Eventually, Joe went to the phone-box and called my parents
and they came up to the house.
I asked Joe not to say anything about what had happened.
All I told Mum and Da was that I had been feeling unwell all
day and had started to bleed. Joe and Da brought me into the
hospital and Mum stayed and minded Christopher and Owen.
At the hospital they were very concerned that I seemed so
weak and, of course, I didn't tell them all of what happened
earlier that day, either. They did a scan and said they could see
nothing – there was no sign of the baby. The doctor came to
see me and he held my hand and said he was very sorry.
'You lost your baby. It must have happened before you got
to the hospital.'
As the doctor was leaving, Da walked in on his own and said,
'I'm so sorry you lost the baby. I know how much this baby
meant to you.' He had tears in his eyes as he talked with me. I
had never seen my father so upset over something to do with
me.
The doctors said I needed to stay in the hospital, and when
I was settled in the ward Joe and Da went home. A few days
later they did a D and C.
Joe came to visit me every night. He was worried about me
and sad that we had lost the baby. Two weeks later I was
discharged, but I was still very weak and spent a lot of time in
bed. I was so glad to get home and hold my children in my
arms and hug and kiss them.
It was years later when I told Joe more about what happened
that day; the day that I died and went some of the way to
Heaven and back. I told him as a way of consoling him in the
last few months of his life.
Many of us have a fear of death, but there is no need for it.
>At the moment of death there is no pain, no discomfort; some
people may have pain right up to that last moment, but then
there is none. You have no fear and anxiety – you go freely.
Death is like birth; I know you might think that's a strange
thing to say, but you are being born into a new life. You
actually don't 'die', it's only this physical shell that you leave –
like an empty egg shell.
I know there is a place called Hell, that it actually exists, but
God has never shown me anyone being sent there. I can only
go by what I have seen myself, and from what I have seen, God
forgives everyone – no matter what they have done. I know
this is hard for us to understand. A lot of the time we look for
justice and revenge. So it is very hard for us to understand, but
when our soul stands in front of God after death, it feels so
much love and desire to be with God that it wants so much to
stay there and it asks forgiveness in a very deep and real way;
forgiveness for all that was done on this earth out of the frailty
of the human condition.
And God in His infinite mercy forgives His child. We are all
nothing but children in the presence of God, who is our father.
Your soul is perfect; when your soul is free of your body it
can travel through the universe to places you could never even
imagine. How can I help you to understand how wonderful
this feeling is? There is no way to express it; no way to tell you,
unless you have experienced it yourself. And most of us have
to wait until we die to do this.
When you die, you are not on your own, you are accompanied
all the time by angels and those spirits who have gone
before you. You won't want to come back. Why, when you
have no more pain, no more tears, no more sadness, would you
want to get back into a human body? That is why people, when
they die, do not want to return and the only thing that brings
a soul back to a human body is being sent back by God,
because it is not yet time.
We have become very materialistic as a society, and so
frequently we look at death and ask, 'Is this it? I rot away and
there is nothing more?' I assure you there is more – much
more. I hope that through the books I write I can communicate
this and help people to understand. Believe what I say. Believe
that, yes, there is more, much more, even though I may not be
able to prove it or show it to you now: it is proven to everyone
when they die. Some people feel that that's too late – waiting
to die to see the proof. People are given proof while they are
alive, but sometimes they have to look or listen very hard to
recognise them.
A few days after I got out of hospital, the weather started to get
very cold. Joe was back working with the local County
Council, even though it was only a temporary contract, and I
was out in the shed getting turf for the fire when I heard my
name being called. I turned around but saw no one. I brought
the bucket of turf into the house and there, sitting in the chair
beside the fire, was an angel.
He startled me because he was very striking, very different
from any other angel I had ever seen. It was as if he was made
of jagged glass, of perfect shattered splinters which were all
identical in size and which all reflected light. His face and his
features were very sharp and as he stood up he was about
twelve feet tall, his head almost touching the ceiling. Very
unusually, music seemed to come from every part of him –
enchanting, soft, mellow music, quite unlike anything I have
ever heard before. It wasn't human music, but the sort of music
I could imagine hearing in Heaven.
'Hello, Lorna,' he said in a very soft voice. 'My name is
Kaphas. Something special is going to happen for you and Joe,
but particularly for Joe.'
'Angel Kaphas, can you tell me when?' I asked.
'Soon, Lorna. You will know when the angels descend on your
home.' Then Angel Kaphas rose out of the chair and was gone.
Weeks passed, I don't know how many, and the weather got
colder still. Joe remained very sad about losing our baby, and
I was too, but I had known in advance and so I had had more
time to get used to it. The weather was getting very bad and it
was ice cold outside – really, really cold – and it was snowing
extremely heavily. As he came back from work, Joe decided to
get extra groceries, and I always remember him arriving at the
door with his arms full of bags of shopping. As Joe walked in
he started to say, 'God, it's cold . . .' but as soon as he said the
word God, angels descended on our little home.
It was as if angels were coming through every part of the
house: through the roof, through the walls, even up through
the floors. Every atom of the house seemed to be full of angels.
It's something that had happened to me before – and still
happens – when something very special is about to occur. I
knew this was the something special that Angel Kaphas had
spoken of – something special for Joe.
Joe continued '. . . You never know, tomorrow morning we
might not be able to get outside the hall door with that snow.'
It was stacking up pretty high outside, and there were reports
on the radio about roads blocked and traffic not being able to
go up to Leila because the road was covered in snow and ice.
That evening we had the fire going – there was a power cut
and so this was our only light – and I remember feeling nice
and snug in our little cottage. The children were in bed asleep,
we had plenty of fuel and food in and it felt lovely; it felt safe.
Around ten o'clock Joe and I were sitting at the fire enjoying
tea and sandwiches and we talked about the baby we had lost.
As we sat there we gave it a name.
The room was shining with the angels and I noticed some
angels going into our bedroom.When they came back into our
little living room I heard them say of Christopher and Owen,
'They are sleeping peacefully, like little angels.'
Everything became silent; there wasn't a sound. I got up out
of the chair and peeped out the window; it was pitch dark
outside, except for the snow, which left a glow in the darkness.
I was a little anxious and excited. I did not know what the
angels were going to allow to happen, but I knew it was going
to be special.
The next minute there came three knocks on the window –
of course, Joe and I nearly jumped out of our skins. He said,
'Oh God, somebody must be outside.'
As he was getting up out of the chair, three knocks came on
the door as well. I said, 'They must be freezing. Maybe it's
Mum and Da, maybe they had to come up for something.'
'They are out of their minds to travel on a night like this,' Joe
said.
Joe was surrounded by a whole host of angels, but, of
course, he didn't realise it. Suddenly I knew what was going on
and started to laugh. Joe said, 'Why are you laughing?'
'There is no one outside the door,' I said. 'I know who that
was.'
'Who?' asked Joe.
'It was our baby,' I said, 'he was saying goodbye. He was just
giving you a physical sign to help you to believe, by knocking.'
'Go away out of that! Don't be talking such nonsense,' Joe
said.
'Go out and open the hall door and you won't see any
footsteps in the snow.'
I had to laugh again at the expression on Joe's face. The
room was full of angels. I knew angels had brought my baby's
soul to knock on the window and now he had gone back with
other angels. I didn't need to see him, our little son – he did
this for his dad, to help him to believe.
Joe opened the hall door. The snow was up against it; it was
nearly a foot deep and it fell in onto the mat; the freezing cold
air came in, too. Joe looked out and he could not believe it –
there were no footsteps in the snow. He looked and he looked
to see if he could find any footsteps in the snow; of animals,
birds, of any kind. He stepped out into the snow. Joe went
white in the face; he couldn't believe it. He looked at me and
shook his head, saying, 'Oh my God, that's just too much!'
Eventually, he came back in, closed the hall door and I said,
'Don't worry, sit down by the fire and get warm. That was your
son, our baby, saying goodbye. He was leaving with all the
angels to go to Heaven, off to where he should be. Now, you
can let him go.'
Joe cried there at the fire; we held each other in our arms and
we both cried. We were very peaceful, though.
'Wasn't it wonderful that our little baby did that for us?' I
said to him, 'that the angels allowed something like that to
happen so we would know that our baby's okay, that it's all
right. That was our child thanking us for being his parents.'
Da had a habit of dropping in to see us out of the blue – mostly
in the evening. I always loved this. One day, I was out working
in the garden, pulling weeds and hoeing between the rows of
potatoes – we were now growing most of our own fruit and
vegetables – and Christopher was helping me. Although he
was only about five, he was always anxious to help.
As I heard Da's car pull up outside the gate, I turned around.
The two boys cried out 'Granddad'. Christopher ran through
the potatoes and tried to open the gate, with Owen toddling
behind. The gate was tied with string, so I picked Owen up and
helped Christopher to untie it. The gate opened and Owen
wiggled in my arms to get down. Christopher greeted Da as he
got out of the car. He was in fishing gear and wearing his
favourite hat – a tweed hat with colourful fishing flies in it.
He'd had the same hat for years and he wore it every opportunity
he got, and he always treated it with loving care.
Da greeted the kiddies with a pet on the head – he always did
that and sometimes I would say to him, 'They are not dogs you
are petting, Da!' and he would laugh at me.
'The garden is looking great,' said Da, as Christopher pulled
him in the direction of the potatoes.
'When the children are finished showing you all the
vegetables we're growing come in and I'll have tea ready,' I
said.
Owen, who was now about three, was first back into the
kitchen and arrived with a tumble and roll. He was born
prematurely and, as a result of not having developed fully
before birth, his hips swiveled much more than normal. He
could move so fast that I would hold my breath as I watched
him, and he could tumble over three or four times and still end
up back on his feet. It was as if he was double-jointed from the
waist down.Many times, when I saw Owen tumbling and I was
holding my breath, I would see flashes of angels spinning
around him in every direction, protecting him. Seeing the way
he tumbled you would expect him to break bones – but he
never did. The doctors in the hospital said that Owen's hips
wouldn't develop properly before the age of seven, and I often
said to Joe that I couldn't wait for Owen to reach that age so
that I could breathe easily.
'Lorna,' my father asked, 'would you and Joe and the kiddies
like to come on holiday with your mum and me in the summer
– down to the little cottage in Mullingar?'
I was delighted. Joe and I had never had a holiday; we had
never even gone on honeymoon. I was thrilled at the idea of a
break.
'That would be great,' I said, 'of course we'd love to come. I
hope Joe can get the time off.'
Joe had recovered from his appendicitis, but I could still see
the red mass of energy around his appendix, so knew it would
flare up again. He had recently got a job at the local carpet
factory – it was hard physical work in unpleasant conditions,
washing and dying wool – and most of the time he worked the
night shift. This work can't have helped his health, but we
needed the money.
One of the few benefits of this job, other than the small, but
regular, income, was that Joe had access to cheap undyed
wool. I had done little knitting as a child, but now with access
to this wool, I took to knitting with a vengeance, even though
all the jumpers I knitted were the one colour – the colour of
sheep! I knitted Aran sweaters for the children, for Joe and for
Da. My da loved his sweater and wore it a lot of the time he
wasn't working.
This day, Da and I sat down and had a cup of tea and talked
for a few minutes. The children were delighted too; they asked
their granddad so many questions about where the cottage
was, what it was like, whether there were trees in the garden.
'The garden is wild, with lots of trees and grass as tall as you.
There is a boreen as well, all overgrown like a jungle. You'll
have a great time.'
'When can we go?' They kept asking, and I told the children,
'not until your Granddad and Dad gets holiday.'
Da had his tea and he went outside into the garden with the
children for a little while. 'See you, Lorna, I'm going now,' he
called out.
The day before we were due to go on holiday was a really
warm, sunny day with hardly a breeze, but as I was hanging
washing on the line this strong wind suddenly came up. I
knew it wasn't an ordinary breeze and I started to laugh.
'I bet that is you, Hosus!' I said. 'What are you doing blowing
away my washing on me. What are you up to?'
Then he just appeared. As usual, he was playing tricks and
trying to make me laugh. Then he disappeared again, just like
a light evaporating into the air. He is a wonderful angel. That
day, I caught my son Christopher standing there, looking in
the same direction and staring, and I knew by his eyes that he
saw what I saw. He never mentioned it then, nor since; maybe
he has forgotten about it; maybe, though, when he reads this
book he will remember – that I don't know, I will just wait and
see.
The day we were off on holiday, I was worrying how we
were all going to fit into the car. Da's car was not big, and we
had a lot of luggage and all the changes of clothes for the
children. The children were out in the garden watching
anxiously for their Granny and Granddad, and when the car
pulled up to the gate the children let out such screams of joy.
Christopher and Owen immediately climbed into the car
with their toys and Da and Joe somehow managed to fit
everything into the boot. Off we went towards Mullingar, in
County Westmeath, some fifty miles away from Maynooth Joe
talked quite a bit, but I stayed quiet within myself and played
with the children.
We got to the cottage late; it was almost getting dark, but
there was a beautiful full moon and a bright sky packed with
stars. The little stone cottage was lovely – nice and cosy. I just
felt happy to be there.Mum and Da slept downstairs and we all
slept upstairs. I slept really well that first night.
During that holiday, Da and Joe did a lot of fishing on
different lakes around the area, and Da brought the children
and me out in a boat, too. The children were so excited about
being on the water and the boat bobbing up and down, even
though we only went a short distance from the shore and back
in again.
Da had had an accident in the garage a few years before, and
since then had been unable to do heavy physical work. Even
though Joe wasn't particularly well himself, he did a lot of
work on the cottage that holiday that was impossible for Da. I
helped too. We put plasterboards up on the walls to protect
them from the damp, which was a difficult job as one of the
walls was very high and the plasterboard was very heavy. On a
couple of days we worked all day until the evening but, by the
end of the holiday, we had succeeded in finishing the job.
On a few evenings, Joe and Da went fly-fishing. One evening
I told Joe I'd like to go for a walk on my own and I asked him
to stay with the children. I wanted to be by myself so that I
could really talk to the angels; not just quietly, but aloud, so
that they could actually walk beside me in a physical human
form. It was about eight o'clock in the evening when I went off.
I knew there wouldn't be that many people down by the lake
at that hour. I crossed the main road and took a left turn down
a minor road to reach the lane that leads to the lake. Instead of
turning left for the lake, I decided to go straight on and, as I
walked, I said to the angels, 'Now you can walk alongside me.
I know you are there in spiritual form, but I need you to appear
in physical form so that I can talk to you.'
Angel Michael appeared beside me and walked in time with
my step. He put his hand on my shoulder, and that felt good.
As we walked along the road, Angel Michael said, 'A little
further up the road, Lorna, there is a forest to the right. Let's
go for a walk there.'