TERRY MOSHER
BILLIE HOLIDAY
Today (July 9) marks my late sister Minerva’s 87th birthday. It has been five-plus years now since she left this earth and I still miss her greatly. She was my anchor during my dark years and for that I have always been very grateful.
A day before she died on March 3, 2011, Minerva said she had two visitors. One was her daughter Amy who died from a brain tumor in 1958 at the age of five and the other was Charmaine, her niece who had died Feb. 11, 1986 at the age of 25 when she was in her first year of veterinary school at Cornell.
These unexpected visitors are what I call escorts from the other side who ease the transition from life here on Earth back home to the spiritual side.
The first time I had heard about these visitors was when my mother died May 21, 1953. She had actually had her visitors on May 19. Angels, she told my dad, had appeared at her hospital bedside and told her they were there to escort her back.
She was given a day to say goodbye to her family. So she had my dad round up us kids. My oldest brother Ray was on Okinawa with his Air Force comrades (he flew in bombers that attacked the North Koreans) and could not get back in time, but one by one we four remaining kids were ushered into her hospital bed as she said goodbye.
I remember this well because as the youngest I was so scared to enter. I had to be pushed into the room and as entered I saw mom sitting on the bed with white hair flowing down to her shoulders. I had never seen her with white hair and that alone scared me.
The thing that has bugged me since that day is that I don’t remember what my mother told me. What can a dying mother say to her young child? I have tried to remember and even have prayed that I would remember, but nothing. That will always nag at me.
Mom died the next day as the angels promised and my world instantly changed, pushing me into my dark years.
When our granddaughter, Sarah Mary Ann (Junior) was killed May 26,1989, she not only spoke to me hours after her death (“Don’t worry about me, I walk with the grace of God:”), but days later I had a vision in which I saw my father and my mother holding out their hands to Junior and escorting her back home. What made me smile is that in the vision was also our faithful dog, Peanuts.
The escort image gets complicated when it comes to the experience my sister-in-law, Barbara Mosher, had with Charmaine’s departure to the other side. Barbara details this and more in the book she wrote about Charmaine‑ Beyond The Yellow Brick Road.
A couple days after Charmaine left, Barbara saw Charmaine and another daughter, Robin, who had died 30 years earlier at nine-months old, riding together on a horse. But I’ll let Barb tell this.
“I was driving through the countryside, going to my sister Peggy’s and help her out,” Barbara said. “I was playing some Christian music of some kind when I got a very strong vision. It wasn’t really a vision, but what I would call ‘my mind’s eye’”
At this point in the story, I correct Barb and add that what she experienced was somebody telepathy talking to her, along with a vision.. That somebody talking was Charmaine, and Barb agreed with that assessment.
“I saw Charmaine on this horse and they were going kind of sideways, like in dressage, “Barb said. “I asked Charmaine about Robin and she said that Robbie was there with her. It’s interesting she called Robin Robbie because we didn’t call her that.
“Then I saw this young girl that was about seven old on the horse with Charmaine. Both had great big smiles. I felt like the Lord gave me this blessing, and I cried after that. I was crying out of joy because I missed them so much and (I was able to see them).”
Barb also told me that she had worried about how Charmaine would look in the casket after she died because her whole body had swollen up just before she died.
“I laid awake all night worrying about that,” said Barb, who then got a telepathy message from Charmaine that assured her, “I will look presentable.” And she did.
In the immediate days after Charmaine died, Barb grew anxious what she would do without being able to talk to her daughter about things that concerned her. That support would no longer be there.
But again she got a message from Charmaine, who said, “Mom, you don’t need me, you got Jesus.”
I guess I’m thinking of these spiritual issues so acutely now because of what is happening in our country with such divisive politics and such violence with police killing blacks and a black sniper gunning down some policemen.
It’s getting ugly out there and I am dropping back into my spirituality to retain some sanity. I have never understood why the color of skin can lead to such hatred and such violence. Think about it. Take a deep breath and wait five seconds and then ask yourself why color does that to us? Why should black, white, green, blue, yellow or red or any color matter to how we treat each other?
I’ve been listening to American Routes and an hour-long tribute to the great singer Billie Holiday, who died 57 years ago (almost to the day) at the young age of 44 after a long struggle with drugs and alcohol and abusive men and terrible, terrible racism.
Holiday’s songs reflect her life, full of sadness and lost love and racism. I really bottom out when she sings “Strange Fruit.” That song is a direct attack on that racism, and is a horrible reminder of how the color black painted a history of darkness in our country that still exists to this day, as recent events attest.
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin’ eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin’ flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
And the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.”
My mulligan, if you will, on this life is that if I do was well as I can and do it with love and with compassion and be as helpful as possible, then I should not fear when I take my last breath and am escorted by friends and family back to my spiritual home.
But while I’m here, I fear for not just me but those of us that are blinded by color and can’t get past our hatred to smell the roses, to see the beauty that is our world when it’s filled with that love, that compassion.
Our enemies are waiting at the door for us to destroy ourselves from within ourselves. I pray that is not true, that it doesn’t come true, but there are some strange fruit hanging from trees and that is not good.
That’s it for today. I’m outta here. Keep the faith and hopefully we can get through this muddle, all this trouble.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.
.