TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL…OR ROOM SERVICE?

I’ve never been one of those people who felt really sure about what happens after someone dies. I was raised Jewish, but not religious. The Jewish heritage that was handed down to me always felt like it was more about passing on culture and tradition, rather than imparting any particular viewpoint about God. I’m not sure if my parents even believed in God. But losing my mother this past August got me thinking more frequently and urgently than ever before about what actually happens to us after we shuffle off this mortal coil.

I have a number of close friends who claim to have communed with their dear departed through a hired medium. I know others who seem certain that when the lights flicker, or the electricity mysteriously goes haywire, or a hummingbird is in the vicinity, that it is their loved one making themselves known. I’ve always had a level of cynicism surrounding these types of occurrences. I’ve reasoned, either in my mind or out loud, that mediums are just highly intuitive actors who have paved out a unique source of income for themselves. That sometimes lights don’t work how they’re supposed to. Sometimes electrical service is interrupted. Hummingbirds fly around flowers whether or not anyone you know has died recently.

But after my mother’s passing, I was surprised to find that I, too, clung to the idea that maybe she was still somehow physically present, albeit in some other form. She loved — no, that’s not strong enough — she was crazy about — butterflies. She had dozens of butterfly-motif tchotchkes in her home, most of which are now in my house. And I felt certain after she died that I was seeing way more monarch butterflies than I ever had before. Of course, at the cemetery on the day of her funeral, I saw a great big beautiful one as I walked into the mortuary. But maybe the cemetery folks release a lot of butterflies in order to make the recently bereaved feel better? The next day I saw a gorgeous specimen in my garden. And then I started to see them everywhere: walking down the street, when I dropped my kid off at school. Okay, so maybe August/September is butterfly season? I didn’t remember other summers being so butterfly-laden. Was I just more attuned to looking around and noticing them, because of how raw and vulnerable I was? Because of how much I wanted it to be true that these butterflies were, in fact, some iteration of my mother?

About a month after Mom passed, I decided to have a weekend away from home at a fancy hotel, by myself. A “pamper-yourself-and-honor-your-mom-by-writing-everything-down-from-the-last-six-months-because-your-mom-recently-died-of-cancer” weekend.

When I booked myself a room at the luxurious Monarch Beach Resort, I didn’t make the butterfly connection in my mind. I’d like to chalk this daftness up to some sort of grief-related brain fog, so I will. Anyway, after I checked in I realized: this joint is chock-full of butterflies — real and fabricated. Butterfly-embroidered linens. Butterfly-embossed stationary. Paper butterflies on top of charming little boxes containing delectable dark chocolates that they place on your pillow each night.

It is a stunning hotel. There are sweeping ocean views from every lobby window and terrace. The weather that weekend was perfect. Seventy-five to eighty degrees and sunny. And it seemed to me that my mother’s spirit was everywhere. Real butterflies abounded. But it was more than that. She would have loved this place. She would have loved this weekend. She would have loved being there with me. And as sad and devastated as I was that she wasn’t there to share it with me, I also had this joyful feeling that somehow, in some way that was palpable to me, she was.

But the cake-taking experience of the weekend was something that happened on the last morning I was there. I ordered room service — lemon ricotta pancakes with berries, which the room service order-taker described as “lovely.” I wasn’t sure if this was a resounding endorsement or not, but it was good enough for me to decide I would rather eat those than any of the healthier options, since the plan after this weekend was to overhaul my diet in order to balance out all the mourning-related overeating and drinking I had been doing. Why not just be decadent for one last day and have a big old stack of pancakes for myself? Room Service told me they would arrive by 10:18.

Shortly thereafter, there was a knock at the door. A friendly Latino man greeted me with a big smile and asked if he could come in with my breakfast. His nametag said “Santos.” I gave him a big smile right back. I was feeling good. Rested. Centered. I had a real “namaste” vibe going on, after a weekend of sleeping, pampering and taking it easy. Santos seemed to find me affable and welcoming. He lingered as he set up the room service table. He talked about the beautiful day and how I seemed happy, and that he was happy that I was happy. A delightful exchange. And then, before turning to leave, he stops, and he looks right at me, and he says “Bless You.” Well, that’s unusual for room-service delivery, I thought. But welcome. A morning benediction. Nice. I am in the right frame of mind for this extra bit of religiosity.

And then he is walking out, but he stops before he gets to the door. And he turns and says, “We must be happy, because we have…the life. We have the best thing…the life.” And I smile and I say, “I couldn’t agree more,” thinking to myself how very on point, thinking this would be the end of it and he would take his leave. But he stays there, and he keeps talking — “We are blessed, we have life, we are here enjoying, we must be happy.” And he keeps going in this vein, and I’m smiling, and nodding, and agreeing, fully expecting him to leave at any moment. But he doesn’t. He stands in the doorway and he goes on: “Michael Jackson, he has millions of dollars, but he doesn’t have what we have. And who is that guy? Apple computers…?” — “Oh — uh…Steve Jobs?” I offer. “Yes, Steve Jobs, look at him, he has millions and millions of dollars but he doesn’t have what we have — The Life.”

I am nodding yes, and agreeing, and getting increasingly misty, and trying to hide the fact that I am getting that way, because it’s weird, me tearing up while the room service delivery guy is just being friendly, making conversation. Or is he? What the fuck is going on here?? Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer, like Mom, is that a coincidence? Is this man’s presence here a coincidence? Is any of this, the butterflies, the benediction, any of it a coincidence?? And then I can’t help it, I start crying, and he closes the door behind him as he comes back into my room, coming closer, which could be menacing in some other set of circumstances but it’s not at all right now, and he says, “There is a reason I’m here, I know who you are, I see you, it’s okay, God loves you, he will take care of you, money or no money, Mother or no Mother, we are all alive, we are all living, busy or not busy, we are alive, it’s a gift from God, the one and only God,” and now I’m shaking, I’m really weeping, I’m full blown heaving and trying to catch my breath and tears are falling off my face and onto the ground, I can’t stop, and he takes my hands in his hands and he says, “You don’t know who I am,” and I cry, “I think I do!” because HOW DID HE KNOW?

How the fuck did this guy walk in this room on this morning and know that I didn’t have my Mom, know what the fuck I was doing here, know that it would be okay to talk to a hotel guest like this who just ordered room service? Most people in a snooty five star hotel wouldn’t tolerate this, wouldn’t appreciate some sort of Jehovah’s Witness-y man proselytizing while delivering their lemon ricotta pancakes, that’s how they would take it in, right? Perhaps that’s how I would take it in at another time and place, but today, here, as I just finished writing about a conversation I had with my Mom a month ago in which she came to terms with her impending death, in walks this…man? — this…Angel? — my Mom? Is this my Mom?? Did she come to me in this man’s body, Santos, who has both of my hands in his hands now, who is looking so deeply into my eyes and telling me I’m a good person, a sensitive person, “God loves you, it’s okay, it’s all okay” while tears fall off my face onto the butterfly-adorned carpeting?

And then he says, “It’s okay, not everyone knows our worth, but it doesn’t matter.” I’m still crying, snot covering my face, but I’m a little confused by his declamation. Because my mom did (does?) know my worth. I’m not crying because I feel undervalued or worthless, and my Mom, or God, or an Angel — well they would know that. And then he says it again, “Not everyone knows our worth,” and I think I see where he’s going with this, maybe he thinks I’m a jilted wife, I’m alone in a luxury hotel room ordering pancakes for one in my bathrobe and I’m ugly-crying like a preschooler who just fell off the monkey bars, and he’s assuming that I’m a woman abandoned, my rich husband left me so he could fuck his secretary and I’m consoling myself by spending his money on a luxurious weekend alone where I can ditch my gluten-free-sugar-free regimen and eat a pile of pancakes, and I think to myself, “Noooo, he is ruining it, he is ruining it, no Santos, stop, don’t introduce doubt where I thought that maybe, for the first time since my Mom died, there was no doubt, this was proof, proof-positive that she was still here with me, she is still here, she came to me to deliver me a message in the body of the room service delivery guy.”

If Santos were actually my mother, he would know that my husband didn’t leave me. I start to beg in my head, “No Santos, please, don’t ruin it because I was so sure, I was so sure you were Mom, I wanted you to be her, and I don’t know what to believe now.” So I say to him, “No no, I just lost my Mom,” but he is nonplussed, and he says again, “Mother or no Mother, we have The Life.” (Incidentally I like how he keeps saying “The Life,” instead of just “life” — like we have some especially privileged version of life that deserves its own definite article, although I imagine this is just a result of him translating from the Spanish, “temenos la vida”).

Then I calm down, I laugh. There is only so much deep shit one can handle at a time, and now the intensity of the immediately preceding moment is starting to dissipate. Santos is still holding my hands in his hands, and he says “I am a pastor at a church.” I mumble something like “I know,” even though I don’t know. But I know this man is a spiritual something, or a spirit himself, or maybe, just maybe, he IS my mom, WAS my mom for a brief moment — invasion of the body snatchers — and when he was looking deep into my eyes, they were her eyes, I was talking to her and we were looking into each other’s eyes and meeting and talking to each other, my Mom and I, and I just know it, although of course there’s no way to know it, we can only Know these things with a capital K, a paradoxically confident yet totally unsubstantiated Knowing, and that’s it. So I just Know it.

Santos starts to go. He gives me a hug, walks to the door and says “I hope you have a good day.” He also says, “Say hello to your husband. Where is he today? Meeting?” I never told Santos I was married, but is this his tacit admission that he understood he was getting it wrong earlier? An unspoken apology for making the assumption that a man had walked out on me? Or is this perhaps his winking acknowledgement that he knew the actual situation all along; that he, Santos/Mom knew all along that I was married, He/She knew what this was all really about, but He/She had just been testing me, inserting some doubt? Because what good is belief if there’s no doubt? After all, it’s easy to believe in things when there’s no doubt at all. Maybe there has to be doubt in order to make your belief count, make it worth something. So He/She planted that little doubt nugget, just so this otherworldly visit would be kosher and ok and not too miraculous. This wasn’t the Red Sea parting or a talking burning bush; it was just a visit from a room service waiter that may or may not have had a touch of divinity. After all, if I was totally sure of what had happened just now, if there was no doubt, I would sound like a crazy person relaying my story to friends and family later on: “My Mom visited me in the body of the room service delivery guy and I have no doubt at all that that’s what happened.” That’s straight-jacket time, right?

I laughed again and said “No, my husband is in Los Angeles,” and that was that. Santos said “Have a wonderful day,” and he smiled, and he walked out the door. And I proceeded to eat every last bite of my lemon ricotta pancakes, slathered in butter and syrup, just like a forsaken wife drowning her sorrows in carbs, or maybe — just like a joyful daughter celebrating a reunion with her recently departed mother — and then I went back to my computer to admire the ocean view for a few more hours while I wrote about Mom some more.