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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
Agnes DeMille
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A woman's unique, growing figurine collection keeps the memory of her father alive.
Miracles...seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. -Willa Cather
Scripture tells us that when we die, we join that "great cloud of witnesses" that St. Paul spoke about, a community of saints who, like angels, can send little signs of hope to the family members left here on earth, if God wills it. Arles Hendershott Love of Rockford, Illinois, understands this very well.
Arles grew up an only child, but her dad (also an only child) was her best pal, sharing his time and his rich spiritual faith with her. "I was very close to him," Arles says. (Even after Arles married Joe Love, she did not totally change her name. She said it was for professional reasons, but Joe knew it was because his wife didn't want to let go of her dad's name.) Her paternal grandmother, Emma, was also an only child and had been so delighted with Arles's birth that she planted a yellow rosebush in honor of the event. Arles loved her grandmother. "I spent a lot of time with her, and even looked like her. People often called me Little Emma. In her later years, I was her legal guardian and took care of everything for her. When she died, of course I had yellow roses everywhere."
Arles's mother loved to collect antiques and figurines, and her interest rubbed off on Arles. In 1986 Arles started her own collection: Santa Clauses. "I'm not exactly sure how or why it began, but eventually I branched out into other items too." She and Joe enjoyed attending collectors' events and trading with others in the field.
Meanwhile Arles's father had contracted Parkinson's disease. Eventually he needed a wheelchair and a feeding tube, which he handled with great courage and his usual faith. In December 1995, however, he began preparing his loved ones for his death. He asked his wife to buy Arles a specific gift—two Santas for her collection, but not just any Santas. "No, Dad wanted the Santas to be identical, but one big and one little." When she opened the gift on Christmas morning, her dad explained its significance.
"It's to remind you that we will never be apart," her father told Arles. "I'm the big, and you're the little. And even after I move on, I'll be looking out for you and Joe.
"Oh, Dad..." Arles's eyes filled with tears. She couldn't think about losing him. But six months later, her father died. The night before his funeral, Arles saw a double rainbow in the sky. One was big, and the other was little.
That should have brought her some comfort. But as the weeks passed, and grief took hold, she wondered whether she would ever be happy again. Life without her father seemed unlivable. Even though she believed in heaven, she found herself wondering: Was he there? Could he see her? Did he know how she felt?
In addition to Santas, Arles collects Egyptian artwork and artifacts. One afternoon she and Joe went to a small store in Milwaukee that sells such things. They bought some papyrus paintings, and the owner rang up the purchase and bagged it. Then he impulsively reached over to a shelf, took an item, and handed it to Arles. "Here," he said. "You need to have this.
It was a brass pyramid. It was identical to one she had at home, only larger. Arles looked at Joe. He was smiling. "Looks like you have a big-little pair now," he said. Just like the Santas her dad had given her, just like the rainbows. It was probably a coincidence. But how had the storekeeper known that this pyramid would have such special meaning for her?
Slowly, more pairs began to come, most through unexplained circumstances. Sometimes the big came first, followed several weeks or months later by the little. For example, two years after her father's death, as Christmas approached, Arles was laid up from surgery, and her mother brought over a Santa for her collection. "I have several hundred now, so keeping them straight can be a challenge," Arles says. "But as soon as I saw it, I realized it was the small version of one I had picked up several years before." Her dad had been with her when she bought it.
Arles also noticed that her pairs seemed to arrive when she most missed her father or was having a difficult day because of her health or her job. Each unexpected treasure brought her much-needed reassurance. One year, Arles joined a Lenox ornament club in which the company sends figurines to members at random intervals. "You never knew when one would arrive," she says. "The day after a particularly rough day, a package came in the mail. It was a big snowman dad holding the hand of a small snowman girl." The timing was perfect. "I took this as a sign that Dad was still watching over us both and that things would work out."
Last summer Arles and Joe came across an exquisite angel figurine holding an armload of pink roses. The angel's name, according to the tag, was Emma. Her grandmother's name! Arles had to buy her. But when she went to the sales associate, she had a surprise. "Emma comes in a smaller version too," the associate explained. "It's the first time the company has ever done that." Arles was getting a funny feeling. Even though the figurines would not he delivered for a while, she decided to purchase both.
The figurines were delayed in shipment. Meanwhile, Arles learned that she would need surgery again. She was extremely worried, so she and Joe decided to enjoy a day in Lake Geneva, a tourist area in southern Wisconsin. "There just happened to be a huge merchant sale going on that day," Arles says, "and everywhere I looked, I saw big-little pairs—carved figures, wood chimes, on vendors' carts, in the VIP area." How she wanted to believe that such a happening was more than coincidence or her imagination, that such little signs were truly meaningful. But could she?
She got her answer a few weeks later, when she learned that her surgery had been successful. That day a deliveryman also brought her a package. Arles had been so absorbed that she had forgotten her Emma angels. Happily she opened the box—and gasped. The figurine she had seen at the display had been holding pink roses. But the roses in both of these angels' arms were yellow—the color that she and her grandmother Emma had always loved best.
Since her dad's death, Arles estimates that she has received some seventy-five big-little pairs. "I believe now that they are definitely messages from my dad, and probably Grandma Emma too. I know they are both safe and with the angels, sending me a little touch of heaven."
By Joan Wester Anderson
Marilyn L. Ali
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