Teach Us How To Hug

They knocked on my door late one night. I was too afraid to open. They kept knocking until I covered my head with the blanket, lay underneath and felt my heart beat out of my chest. I drifted back to sleep, sweating. 

Maybe they kept knocking but I didn’t want to know. 

They came back the next night. I opened my eyes with a start around 4 am. They were here again. I lay there, willing them to go away.

But gently, softly, they wouldn’t stop knocking. 

I put my mother on speed dial and inched my way to the door. I could hear them breathing. It’s like they were right next to me, taunting me, telling me they weren’t going away. 

I don’t have a peephole. With as much confidence as my racing heart could muster, I asked “who’s there”. They responded immediately, they knew I was afraid. “Please open. We mean no harm.” 

I learned that night if someone knocks on my door and promises they’re safe, I’ll believe them. 

I opened the door. 

Two of the most beautiful beings I’ve ever seen in my life stood there. Both dressed in shiny black, they looked like twins if not for the beard on one of them. The color was menacing but the energy exuded from it had no tone. It was just there. 

“We come from heaven. Can we talk?” 

I wish, like many of us, to experience surreal moments. I want to walk through platform 9 and ¾. I hope to one day wake up and fly. Maybe surreal moments happen to us all the time, but we’re such non-believers that we miss every single one. 

I could have missed this one too, but they didn’t wait for my invitation. The beautiful man and woman glided into my home. I don’t have a couch yet so they did like me and sat on the floor. 

“We’re not here for long. Our passes will expire soon.”

“Who ARE you” I interrupted. Something about them made it hard to change the flow. They were acting like following their lead was the only choice I had. 

“We’re angels from heaven. Our messengers have been whispering about you for 3 years now.” 

Angels? Heaven? Did I open my door to the crackheads living down the block?

“We know you won’t believe us. That’s okay. Our business will begin after your 82 years of life. We have a question and then we’ll be on our way” 

Wait…82 years? Did I just hear my life sentence! 

They ignored the shock and confusion and misunderstanding on my face. Like a pre-written script, they continued

“When you get to heaven, will you teach the angels how to hug?”

And with that, they uncrossed their legs, looked at me with unnatural eyes, and finished their revelation. 

“You have 47 years, 3 months, 8 days, and 7 more hours to think about it. We’ll come back to visit once again before you go. If you say yes, you’ll go with her. If you say no, you’ll come with me. Goodbye.”

I barely sputtered out “why” as they started gliding away, They looked at each other like they shouldn’t be telling me, but they did, they told me why. 

“Only you can feel empathy. Only humans can feel pain. We don’t know the right touch, the right time, the way to hug. We don’t know how to comfort you. For a thousand years we’ve asked humans to join us in our quest to heal the world. For a thousand years we’ve been training, but us angels will never feel how to give a hug. That is why.”

I didn’t even hear the door shut. Still wrapped in the blanket I got out of bed with, I lay on the floor and convinced myself that was a dream. A very real one, but I used to sleepwalk when I was a kid. Maybe this was the same thing. 

It’s been 3 months since then. I sometimes think of the pair, their unnatural eyes and shiny black clothes. I can’t believe my memory but I can’t let them go. What if they were real? What if my job will be to teach angels to hug? 

Silently, I start hugging people a bit more, a bit tighter, absorbing data points I might need when I’m gone. If it was just a dream and the angels aren’t real, a little comfort will only do us good. 

I’ll be ready when they come, and when they come I’ll go with her. 

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New readers, welcome. I’m so happy you’re here. This piece was prompted by

Rachael Tiss

. She asked me to recount a life-changing moment. I decided to mix reality and my imagination in response. 

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