Angela
Driving the 134 through Burbank with Forest Lawn on my left, guilt rippled my gut in what felt like hello. The fact that her name has Angel in it was not lost on me.
Have you ever met someone so cool, so smart, so magnetic that you wanted to just crawl right into her skin, speak with her voice, inherit her genius of a smarty pants brain? Like that.
Angela. A gumshoe for the Hollywood Reporter, she ferreted out what was what in the tangle of Hollywood shenanigans. A reporter! She wrote of all of the Hollywood churning's but with the mind of a scientist, the wit of a comedian, the conviction of a politician. Bold, assured, she could even cook beautifully! Shit. I was too impressed to be jealous.
Our friendship was immediate and strong like the espresso we drank before our hikes. I poured my soul into her gorgeous brown eyes and she bounced her brilliance back to me in the LA haze. But, like many friendships forged there; we were fits-and-spurts friends, let’s-circle-up-again-soon friends.
I was surprised to hear sometime later that she had dumped her job at the Hollywood reporter to go to a spiritual school in Santa Monica. As a gal who talked to angels and regularly went to Shamanic journeying workshops in Eslalen, I understood the charm of that non-world world and got back in touch to hear of her new life. She was overjoyed and I celebrated all of that for her, the only massive exception was that she’d suddenly left her husband, my dear friend.
Only a few months later, I was on my way to the other side of LA and thought to check in on her from the 405. As her voice came on the line, I immediately knew something was off.
She sounded jangled and nonsensical. Manic even. My grounded, opinionated, fierce friend had flown away. Even though she was under the care of a psychiatrist associated with that school, she seemed to be cracking.
As I heard of all of the conspiracies against her, the people who didn’t understand her important revelations, and all of the money she was owed by famous people, it was all too familiar. These were the same style of words I’d heard as my brother slipped out of our world and into his own, before his schizophrenia diagnosis. Shaking, I hung up and called her ex-husband, he was desperate to help her.
Afraid for her, afraid for him, and afraid to lose another brilliant soul to the depths of psychosis, I didn’t call her from another freeway. I didn’t reach out to her again.
Several months later, I got a text asking me to call. With a sinking heart I dialed her husband to hear the terrible news that she'd found her way back to the spirit world by her own hand. She’d left a dozen suicide notes. I was present when they were read out loud, but I didn't hear her voice in those letters, it wasn't Angela in that cursive ink. The following day we went to the flower market in downtown LA and bought 1000’s of flowers. We cut and arranged them for hours, their joyful color a stark contrast in the sea of black outfits at the funeral and afterward. 100’s of people came to the church in North Hollywood to honor her; the speeches were as beautiful as she.
Many more months later, while driving on the 134, I heard her voice as I passed where she was interred at Forest Lawn.
She said “Jane! Jane! Don’t worry about me, I’m really good.”
I said “Angela! Oh my god! How are you?”
"I’m better than expected. I realized my mistake almost immediately, but I worry about my family.”
“Oh honey!” I said.
“I’m so happy to hear you are well, it’s great to hear your voice!”
But then, my own doubting mind bumped on the line.
As I got off the exit at Vineland, I said to myself, 'Really? Are you really talking with your friend on the other side, and she’s saying things you’d really like to hear?.
But as life would have it, at that very moment my mind was bullying me about whether what this freeway conversation was real, I got off the exit at Vineland and found myself behind a silver Mercedes with a license frame that had a message engraved with cursive writing on the top above the plate.
It said.
"Believe it!"
So I did.
