Chapter 14
by Sherryl Fields
A number of years ago, my good friend Diane invited me to attend an event featuring Roland at a small artsy space in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. After the show, when most everyone had left, Diane and I sat down at a table and had a glass of wine. While we were sitting there, Roland came over and joined us. Diane introduced me to Roland and they chatted a bit. Suddenly, Roland looked at me and said, “I have a Purple Paper for you.”
Then he jumped up and headed toward the back of the building. Diane looked at me with wide eyes. Wow! This was exciting and totally unexpected. I wasn’t really sure what this was going to mean but I could feel a stirring of emotions inside, like there was some impending information that was going to be revealed. It felt like something I was dying to hear, but at the same time I dreaded it because I knew the overwhelming emotions that would come with it.
Many thoughts flashed through my mind as I waited for Roland to return with the paper. He sat down and laid the drawing in front of me. Written upon the page was the date October 3, 2010, and it said, “Your baby is with the angels.” He proceeded to tell me that the daughter we had lost in 1993 when I was six months into my first pregnancy was now safe and living and growing with the angels in heaven. He said that she was watching over us and our three boys. She was working so hard behind the scenes to guide us and heal us from our earthly pain.
I asked Roland why she didn’t stay with us. He said that she had her own work to do and that she was doing it from the other side but that she is always around us and is sending us her love and guidance. He explained that we all come with our own mission to accomplish and that our presence or absence affects other people’s work as well. He said that she had to go through the process of coming into this life and leaving it for her own growth and development as a soul.
This loss was so very difficult in many ways. I had waited my entire life to have this first baby and expected to get to keep her. It was my first pregnancy, and I was deathly sick the entire time (as I was with all of them). She was a girl. I went on to have three boys. I have always wondered how our lives would have been different if she, Shelby, had stayed. Having Roland explain his understanding of her life brought some relief and helped me understand that sometimes there is a bigger plan that we are only just a part of.
I will always miss her and long for her, but I do believe that someday all the answers will be revealed to us and we will understand. It was a blessing to get that Purple Paper and feel connected to my baby even for just those few moments.