Greeting Harold

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Today I am writing a bit of prose for a wonderful new prompt over at Poets United: Telling Tales with Magaly Guerrero a Pantry of Prose # 1.  This prompt will post on the first Sunday of every month, and Magaly wants us to put our prose on.  We always have until Tuesday evening, so come join us!

Greeting Harold,

It was cold on earth where Willa waited for her next assignment.  Harold a Caucasian male with 46 earth years, was due to arrive any minute.  He had been in a coma for weeks from head trauma from a beating he endured in an alley way, but his time to enter the new realm was today.

 

Being a soul greeter was an important and delicate responsibility.  Willa in all her smallness of spirit had been holding this great task for centuries, and at times it could seem overwhelming.

Her last greeting was a lady named Loraine who was a lonely soul with no family and her story was a sad one.  She had become a hoarder; keeping everything her hands touched.   Ironically, she had died from a fire in the night, trying to re-enter the home to salvage everything she felt she could not live without.  It took quite a while before she was ready to move on to the other side.

As Willa thought of  Loraine she could see Harold edging before her.    He was a mirror image of his former body, yet different, he appeared before her in all his knowing and confusion wrapped together like braided hairs.  Harold had been a homeless man with nothing to his name including respect.  In the hospital he had been John Doe # 37, but now his identity was known.  Harold L. Bowers, son of a senator, oldest brother, and a man who had been a lawyer before he lost everything to addiction.

“Greetings Harold”, she said as she reached out her spirit toward his.  He fell into her like a weary man plopping into the most comfortable chair he had ever known.  Willa’s spirit smiled.  Most soul’s wanted to go back, and could not bear to leave behind all they had known, but not Harold.  Willa found that greeting souls was always a lesson in some way for the new arrival, but today the lesson was hers to hold.

Click HERE to see the poem that inspired it.