My Angel

If you know me you also know that I love to take photos of the Groom Cross and in particular the angel atop the empty tomb. I've posted some of these photos before, but wanted to include them in this presentation.

Looking towards the northeast, you can get the cross and the tomb and angel all into the same shot. I really don't like the trees that were planted and "spoil" the bottom part of the view of the large cross.

I prefer to have the cross at my back and take photos nearly due west. I have to be careful because there are some ugly radio towers in the background.

I love it when there are clouds behind her.

And sometimes I like to photograph her head on, facing nearly due north.

My favorite time to photograph her is in the late evenings, near sunset; I am almost always enthralled the way the sun, the clouds and the sky frame the shot.

And sometimes I like to take the same photograph from the same perspective, but shoot with a different setting, such as in black and white:

It sounds silly, but sometimes when my days are dark and dreary I think of her and a ray of sunshine pierces my gloomy mood.

I think of how achingly beautiful she can be with the setting sun creating a halo of pure dazzling white against the azure sky, a few wisps of clouds disappearing with the light.

I never could get very close to her, though; using zoom gave me the best detail I could get from the ground, even standing on a stepladder I sometimes take with me.

Early one Sunday morning, I got up and over there around sunrise. I wanted to get some closeups of her, without anyone around because I had in mind climbing out on top of the "tomb" structure -- where there's a sign that asks people NOT to climb on it.

I felt a little odd doing something like this, at a place I love (and would hate to be banned from), but I also felt obsessed with looking into the statue's face.

A few weeks earlier, I had mentioned to a woman in the gift shop that the angel was one of my favorite things to photograph out there. She told me that before the tomb "exhibit" was finished, the angel was stored in the store. She said people would put their babies in the angel's arms and take photos. I thought that a touching story.

With camera in hand, I climbed out on the slippery fake rock, slick with the morning dew. I nearly fell a couple of times, but got close to "my" angel. I was nearly there!

I jumped down into her little "niche", the cubbyhole where she was mounted and where the lights and wiring for the tomb were hidden.

She was as beautiful as I thought she would be; I sat there in the cool Texas dawn, staring at her, oblivious to the noise of the truck traffic on nearby I-40. Something was SO familiar about her and then it hit me so hard that I nearly fell off the structure.

She looks JUST LIKE my ex-wife!

This is where I'd normally say something like "But my ex was no angel!" but that would be a lie, at least hateful and undeserved. She put up with me for over five years, and if she's not going to be an angel, she at least qualifies for sainthood, bless her.