A rainy Sunday morning in normally sunny California, a portend of something undesirable and unwelcome was inevitably coming closer to disturb my quietude.

I poured my first cup of Sunday morning coffee that, for some reason, is always the best of the week. I continued to my computer station-yes, I am old and out-of-date, a dinosaur in technology with no laptop in sight, nor will there be. I gingerly set my hot cup of java on my small, decrepit desk, and launched my desktop computer to see what I had missed overnight. Soon I wished I had not made that effort so early in my day.

I opened and began reading an email straight from the bowels of hell, a missive of deceit and hate, news of the worst possible kind at the worst possible moment for me right now. My split-second reaction was a gripping sense of panic as a wave of anxiety swept over me like the frigid, foretelling wind from the darkest reaches of Antarctica. My vision blurred momentarily, and my head bowed towards the ground as if I might lose consciousness.

Then, after only an instant of wavering on the brink of despair, I felt a soft, warm hand on my shoulder offering comfort and succor, and a close spiritual presence offering inspiration to battle on, to not surrender to another of life's many and seemingly undefeatable, unmovable obstacles heaved into one's path along sometimes rocky roads in difficult times.

My mind cleared, the other brief afflictions lifted like the fog on the coast of Maine as the morning sun burns through it delivering promise of another of god's miraculous days in our life.

I then realized and respected the fact that I had faced many challenges in my life-as countless others do on this long journey-some appearing insurmountable at first. In each instance I had somehow overcome them one-by-one and moved on with little lasting effect over time on my God-given indomitable spirit.

This too will be the case in the apparition of an unjust, undeserved, selfish beast that has suddenly rose up angrily in my path on its hind legs, roaring fiercely and gutturally as if it were from another world – threatening my very sanity and welfare .

As in previous barricades, barriers, and blockades I have faced and overcome, I will endure the stress and strain of this also, and with determination and fortitude, patience and resolve, this evil creature, too, will be slain as in those childhood fairytales -although not without some unpleasantries and pain deservedly and justly dealt to the shylock to whom I have fallen victim.

As I wrote this response to that unwarranted and vile missive I realized there were two spirits beside me to assist this Sunday morning – one being my mother who passed away so young so long ago – almost to the day – but who makes her presence known when need be and has done so all my life.

The other presence I distinctly felt near me this morn I'll just refer to as "Bob," who, twenty-five years back in our younger days, quite descriptively, and precisely, assessed the character of the individual of whom I speak of herein in verbiage I cannot repeat in a public forum such as this.

All these years hence, in the deepest recesses of my mind, I suspected, and was haunted with an uncomfortable, eerie feeling, that he was right in his judgement, which was not in any way phrased to leave any doubts as to her depravity and greed-filled, selfish nature, with not an atom of redeeming worth or value to this world.

Having recently turned seventy-three, her remaining time with us is slowly, as do the sands of an hour glass pass from top to bottom – deceivingly slow at first, but with certainty the once-bountiful pile of precious bits of her life in the top section, grain by grain, fall away to the bottom signaling for her time is nearly gone to redeem herself.

May god take pity on her character and, in due time, after she has suffered somewhat, felt the pain her victims felt-and there have been more than just a few, shed the tears of desperation and heartbreak she caused others to shed, and may he forgive her worldly life of callous, meanness, and absence of even a particle of concern for her fellow human beings.

Let's all pray her sins on earth were not irredeemable and eventually will be forgiven, though, as of now, she remains as detestable and as vile a woman as you could ever imagine with no apparent concerns to change.

If you have read this gloomy account of this pariah and see something in it that fits someone you know, pass it on to them-or others who might benefit from the lesson that you must forge on even when someone you have loved or cared for turns into your worst nightmare. If only one person takes something from my story that so troubled me to write, it will have been worth the effort.

Postscript: As of today-Sunday morning at that-I awoke to the realization that "Bob's" solemn words to me a quarter century ago-though he loved her much-have proven to be accurate and true.