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Among Friends |
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| The value of miracles It is customary in my rural, isolated community to celebrate and mourn together. In hard times, sorrows seem lighter; in good times, joy stretches further. Lately, there've been too many funerals, so the picture postcard that arrived in yesterday's mailbox is a welcome reminder that there's a time for every season. The invitation to rejoice with Amelia's family at her graduation party featured a photo montage of "happy snaps" that captured important moments in her 18 years. The pictures of this beautiful girl with the waist-length chestnut hair, shy smile and dancer's carriage was accompanied by a Bernard Berenson quote: "Miracles happen to those who believe in them." Seven years ago, we believed, despite overwhelming odds to the contrary, that Amelia would live to see this day. We accepted as an immutable law of the universe that a miracle of timing and coincidence would save her -- and it did. In 2001, Amelia was a student in my husband's sixth-grade class when she got sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas and began missing school. At first, our local medical folks thought she had a bad cold she couldn't shake off, then perhaps a lingering flu. When she didn't get better after the first of the year, doctors thought Amelia might have asthma. When she still didn't respond to treatment, she was flown by air ambulance to a neighboring island's big-city children's hospital; she got worse. Whether it was luck or fate depends on your faith. On Feb. 14, 2002 -- Valentine's Day -- Amelia suffered heart failure. A team of visiting doctors from Stanford Medical Center happened to be passing by. She was revived; within hours, she'd been flown by private jet to a Palo Alto, Calif., hospital, where she went to the top of the list of critically ill people waiting for a heart transplant. In the coming days, someone died whose heart was a donor match. Amelia lived. Writing later about what she described as her "misery road of darkness," she remembers it as a time when all she could think about was "breathing air." With a stranger's heart beating under the scar running from her throat to her sternum, this 11-year-old country girl who loved horses, volleyball, her parents and her two big brothers survived surgery, setbacks and homesickness. Every picture taken of her during her struggle shows her smiling. Through the many months she was away, our whole town continued to believe in the miracles that came in the nick of time. Our faith was rewarded when she came home to us, her cheeks pinker, her eyes brighter, her breathing deeper. In the next few years, we cheered when she spiked the ball to win on the Dragons' home court, teared up when she was chosen May queen, applauded as she walked under the blossom-bedecked graduation arch. That's why this weekend's celebration of Amelia's graduation from childhood into adulthood -- a transition that so easily, in the exhalation of a single breath, might not have happened -- won't just be a Kodak moment, but a Kleenex evening. Hundreds of us will gather at a local stable to greet each other with customary kisses and hugs, eat home-cooked barbeque, dance to country music and give Amelia cards with crisp $20 bills tucked inside. Amid the laughter and talk of ordinary things, our sidelong glances will follow the young woman with wide brown eyes as she makes her way through the crowd. When she goes to the microphone to thank us for coming to her party, we will offer up silent gratitude for the miracles that made it possible for us to be there celebrating Amelia's future, as well as her life. |
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