by Amy Newmark
“Darling, I have some news. Is this a good time to talk?” Her voice, usually upbeat and breezy, sounded flat. Something knotted in my stomach.
“Sure. It’s always a good time to talk to you.” I waited, trying to mask my sudden apprehension.
“I went to the oncologist today,” she began, and I wanted to plug my ears so I wouldn’t hear what she’d say next.
After a courageous, three-year battle with breast cancer, Aunt Jeanne had developed an inoperable liver tumor. She accepted the diagnosis with grace, assuring me that she’d fight this new battle with her characteristic strength, determination and positive attitude. But she admitted that the prognosis was not good.
A few weeks later, I was on a plane heading for New Jersey.
I spent the next month with Aunt Jeanne. At first, it was like old times as we laughed over the latest family gossip or reminisced about bygone days. Sometimes, I could almost convince myself that she was going to beat this, and everything would go back to normal. But as the insidious disease began to take its toll, our conversations turned to more profound subjects. We talked of the transiency of life and the promise of a better world beyond this one, a world free of sickness and pain. We talked about our children and grandchildren and shared our hopes and dreams for them. During those days, we became more than aunt and niece. We became friends.
Then, unexpectedly, Aunt Jeanne seemed to rally. I decided to fly home to Florida and get my life back in order. My husband, John, had booked us tickets to return to New Jersey in two weeks for our grandson’s birthday, and I planned to spend more time with my aunt then.
My first day home was devoted to the mundane tasks I’d put on hold. I was vacuuming the bedroom when John poked his head in.
“Are you almost finished?” he asked. “We’ve got to get going if you want to make the four o’clock Mass.”
I had completely forgotten what day it was. Being a late-riser, I preferred attending church on Saturday afternoons instead of Sunday mornings. I quickly changed clothes, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and jumped into the car. On the way to church, I fixated on all the things I had to do when I returned home.
With those thoughts whirling in my head, I followed John up the church steps. But the minute I walked through the door, my mind was suddenly whisked clean, as if a cosmic broom had swept away all the clutter, and I was overcome by an uncontrollable desire to light a candle for Aunt Jeanne. I found this unnerving, since I hadn’t lit a candle in church since I was a child. As much as I tried to ignore it, the feeling grew stronger.
As we took our places in the pew, I glanced at my watch. It was almost four o’clock, and Mass would begin in a few minutes. I nudged John.
“I’m going to light a candle,” I whispered, ignoring his raised eyebrows.
Kneeling before the rows of flickering votives, I touched the slim lighting stick to a flame and transferred the flame to an unlit wick. As I watched the ruby glass begin to glow, I was shocked to hear myself whisper, “Lord, please let this light her way home.”
Where did that come from? But as I hurried back to the pew, I had the sinking feeling that I knew.
“What was all that about?” John whispered.
I tried to answer but could only shake my head.
When we arrived home, the answering machine was blinking. I hit the “Play Messages” button, steeling myself for what I expected to hear.
“Hi, Jackie.” My uncle’s voice sounded drained. “I hate to leave this on your machine, but I have a long list of people to call. Jeanne passed away around four o’clock. I was with her, and it was very peaceful. I wanted you to be one of the first to know.”
“I was one of the first to know,” I thought. “Aunt Jeanne made sure of that.”
When I awoke the next morning, my first thought was that this would be the first day I’d spend on the planet without my Aunt Jeanne. But I soon discovered that wasn’t really true. She was with me when I sat down to do a crossword puzzle over my morning tea. She was beside me when I put on the bra she insisted I buy, telling me it was the most comfortable thing she’d ever worn. She was watching over my shoulder as I watered the plant she gave me when I moved to Florida. I heard her laughter in the tinkling of the wind chime she made for me from shells she collected in Sanibel. She was whispering in my ear when I sat down to edit my writing, and I felt her excitement when a summer thunderstorm blew in from the Gulf. When I finally lay down to sleep, I realized that there would never be a day without my Aunt Jeanne. And I know that someday we’ll meet again, sit down over tea and angel food cake, and catch up on all that’s happened since the day she became an angel.
~Jackie Minniti
Against All Odds
A Road Less Traveled
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
~Ambrose Redmoon
When I lifted the flashlight I saw a pair of twinkling, hungry eyes like twin candles in the dark. Behind those eyes were dozens of others — a pack of wild coyotes had surrounded us. My heart stopped. We were dead for sure.
Hours earlier, I’d been rolling across the highway that stretched from Colorado to Oregon with my Labrador, Jack. We were on our way to a family camping trip when I decided to take a detour by an old Indian Reservation in Malheur County—“Malheur,” I found out later, was French for “bad fortune.”
I happily turned off the highway onto a secluded gravel road. I needed a little distraction. I’d been thinking about my boyfriend and how the romance had to end, but I was afraid to do it. How would I survive? How would I make it on my own?
My fears, I knew, were illogical. I’d survived way worse than a broken romance in my life. And I’d found independence when people told me it was impossible.
Fifteen years earlier, I was a nineteen-year-old engineman in the Navy, newly stationed in San Diego aboard the USS McKee. Two months into my duty, police found my broken, beat-up body at the bottom of the nearby cliffs — I’d been raped by a fellow serviceman, thrown off the seventy-five-foot edge, and left for dead. I woke up hours later paralyzed from the neck down—a quadriplegic.
“You’ll never be able to feed yourself,” doctors predicted. “Walking will be impossible.”
But I believed in doing the impossible. So I spent the next fifteen years proving those doctors wrong. I worked hard to regain partial sensation, strength, and use of my arms and legs, enough to live independently. In the last few years, though, I had grown increasingly dependent on this boyfriend of mine, who encouraged it.
I’d lost faith in my own ability to survive on my own.
I was stuck—emotionally and mentally. And then, literally.
I drove fourteen miles along the gravel road, right into a thick pit of mud; my Subaru Outback wagon jolted to a stop.
I honked my horn but there was no one nearby to hear it. The nearest home was fourteen miles away.
I grabbed my wheelchair tires and frame from the passenger side, put my chair together, and set it outside my door. After transferring to the chair, I inspected the damage. The wheels had sunk halfway into the mud.
I slid to the ground and crawled to the tires to see if letting the air out would help. Nope. I put a towel under the wheels to get traction, then hit the gas again. Nope. Jack fetched sticks for me and I lay in the mud trying to dig the wheels out. By this time, the sun was setting and it was getting cold.
“Quad, how far do you think you are going to get with a little stick?” I said out loud. Jack cocked his head, as if to say, not so far.
“Jack, it’s just you and me, buddy.”
There was an outhouse 600 yards away. If we could get there, I figured someone would find us in the morning. I put on all the clothes I had in the car—a pair of pajamas over my shorts and a fleece pullover—and grabbed a can of Red Bull, a can of Ensure, a packet of tuna, a bottle of water, and dog food. With that and my flashlight, we set off toward the outhouse.
&nb
sp; For an able-bodied person, it was a ten-minute walk. For me, it was a treacherous obstacle course that took two hours.
First, I had to get out of the mud. I slowly walked while pushing my chair, using it for support, until we got to solid ground. I didn’t have function of my triceps, pectorals or hands, but I did have some biceps, traps, deltoids, and leg muscles . . . so we made it. It was fifty feet and it took us fifteen minutes.
I collapsed into my chair. Then we reached a ramp with a three-inch curb. I stood up and tried to lift my chair over it, but my legs gave way and I fell to the ground with the chair—and our precious stash—on top of me.
Jack looked down at me nervously. He’d been with me for five years and he knew I’d never done the ground-to-chair transfer before.
“I know, I know. But I can do this,” I told him.
I inched my way onto the ramp, which gave me just enough height to reach the luggage carriers on my chair. In a complicated series of maneuvers that involved swinging one arm around the backrest, pushing with my feet, and stabilizing myself with my left arm on the luggage carriers, I was able to get myself back into my chair.
I felt ten feet tall! Jack barked in victory.
I found a mound of dirt nearby and used it as a little ramp to get onto the big ramp. We were doing great. Next, I had to get up that steep ramp. It had thick slats every few inches. I pushed myself backwards, uphill, an inch at a time. Every time I reached a slat, I rocked back and forth to get over it. That took another hour.
Finally, the road was clear to the outhouse. The sun had set so I turned on my flashlight. I could see the outhouse twenty-five feet away!
I could also hear the coyotes splashing and howling in the reservoir nearby.
“Don’t worry, Jack. They won’t bother us.”
Ten feet later, Jack suddenly put his head in my lap and stuck to me like glue. He was afraid. I lifted up my flashlight. Dozens of unfriendly eyes stared at us, the closest pair shining a few feet away. Oh my God.
“Get away!” I yelled.
They had us and the outhouse surrounded. My first thought: We’re dead meat.
My second thought: There is no way they are taking us down!
I lifted my feet to show the flashing red lights by my front wheels, hoping the coyotes would think it was fire, and we charged. I sped downhill the last fifteen feet with Jack by my side, straight into those glowing eyes. I cursed as loudly, as angrily, and as rudely as I could, and I kept cursing until we were safely inside the outhouse.
We spent the night there, with the coyotes howling outside our door.
At dawn, I gave Jack his food and I ate the tuna, and we ventured outside again. I pushed up a hill; my thumbs were bloody now. At the top, we reached a cattle guard—a grid of metal bars sticking up from the ground. How was I going to tackle that?
As I stared at the grid, a four-wheel-drive appeared in the distance, on the gravel road. I waved my arms wildly and burst into tears when I saw them coming toward us.
My rescuers, Bob and Bud, were out for some early morning bow hunting. They were shocked to see a woman in her muddied pajamas and wheelchair with her dog, in the middle of nowhere. I recounted the story as they bundled us into their truck, and they were amazed we’d survived.
I wasn’t. I’d survived worse. And I knew now that I could go home and send that man packing.
~Dana Liesegang with Natasha Stoynoff
Let’s Make a Deal
There’s a story behind everything . . . but behind all your stories is always your mother’s story . . . because hers is where yours begins.
~Mitch Albom, For One More Day
“You know, your aunt was always jealous I was picked that day,” my mother would begin. A smile would spread across her face, ever the competitive little sister. “I was no more than twenty-one, and I had on the cutest bunny costume!” Her face would shine even brighter. “I made it myself, you know. I even had a tail. That day I won a year’s supply of Reynolds Wrap and Super Glue.”
She was speaking of her early 1970s appearance on the ever popular Let’s Make a Deal. This tale was one of her favorite memories of all time, and I had heard it throughout my childhood far too many times to count. I never minded though; I loved to see her smile so radiantly.
It was now early October, five years and one week since I had last seen my mother smile. As I often did around that time of year, I spent much of my time reminiscing and flipping through family photos. This year in particular though, I desperately missed seeing her face light up and hearing the heartiness of her laughter. For the billionth time, I searched for family videos, but nothing new surfaced. My mother had hated to set foot in front of a still camera, let alone allow herself to be videotaped.
As I was flipping through a scrapbook I had just applied the finishing touches to, it dawned on me. I could search the web for old Let’s Make a Deal clips. I mean, there are stranger things on YouTube, right? I grabbed my iPad and swiftly typed in “1970s Let’s Make a Deal clips.” Hundreds of options popped up, mostly boasting 1970s cars (which I knew my mother had definitely not won). But one bold blue line caught my eye.
“Let’s Make a Deal Tickets.” Tickets? Huh? I didn’t know they were still filming. I clicked the link and found information for tapings in the Los Angeles area. I read through, and as the moments ticked by, I grew giddy and excited. Tickets! I entered my information, requesting tickets for a date a few weeks from then. I couldn’t wait to tell my husband when he got home!
A few hours later, as Danny and I were sitting down for dinner, I heard my phone ping, alerting me that I had received an e-mail. I would usually disregard the noise during dinnertime, but for some reason I was drawn to the phone. I picked it up, and immediately saw the subject line, “Let’s Make a Deal Tickets for Friday!” Friday? Tomorrow? Tomorrow! I checked my Google schedule and lo and behold, I had the day off.
“Babe, Let’s Make a Deal, tomorrow! Let’s make it happen!” I shouted.
“What?” he called from the kitchen. “I wish! I have to work. Are you serious?” I had told him about my previous search and he was as excited as I had been.
I forgot all about dinner and ran upstairs, searching for my newly acquired Halloween costume that would have to work for the next day. I slipped it on and looked in the mirror, finishing off my rather convincing pirate getup with an “Arrrrrg!”
“Verrry nice,” Danny said, coming up behind me. He spun me around and hugged me. He held me gingerly for a minute and then said, “Something tells me your mom is responsible for this. I know it in my heart. Just you watch, you’re gonna win. I know it.”
The next morning found me standing on the back lot of the studio, waiting in line, dressed as a pirate, surrounded by a gorilla and a Greek goddess. There was nowhere else I’d rather have been. In what felt like no time at all, we were herded into our seats and the cameras were rolling. The music, the people, the lights—it was beyond overwhelming, in the best possible way!
Everyone was encouraged to dance, and that we did. I moved with the music and waited for Wayne Brady to make his debut for the day. Within moments he appeared, and after some more silly moves, he quieted us down and got us into our seats.
“Alright, who’s ready for our first game?” he asked after his hilarious introduction. Of course, we all screamed our heads off: “Pick me, pick me!”
“Alright, you,” he said, pointing to a brunette woman dressed in bright yellow. “And . . . you!” he shouted, pointing at me. Me? Me!
I ran down the steps to join the two of them on stage. My ears were ringing, my face was flushed, and my heart felt like it was about to leap out of my chest.
“ . . . Alright, you got it?” Wayne asked. I snapped back to reality. My head may have been nodding up and down, but I sure didn’t catch the rules. Everything was going so fast. “Go ahead, which door would you like?” he asked, facing my opponent.
“Door number one!” she replied enthusiastically.
&nbs
p; “Alright, Amy, that leaves you with door number two,” he explained to me. Thankfully I now had some idea what was going on.
“Now, I’m going to offer you five hundred dollars for your doors, but you both must decide to sell or stay, even though you are ending up with different doors.”
Okay, I’m getting it now, I thought. We looked at each other and decided to stay right where we were. “We’re not selling!”
He offered us more money, but we weren’t interested. Give us our doors!
Wayne revealed my partner’s door. Behind it was a . . . ZONK! A cactus-shaped something or other, who knows? What was important was that was not my door! She took a seat, which left Wayne and me all alone.
“Amy, how are you feeling?” he asked me.
“I’m feeling great, how about yourself?” I quipped.
“I’m wonderful. I’m just hoping to give you something amazing like a brand new car.” He smiled.
“I hope so too. I’m going to keep the door. Can I keep the door?”
“Well, you have to,” he paused, laughing.
I blushed, but then I saw an opportunity. “You know, my mom was on this show almost forty years ago, and today I know she’s with me, watching from up above. Thanks Mom.” Tears filled my eyes and the back of my throat. I choked on my words and Wayne continued seamlessly.
“I’m sure she is. Now, do you want to see what’s waiting for you behind door number two?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed.
“It’s a . . . brand new car!”
My heart stopped. Or did it speed up? I’m not sure what happened. All I know is that my knees turned to jelly, yet still they helped deliver me into the driver’s seat of my brand new Honda Fit. I gripped the steering wheel tightly, thanking the powers that be, and most especially my mother. I may not have seen her smile or heard her laugh that day, but I sure do know she was doing both in the purest and happiest of ways.
~A.B. Chesler
Twenty-Six-Ounce Miracle