Christmas is for Miracles

Christmas is a time for miracles. A time for love and sacrifice—of sharing and giving. It is a time when we remember the Savior and the wonderful gifts we receive at this special season.

I remember a cold Christmas morning in Alabama we shared in a tiny trailer. Ed was going through

Our 1966 homemade Christmas tree

flight school and we were so poor we didn’t have a phone and all our possessions fit in our car. We couldn’t afford a Christmas tree so Ed scrounged pieces of greenery and build a small three-foot tree of chicken wire and broken pine pieces. My dad sent us boxes of Danish Dessert for our gift, and we cut out pictures from the newspapers of all the items we’d give each other “someday” and gave them to each other as our dream gifts.

The army gave us gifts: 1. two weeks off –but we had nowhere to go so we sat in our trailer playing monopoly and other games with other poor flight students and 2. Orders for Ed to go to Vietnam as soon as he finished flight school. The water pipes in the trailer froze so we had no water, but we scrounged everywhere under seat cushions and in the car until we found 100 cents and called home for three minutes. We had each other and love and that was enough.

Our Christmas gift--Marlowe 1967

I remember the next Christmas day when I came home from the hospital with Marlowe. I had been able to talk to Ed on the phone through the Red Cross and tell him about his new son, and even though a war separated us, we had each other, Marlowe, and love; we were a family now, and that was enough.

So many Christmases throughout the year were special, but another one I remember as blessed –even a Christmas miracle—was one in Italy when Ed was in the hospital in Vicenza. His left arm was extremely sore and getting progressively worse, but the doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with it. The doctors tried with all their medical skills to identify the problem with his arm, and failed; Ed’s arm became worse until it reached a crisis on a December night when Ed paced the hospital floor. Despite the maximum amount of pain medications given him, he was in far too much pain to rest. I talked to him by phone and realized how serious the situation was, and I was waiting only until dawn to call our home teachers to ask them to give him a priesthood blessing. 

Suddenly, about 4:30 a.m. when my daughter went out to deliver the newspapers, she came rushing back to report that our home teacher Bob DeWitt was outside our house. Bob explained he had come to pick up our neighbor to fly to Turkey, but they had just been notified that their flight was postponed. Bob contacted another priesthood holder and they went over to the hospital at 5:00 a.m. and gave Ed a priesthood blessing before Bob flew to Turkey. Bob called and told me that in his blessing he’d blessed Ed with comfort and that he’d been inspired to bless Ed that he’d recover his health, and the use of his arm completely.

 

Ed in Landstuhl for Christmas 1985

Those words shocked me. Nothing was seriously wrong with Ed, was there? Soon after that blessing the surgeon examined Ed and noticed that Ed’s hand was becoming atrophied and his fingers were curled like claws. When more x-rays did not show anything, but there was obviously something damaging the nerves in Ed’s hand, the surgeon, radiologist and flight surgeon tried something they’d never tried before--they used they prenatal ultrasound machine to examine Ed’s arm.  It detected an infectious abscess deep in the muscle of Ed’s arm, near the bone—invisible to X-rays. 

They did an emergency operation to drain the abscess and Ed was transferred immediately to the regional medical hospital in Germany. Before Ed left, the surgeon explained told me that a lot of nerve damage had already occurred in Ed’s arm and hand, and that another couple of hours without surgery could have meant that Ed would have lost the complete use of his arm. I flew with Ed to Landstuhl in the medical evacuation plane. Ed spent Christmas in Germany in the hospital, but I made it home on Christmas Eve to be with my daughters. My sons had gone elsewhere for Christmas because we didn't know whether I'd make it back to Italy. 

Nine months in army hospitals in eighteen months and multiple surgeries would occur before Ed would recover, but the priesthood blessing was fulfilled. Ed recovered his health—and the use of his hand—completely.  A postponed flight and a priesthood blessing were wonderful Christmas blessings.

In 2007 we had another Christmas miracle that we didn’t even recognize as such at first. Ed was in a

Ed in 2007 before Christmas

minor car accident a day or so before Christmas. He was hit in an intersection by a young woman who ran a red light and hit his car right in the wheel area. It knocked his car around and he hit his head on the side window and was unconscious for a few seconds.

Apparently, it turned the car around and hit the rear of his car again before he ended up on the side of the road facing 90 degrees from where he had been going. It totaled the car and he had a headache so he was advised by the paramedics and the policeman to be checked out at the emergency room. 

Even then I doubt if he would have gone if I hadn’t come to pick him up and I insisted that since I was driving that’s where we were going--to the ER.  Since he had been knocked unconscious the emergency room personnel insisted on a CT scan even if Ed didn't think it was necessary and we walked over and got the CT scan and walked back. We were getting ready to leave, thinking everything was normal when the doctor returned and reported that there appeared to be no damage from the accident, but that the CT scan had shown a medium to large-sized aneurysm.

From that point on, Ed got royal treatment—rushed to the University of Utah hospital in an ambulance with a paramedical and EMT, sent directly to a trauma room where he was treated like he was in danger of dying, with neck brace, backboard, IVs in both arms. He kept saying, “I’m okay. I just have a headache and an aneurysm.” After further CT scans and tests by more neurosurgeons, they reported that the aneurysm hadn’t ruptured due to the trauma of the accident, but they wanted to keep him in an observation room until 12 hours after the accident to make sure. Finally, about 3:00 a.m. they took the backboard off, but he had the neck brace on all night. The neurosurgeons made sure he was okay and had an appointment to be seen in the neurosurgery clinic in January for follow up on what to do about the aneurysm before they released him. 

But the real miracle was that the aneurysm was found and located before it burst and that it could be

Ed after aneurysm surgery

taken care of. It wasn’t fun to have an aneurysm, but it was better to find one before it ruptured and could be taken care of than after it ruptured. I felt it was truly a Christmas miracle that he had the minor accident that made it necessary for him to get a CT scan, even if it wasted a good Christmas shopping night and day and he was  stiff and sore and had a headache. And the car he totaled was the old 1993 Nissan that Diana and Bryan used forever. Ed had been wanting an excuse to get a new car and there it was! The surgery to fix the aneurysm in January went well!

Ed's last Christmas

In 2014 we had another miracle with Ed's health. In 2010, Ed's emphysema became so bad that he received a lung transplant which gave him four and a half good years. During that time, Ed and I traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, England, Ireland, Scotland, and did many other memorable things. We had gained three grandchildren and life was good. Then Ed had some problems with his bad lung collapsing, and he grew worse and worse. After many operations, illnesses, treatments, December 2014 found Ed very weak and ill. Then on Christmas day, we realized he had the flu. He'd had the flu shot, but apparently it wasn't a good match and didn't work well. 

All Christmas day, Ed was so sick and struggling so hard to breathe that I wanted him to go to the hospital. But his grandson, James, was on a mission in Costa Rica and was supposed to call home. Athena's family was at our house and we were awaiting the call from Costa Rica. It came as a Skype call which was broadcast on our large-screen TV. Ed was able to hear from James, although Ed couldn't talk by that time. The day after Christmas, Ed was so weak he couldn't walk, so he was carried to the car to be transported to the hospital where he died two weeks later. But he had been able to spend his last Christmas with his family and to Skype with his grandson as he had wanted to. 

Sometimes Miracles are large and obvious; other times they are small and sweet. Ed's last Christmas was the last.