George is Healed

George is healed.

My first encounter with a miraculous healing was with my brother, George.  The story unfolds over a period of time, so I will narrate the first part from my perspective, then give our mother’s experience.  To this day, George has no recollection of the healing.  However, George has developed a spirituality of his own, spending a period of time with Ralph Martin’s ministries, travelling on several of his missions across the globe.

The story begins as I was a freshman at Michigan State University.  My parents had dropped me off at the beginning of the semester and, being the eldest of a large family, they did not offer to come and bring me home for Thanksgiving.  I was on my own.

I was unsuccessful at hitching a ride with any classmates who were going back to my community, so I thought I was stranded.  I told my computer programming professor my plight and he offered me the use of his VW bug.  The pretense was that I was “test driving” it to see my family.  His hope was that I would offer to buy it after his generous offer.

When I picked up the VW bug, I noticed that the floor board on the driver’s side was eaten out with rust.  As I drove down the road, I could see the pavement going by…beneath me!  On top of that, the temperature was in the 20’s and it began to snow.  In fact, by the time I was a half hour into my 110-mile trip, I was driving in a white-out.  The windshield wiper barely worked and the defroster was blowing snow onto the dashboard.  Even with long underwear and several layers of clothing I was just barely able to concentrate on driving.  But the prospect of a home-cooked meal and leftover turkey to bring back to the dormitory drove me onward.

The last few miles were a bone-chilling agony, but I did not stop until I arrived at out our farm house doorstep.  I turned off the ignition and sat there, unable to move.  Someone looked out the kitchen window to see who the stranger was in the driveway.  Finally, my youngest brother, Patrick, came outside and looked at me.

“Well,” he said.  “When are you coming in the house?”

That jolted me out of my frozen reverie, so I got out of the car and walked into the house.

As I walked into the living room, the warmth of the wood stove welcomed me like I had never felt before.  I kissed mom and said hello to my younger brothers and sisters.  Then I looked at George.  He sat in the La-Z-Boy chair and I had to look twice to recognize who he was.

George sat in the chair with a blanket over his legs.  His head had a pale translucence color that showed the emaciated structure of his skull protruding through the skin.  His hair was gone.  I could see his blood veins under the skin.  His clothes hung loosely about him.  In fact, while he was over six feet tall, he weighed only seventy pounds!

My first realization was, “I’ll be attending George’s funeral before Christmas.”

I took my mother aside and asked, “What’s wrong with George?”

She related to me that she was taking George to an oncologist near Detroit for treatments for cancer of the bladder.  Furthermore, at the last visit, the oncologist had told her that the tumor had grown to the size of a baseball and was inoperable.  The doctor said that there wasn’t much more that he could do.  They were treating it with chemotherapy, which caused George to lose his hair and his appetite.  His normal weight before discovering the cancer was about one hundred fifty pounds.  He was six feet, four inches tall.

I watched George carefully during my visit and noticed that, although our mother had heaped up his plate with the holiday feast, he barely touched it.  I could see the pain in her eyes as she watched George wasting away.  I knew my mother was praying.  However, I was going through a crisis of my own faith and did not ask to pray with her.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving came with a break in the weather.  After Mass and a family brunch I packed the car with goodies and left for campus.  I drove back in sixty-degree weather and, aside from the permanent air conditioning, the trip was uneventful.  I did not buy the bug.

I wondered about George but my thoughts turned to the rigors of final exams coming up in the next two weeks.  I did not get the dreaded phone call and, after finishing my examinations, found a ride home for Christmas.

As I walked into the farm house, I immediately looked for George.  There he stood, thinner than normal, but he looked healthy!

I ask mom what happened and here is her story:

“Things settled down after you left and we fell back into our routine.  The next Friday, George asked permission to visit that evening with the neighbor boys about a mile away.  I consented and didn’t think anything about it.  I went to bed, praying the rosary and fell asleep.”

“About two am I was awakened by a loud ‘Thud!’”

“I went downstairs to investigate and found George, passed out on the bathroom floor.  His clothes were spattered with blood and there was bright red blood in and around the stool.  I could not determine whether George had vomited or urinated blood.  I bathed him, changed his clothes and carried him upstairs.  He was breathing but unconscious as I laid him in his bed.  I determined to call the doctor as soon as I could reach him in the morning.”

“I cleaned up the bathroom and put all of the bloody clothes and towels into the washing machine, leaving it to cycle overnight.”

“Dear Jesus, Mother Mary what could I do?”

I so exhausted and heart-stricken that I fell into bed praying the rosary, but fell asleep before I could say a decade.”

“I was suddenly awakened by a flashing white light coming into my bedroom window.  I looked at the clock.  It was three am.”

“My first thought was that one of the siblings became aware of George’s condition and called an ambulance.  As I looked out my window, I could see the lights flashing, but not the source.  ‘It must be that the ambulance pulled around the house,’ I thought.”

“I got up and walked across the hallway to see if I could locate the source of the light from George’s window.  When I opened the door to George’s bedroom, I realized that the brilliant strobing white light was originating at eye level directly above George.”

“The next thing I knew I woke up in my own bed.  ‘What a wild dream!’ I thought.”

“I went downstairs to make coffee and to sit down to my morning brayers and scripture.”

“I was on my second cup of coffee in the middle of my reading when George bounded down the stairs, two steps at a time!  ‘What’s for breakfast, mom.  I’m hungry!’  I made three batches of pancakes, about twenty-two of them.  He ate them all!”

“A week later, I took George to the oncologist.  The doctor looked up from his desk as George walked in.  ‘I don’t have time to fool around, sonny.  Where’s George?’  He replied, ‘I’m the one.’”

“The doctor looked at George, then at me and said, ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’”

“I relayed the events of that night to the doctor.  ‘Well lady, your explanation is as good as mine, because I don’t have any!’”

The good doctor put a scope up George’s ureter to make his examination.  He found a single cyst, about the size of a pinhead.  He surgically scraped it out and cauterized the scar.  He dismissed George and mom with the comment, “I wish my other patients were this easy.  There is no need to come back unless you see the need for it.”

George was only 13 years old at the time.  To this day he has no memory of the day he was healed.