TCF Rogue Valley Chapter ~ Reading Room

Healing miracles

by Patty Mylroie, Chapter Leader, TCF, Medford, OR

One of my favorite discussions that I like to have with Compassionate Friends is about the healing miracles they have received from their loved ones or from other sources. I use the word healing much more than recovery after reading a published article called The New Language of Grief by Darcie Sims, Ph.D. She recommended we get rid of the word recovery and use healing instead. She states that recovery is a medical model word, designed to describe broken bones, not hearts. We recover from a broken arm or the chicken pox. We don’t get over the death of someone we love. We get through it, one moment, one hour, one day, one hurt at a time. Healing, she quotes, is a hopeful word. I agree. Now for the miracle…

I want to share with you one such healing miracle that I know had to come from our daughter, Amy Jo. This healing miracle took place approximately seven months following her death. Perhaps there had been others prior to the seventh month, but I probably was too grief stricken to be aware, but this one could not be ignored.

While living in New Jersey one of my favorite places to shop was at the Franklin Mills in Philadelphia, Pa. Since her death I had not been shopping anywhere let alone Franklin Mills. The weekend before Mother’s Day I decided to make myself go to the Mills and look for whatever. I certainly was not enthusiastic or even in the mood, but I attempted to try to get on with my life. I saw a dress that was somewhat appealing, thought about buying it, and then just could not as the sadness of losing my daughter took over. So home I went.

During this same week before Mother’s Day my husband, Charles, was on a business trip in Philadelphia and had decided for some reason to stop at Franklin Mills (he hates the Mills and any shopping center) and purchase a Mother’s Day gift for me. I had not shared with him anything about my previous trip to Franklin Mills except that I had not been in the best of moods to shop.

Mother’s Day arrived. Oh how I dreaded that one! I wanted to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed for the day. I refused to go to Church as the pain of seeing Mothers and their Daughters would just be too much. In spite of my broken heart Charles presented me with a gift for Mother’s Day. I opened the gift and found that exact same dress that I had seen at Franklin Mills the week before and had not bought because of my sadness. I took one look at that dress and I instantly, without a doubt, knew that that dress came from Amy Jo through her Dad.

Charles had learned years ago not to buy me clothes as that just did not work out. But for the strangest reason he bought that very same dress and even in the right size (he didn’t even know my size) that I was about to buy the week before. How he could go into this one store and select this one dress was just too amazing. Franklin Mills has many, many outlet stores and thousands of dresses to select. Too unexplainable for this not to be a healing miracle. Someone had to lead Charles through this process. My heart to this day tells me that this someone was our daughter, Amy Jo, who wanted to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day.

Eleven years have gone by and that dress still hangs in my closet as a reminder that healing miracles do come. This experience proved to me without a doubt that Amy Jo continues to exist in my life no matter where she may be.