The Second Miracle
My life seems to be stitched together by miracles. Mostly of the modern medical kind, if you want to be technical about it. But, that's okay, because God has given us the gift of our minds to understand and discover science, medicine, and the healing arts. There are still things that happen that are beyond our understanding when it comes to our minds and bodies. We learn more each day. The second miracle becomes more fuzzy in my mind as time goes on. Besides that, God keeps adding new miracles, each one more life-changing and critical than the one before it.
As I entered high school, my Papa Tate was growing increasingly frail. Now, the best description I can give you of my grandfather before his illness is to point you to my Dad. Dad looks like him, walks like him, talks like him, acts like him. My Dad got his incredible talents of building things and fixing things from my Papa. Papa had green eyes that twinkled when he was tickled at something. He also had a quick temper and you could hear him cursing from his shop on top of the hill when you walked out of the back door of their house. I have fun memories of him. When I wasn't much older than four I was staying at their house. I went into the bathroom while he was shaving. I got stuck in the toilet and he had to pull me out. I don't know why I thought it would be fun to see if I'd fit all the way into the toilet bowl while I was sitting there! I also remember how he would say a blessing before our meals. He mumbled the prayer and said it so quickly that no one in the family actually new what the words at the end of the blessing were! Same blessing for years on end, but no one can replicate it. He also loved gravy and country style steak more than any other person on the planet!
Papa had Alzheimer's, followed by colon cancer. I remember that in his last few years he would tell stories from his early life, but they were muddled and did not always make sense. He began to talk less and less about the present and lived in the past. He would do things like put on his clothes over his pajamas. I am sure there were way more things going on for him than I really remember, I was only 13 or 14 years old at the time. But I do remember it being very difficult for my grandmother. It is one thing to know someone has this horrible disease but another thing entirely to really understand the depths of it. It takes that person away from you in reality. The body is there but the individual inside can become different altogether. I don't think Grandma could fully fathom this so she spent a lot of time worrying (who wouldn't) and fussing at him about things he couldn't make sense of or understand. There came a time near the end of his life that he couldn't call us by name anymore.
It was early June of my freshman year of High School when Papa went into the hospital. The cancer was ravaging his body. I think he had some surgery to remove part of his colon...but what I remember is that he was unresponsive for several days. The day he woke up he remembered every one of us by name! I was fortunate enough to be able to go and spend an afternoon with him in the hospital. I was so pleased that he could say our names, even people he had not seen for a long time. He passed away only a day or so after that. Mom called my school and had someone come and tell me of his passing during my last class period of the day, gym. She knew I would have friends around me to comfort me.
I do recall (humorously) that when Dad went to Lewis Gale the day he passed away, he left the sunroof and windows down in his car and it poured down rain. I insisted on riding back to my grandparents house in Salem with Dad. We sat on soaked seats as we drove down the River Road, back to the "holler" which would never quite be the same again. Papa Tate had basically lived in that neighborhood near Green Hill Park his whole life, spending his Sunday mornings at Green Hill Church of the Brethren.
I am so thankful for the gift of that warm, sunny afternoon that I got to spend by my Papa's bedside. We were never as close as I was with my grandmothers, but I loved him all the same. All of that happened as we were becoming more involved at Bedford Presbyterian and I was sorting out if I was ready to join the church or not. I had a lot of questions about my faith. In a few weeks time, I traveled to Montreat for the first time. I have no doubt that the experience of miracles I witnessed with my grandparents and my trip to Montreat solidified my belief in the Triune God and the ways in which he works continuously in the world.
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