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It was late September of 1990. My stepson, 37 years of age, was terminally ill with lung cancer, metasticized from other parts of his body that the disease had attacked first. His wife called us from their home in another city and told us the somber news. She was resigned, but ill at ease. I sensed her distress and desperately wanted to help. My husband and I prayed, then I prayed again, and again, that there might still be a turn around or, at the least, that his wife might find some peace in her agony.

I went to our library to hunt down every book I could find that talked about healing or miracles, so I might better know how to pray. I brought home four or five that I thought might help -- two were by Bernie Siegel. I opened his book on miracles and read. If only some of those miraculous stories could apply to my stepson. There were plenty of reasons why he should live and not die so young. For one, we all loved him, even more so, it seemed, as he was almost passing from our reach. My heart was overwhelmed with the possibility that a miracle could happen and that he would stay among us.

Suddenly, I stopped reading, looked out beyond the patio door to the garden, and remembered how, just two weeks earlier, he had sat with us at the table and laughed gently as he shared a thought with his half-sister (our daughter) whom he had just come to know. She was sixteen and she was so proud to call him her brother. The brief visit had been a dream fulfilled. I continued to read about another miracle and I truly began to believe that it could happen to him, too.

Then it was there. My eyes were closed, but the vision was clear. He and his wife were walking through a green meadow, moving happily along, hand in hand, laughing as though without a care. Suddenly, before them appeared an abyss. He turned to her and indicated that he would have to continue while she would stay behind. In that instant, a sleeved arm from a gray shrouded figure moved toward him and gently swept him from her, back over the abyss and beyond, to disappear into a soft gray mist. She was gone, too. My heart seemed to stop. I was confused, but strangely at peace. I was greatly relieved and, somehow, comforted that he was safe. Now, what to say to her? I opened my eyes. There was no one else in the room and I had to sort out what I had just seen. Was this just a dream or was it a foretelling of what was to come? Was I to interpret it to mean that he would die and that she would be all right with it? A few days later I called her. I told her about the vision and, although she was saddened, she was deeply touched, and she was able to be comforted. Knowing that he would be safe seemed better than worrying about the moment of his death. A few days later he was gone and we traveled the long distance to be with her. We have not talked about the vision again, but we talked about him and about how he came to her at night, as if to talk, and then he'd be gone. She is now happily remarried.

For me it is a very wonderful memory from which I still gain a measure of peace.