SHI BLOGS TOO

The Phone Call

My son Patrick called me from his apartment today. He got to go home this afternoon after spending two weeks on life support in the ICU, one more week in a private room at the same hospital, then another three weeks at a nursing facility where he was receiving physical therapy for his paralysis caused by the life saving efforts on the ventilator. His sister Julie picked him up and brought him to his place. She couldn't stay long with him though, because she wanted to get home before the roads iced up again. So he was there by himself when he called me.

His spirits were up and he began telling me that he was going through all the cards and letters that he had received while he was in the ICU in the hospital, and on life support when he stopped breathing due to his severe asthma attack. He said that he had framed the big card that Julie had given him with the lighthouse on it and an inspiring verse. If I remember right, the card had quoted a Biblical verse on it also.

Pat said that he hung it in the kitchen of his apartment. He said "I have more faith in the Lord now Mom."
Then he said: "You're probably going to think this is weird, but you know those dreams I was having when I was in the hospital...like the one I told you I saw a Christmas scene in? Well, I had one all the time in there that I was climbing a mountain that had snow all over it and I was trying to get to the top...but I couldn't."

Then he told me that there was a guy with him all the time helping him and that he "DID NOT FEEL LIKE HE WAS STRUGGLING!" That the guy was feeling it all for him, but he didn't know who the guy was.

It was the phone call that I had been waiting for.

There, he had said it at last. I was not about to bring up the "guy standing behind my bed." That was a sensitive issue. Patrick had been too sick and way too fragile for me to bring it up during our conversations over the past few weeks.

I could hardly believe I was hearing it!

How I wanted to hear those very words. I, of course, got choked up and repeated to Ron(my fiance) exactly what he was saying to me as soon as he said it. I had to share the moment.

Then I said to Pat: "Thank God you didn't reach the top of that mountain."

I asked if he remembered asking, Julie, Justin(her husband) and I, about the guy standing behind his bed. He said "No."

He did not remember asking all of us - "Who is that guy standing behind my bed?" I told him everything that he had asked that day of all of us, and how we three were the only ones in his room visiting that day. How, he had asked Justin as soon as he recognized him "Dude, just tell me who the guy is standing behind my bed."

He got real quiet and then he told me that he only knew that all the time he was in ICU that there was a guy who was doing the struggling for him, and that he(Patrick) did not feel any of it!

WOW! That was when I teared up and asked him if he believed in Salvation. He said "Yeah...but why would God want to save me after all the stuff that I have done, and things that I said to people in the past?"

So I told him that we are all sinners and that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. That God cares and sent a Guardian Angel to watch over him in ICU and heal him. I told him then that we all reached out and asked for prayers for him.

He told me that he feels different now and that he doesn't care if people think that he is weird for telling them all this.

I told him: "You're not weird Pat. God is real, and that Guardian Angel was real...you weren't dreaming honey."

Well, then we said our love you's and goodbye's, and I hung up the phone.

What an emotional phone call that was!