“I don’t know, Barbara,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “But I know that what Dad taught us is true. He’s in heaven and one day we’ll go to live with him there and we’ll all be together again. What a homecoming that’ll be, huh?”
Barbara smiled through her tears. “Yeah, and in heaven he won’t have to make house calls.”
In the decade that followed, although the rest of Barbara’s siblings all went their own ways, Barbara became very attached to her brother Lou. Shortly after Lou joined the Navy, she, too, joined. When Lou finished serving his time, he married, taught college, and eight years later moved to San Diego, where he began working on his second master’s degree at the University of San Diego.
After serving a double hitch in the Navy, Barbara also moved to San Diego and found a house just a few miles from Lou’s. She, too, began attending the university.
Lou worried about his sister’s lack of independence. “I know she wants to get married and have a family of her own,” he confided to his wife, Anna, one day. “But all she does is go to school, work, and sit home, in front of the television set. She can’t expect to meet someone living like that.”
Anna angled her head thoughtfully. “I think it’s just going to take more time with Barbara. She’s starting to come out of her shell some, and once she has her degree she’ll feel a lot better about things. Don’t worry about her.”
Besides, it wasn’t as if Barbara didn’t have a family. She did. Over the next fifteen years Lou and Anna raised four children, and Barbara was always at the center of their family outings.
Over time, Barbara earned a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation and began working in an alcohol-recovery center. Her patients ranged from hopeless adults to troubled teens, and Barbara worked tirelessly with them.
As Barbara became more involved with her patients, Lou and Anna began to notice a change in her.
“You know,” Lou said one night as he and his wife washed dinner dishes together at the kitchen sink, “all of us kids growing up used to think there was something wrong with Barbara. We thought she’d never amount to much, I guess because she was so alone and never did the things the rest of us did.”
He paused a moment before continuing. “But that isn’t true at all. She’s got her education and a wonderful job. She gives hope to people who have none, and for dozens of her patients she’s the greatest gift God has ever given them.”
“I told you, Lou,” Anna said warmly. “You used to worry so much about Barbara.”
“I still worry about her because she has no family of her own. All she’s ever really wanted is a family.”
“She’s growing at her own pace.” Anna smiled, drying her hands on a nearby towel and setting it back on the countertop. “For now, though, it’s not like she has no one. We’re her family. But one of these days, when she’s ready, she will meet the right person and then she’ll have her family. She has plenty of time yet. Watch and see.”
But a few years later, Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer. At forty-three, she was younger than most breast cancer patients, so doctors were at first hopeful she might survive. They removed a cancerous section of her breast, and when the cancer continued to spread they performed a mastectomy. The surgery was followed up by chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which caused Barbara’s hair to fall out and often left her violently ill.
Still, she continued to work, staying home only on the days when she felt sickest. When she was at work, she put her personal troubles behind her and concentrated only on helping her patients.
“That woman is amazing,” Anna said one day as she watched Barbara making dinner for her family in the kitchen.
Lou stared thoughtfully at his sister. “She’s a fighter, all right. But I’m so worried about her.”
“The cancer?”
Lou nodded. “She talked to the doctor yesterday. It’s spread into her lymph system.”
Anna hung her head and sighed, and for a long time neither of them said anything. There was no need. They both knew what the news meant. When cancer spreads through the lymph system, as it had in Barbara’s body, the outcome was too often certain.
That had been in the spring, but Barbara continued to work through the first part of November before succumbing to her illness and taking a leave of absence. The cancer had continued to spread, this time beyond her lymph system into her entire body, and doctors did not expect her to live more than six months.
Now, when Lou left Barbara at her apartment, their time together was painful for both of them.
“You’ve got to hang in here and pull through this,” Lou would tell her as he sat at the edge of her bed and helped her take sips of ice water. She had lost a lot of weight and her skin looked gray and lifeless.
“I’m trying, Lou, really I am,” she would say, never complaining about the effort it took to muster her strength.
When Lou would leave Barbara’s apartment, he would often bow his head and pray before driving home.
“Lord, please help me see Barbara through this terrible disease. I pray that she lives. But if her time has come to go home to you, I pray you make the transition easy. Please don’t let her suffer, Lord.”
Throughout November and much of December Lou got off work early and stopped to visit Barbara. Although her body was obviously deteriorating, she was not bedridden, and Lou was thankful for that. After their visits he would normally return home for dinner and then go back to see Barbara later in the evening, sometimes bringing her a plate of whatever they’d eaten that night.
“It’s getting to me, Anna,” he confided to his wife one morning. “I hate to see her falling apart. One of these days she’s going to be too weak to get off the couch, and then what are we going to do?”
Anna thought a moment. “Well, we could have her come live with us.”
Lou had thought of the possibility, but knew it would be difficult to make it work. Each of their three bedrooms was being used, and there wouldn’t be anyone home during the day to take care of Barbara. Still, he wanted her to feel welcome. If there was any way they could figure out the logistics, having Barbara come live with them was really the only option Lou could imagine.
That week—two weeks before Christmas—he told Barbara about the idea.
“No way, Lou. Not on your life,” she said, trying to sound firm. “You and Anna and the kids have been my family for such a long time; you’ve done so much for me.” She continued, struggling with each word because of her weakened condition. “I’m not going to impose on you now and make you change your whole house around just so I can come there to die.”
“Barbara, don’t talk like that,” Lou chided her gently. “You’re going to pull through this. You’ve had hard times before, but you’ve always fought it. I want you home for Christmas so you can turn the corner on this thing and get better.”
But both brother and sister knew there was no truth in his words. That much was clear as Christmas drew nearer and Barbara finally became unable to leave her bed except for a brief period once or twice each day.
“Listen, Barbara, if you won’t come live with me and Anna, then you need to move to the Veterans’ Hospice or someplace where you can have help around the clock,” Lou said. “It’s eating me up knowing you’re here alone and going through so much pain by yourself. Especially at Christmastime.”
“I’m fine,” Barbara insisted. “I can reach my medication and I have water by me all the time. I get meals delivered to me and whatever you bring me. That’s plenty of food. I don’t need any help.”
Lou disagreed, and his sister’s situation weighed heavily on him. He prayed that afternoon about a solution for Barbara’s living arrangements, asking God to show him what to do for her.
“God, you know her heart, and I pray you convince her to give up her independence. She needs help, Lord, and I can’t provide it all. I don’t want her living alone, so please help us to work things out. Help her to be willing to move if tha
t’s what is necessary. Amen.”
Finally, one afternoon later that week, Lou left a message for Barbara’s doctor, Dr. Sylvia Sanchez, to call him. He planned to ask the doctor to have a talk with Barbara. Maybe she could convince Barbara that she needed to leave her apartment and get help.
The next morning, December 22, Dr. Sanchez returned Lou’s call.
“Yes, this is Barbara’s brother, Lou,” he said.
“Hello, Lou. We’re all very fond of Barbara,” she said politely. “How can I help you?”
“First of all, I think she’s getting worse very quickly and I’m concerned about her,” he said.
“She’s lost some mobility,” Dr. Sanchez explained. “But I still think she’s got another three months or more.”
“That’s why I’m calling. See, I’ve asked her to come live with me and my family, but she won’t do it. She thinks she’ll be in the way, and I haven’t been able to change her mind.” Lou drew in a deep breath. “I called because I was hoping you might be able to talk some sense into her. If she won’t come live with me, she needs to be at a hospice or a group home, someplace where she can have help around the clock.”
Dr. Sanchez thought for a moment before responding. “Have you considered helping her move in with your father?” she asked.
Lou’s face twisted in confusion; he was not sure he had heard the doctor correctly. “What?”
“Maybe it’s time she go and live with your father,” the doctor repeated. “Sometime around October, I got a call from your father. He wanted to know how she was doing, and he seemed very knowledgeable about her particular case. I was surprised and asked him if he was a doctor, which he said he was. Seemed odd to me that Barbara had never mentioned it before. Anyway, we chatted for a few minutes. Before we finished talking, he told me he’d never gotten to spend enough time with Barbara when she was a little girl.” The doctor hesitated. “He told me that when things got really bad people shouldn’t worry about Barbara because she would be going home to live with him at Christmas.”
Lou had no idea what to say.
“Mr. Oliver? Are you there?”
Lou cleared his throat. “Dr. Sanchez, my father died many years ago. There’s no way he could have made that phone call.”
“How strange,” she said. “Wait. Just a minute.” There was a rustling sound of paper as Dr. Sanchez located Barbara’s file.
“Okay, here it is. Let me see. Yes, it’s right here. On October fifteenth I received a call on my cell phone from a Dr. Hank Oliver. The man said he was Barbara’s father and that when she got toward the end of her illness she’d be going home to live with him.”
Lou shook his head, trying to make sense of the situation. “That’s fine, Dr. Sanchez, but my father’s been dead for almost thirty years. Obviously he couldn’t make a phone call.”
“Is it possible it was an uncle or some other relative or friend?” she asked. “As I said, the man was very knowledgeable about Barbara and her condition. Is there another doctor in your family? I never mentioned the call to Barbara because I assumed your father had discussed it with her before calling me.”
There was silence between them again. “Doctor, you’re sure the man said he was Barbara’s father?”
“Definitely. I remember the call very clearly. I’m sure it must have been an uncle or something. Either way, why don’t you look into it and let me know. It sounds like somewhere there’s a family member who is expecting her to come home to live with them. Meanwhile I’ll work on Barbara and try to convince her that it isn’t wise for her to be alone anymore.”
“I’d like her home with us before Christmas, Doctor.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll call her this afternoon.”
Lou hung up the phone and sat staring at it, wondering who would have made such a strange call. There were several uncles in the Oliver family, but none of them knew Barbara very well, and certainly none of them would have identified themselves as Barbara’s father. Nevertheless, he spent much of the day contacting every male relative who knew Barbara and asking if anyone had called Barbara’s doctor. By that evening he had learned that none of them knew anything about it.
Suddenly he remembered his prayer. He had asked God to work out Barbara’s living arrangements, and now he had discovered that Dr. Sanchez had received a phone call from someone claiming to be Hank Oliver. Was it possible that God had answered his prayers by letting him know that Barbara was eventually going to be going home to heaven, where she would be reunited with their father?
Lou told Anna what had happened, and she, too, thought it might be possible. Perhaps, she said, the phone call was God’s way of letting them know Barbara was headed for a better place.
“But that doesn’t help us right now,” she added. “We still don’t know where she needs to be for the next three months until she dies. Christmas is in two days. She needs a place to live, Lou.”
“I know. That’s the strange part. If it’s an answer to prayer, then what do we do about the next three months?”
The answer came too quickly.
Early on Christmas Eve—the day after Barbara agreed to go home with Lou and Anna—she died peacefully in her sleep. She had been completely bedridden for just two days.
Dr. Sanchez and the others were baffled when they heard the news. Although she had been very clearly dying, they thought Barbara should have had at least another three months to live.
At the Oliver home, Barbara’s death sent Lou and Anna on a roller-coaster ride of mixed emotions.
“I’m going to miss her so much,” Lou said, his eyes brimming with tears. “But she was no longer able to live alone, and God knew it was time for her to come home. Home for Christmas . . .”
“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Anna asked.
Lou raised an eye. “About the phone call, you mean? Yeah, it does. The more I think about it, the more I believe it just might have been Dad making that phone call.”
“Maybe so.”
“Really,” Lou continued. “I believe God wanted us to know everything was going to work out fine. Barbara wouldn’t need a place to live because she was going home to heaven.”
Anna was silent, lost in her own thoughts.
“You know something, Anna?” Lou said. “I always wondered if Dad really loved me. Barbara wondered the same thing. But now I feel like I can put that behind me. God knew that I wondered about my dad. So he answered my prayer and let me know that Dad did love both of us. He loved us so much that he was looking forward to welcoming the first of his children home.”
A Gift for Noel
By the time Noel Conover had her first birthday, her parents, Evan and Susie, began to notice something different about her. She was silent. Whereas other children her age might coo or say simple words, Noel rarely uttered any sound at all.
Finally her parents arranged an appointment with a specialist who was able to confirm their fears. Noel had been born deaf and would remain so for the rest of her life. On the drive home from the doctor’s office, Noel sat in the backseat playing with a stuffed animal while Evan and Susie held hands and shared their grief over the news.
“I want so much for her to be like the other kids,” Susie said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “It just isn’t fair. She’s such a beautiful girl, and now she’s going to be different from her peers for the rest of her life. When I think of all the sounds she’ll miss ... She’ll never hear me say her name or sing her a lullaby.”
Evan stared straight ahead, keeping his eyes on the road. “I keep thinking that she’ll never hear me tell her how much I love her.” He glanced at his wife. “She’ll never hear any of it.”
Susie and Evan vowed that day to always be strong for Noel and to expect only the best from her in every situation. They would never allow her to use deafness as an excuse for doing anything less than she was capable of. They agreed to learn sign language and to teach Noel as soon as possible. And they would also teach her to read lips so that
she would have an easier time fitting in with other children in a school setting. They knew there would be times of disappointment and setbacks, but they promised to lean on each other and give Noel the best life possible despite her handicap.
As the years passed, the Conovers lived up to their promise. While she was still a toddler, Noel learned to speak to her parents in sign language, and soon she was making progress in her ability to read lips.
Teaching Noel to make friends with hearing children proved to be the most difficult aspect of helping her learn to live with her deafness. As a toddler, Noel was introduced to lots of children her age but never seemed to fit in with them. Once while at the park, she tried to talk in sign language to a young girl who was obviously able to hear.
“Want to play with my dolly?” Noel signed quickly.
The child gave Noel a blank stare and looked at her hands. “Why are you moving your hands like that?” the girl asked.
Noel looked at the girl curiously, unable to understand her lip movements, and then once again used sign language to ask the girl if she wanted to play. This time the child began to laugh at Noel, assuming that Noel was playing some kind of game.
But the girl’s laughter confused Noel and she began to cry, turning and running to where her mother sat painfully watching the exchange from a nearby park bench.
“It’s all right,” Susie signed to her daughter, taking her into her arms. “She wants to be your friend, honey. She just didn’t understand you.”
“She didn’t like me,” Noel signed back to her mother. Susie’s heart went out to her daughter, whose tiny spirit seemed crushed by the encounter.
“No,” Susie signed in return. “She liked you. She just didn’t understand you.”
But Noel seemed frightened, and Susie thought she knew why. For the first time the little girl understood that she was different from other children, and the thought must have terrified her. After that she refused to make any attempt to communicate with other children. She would play near them and smile at them, but she always remained an outsider.