Strange occurrences :)

Wonderful stories.

 

WOW!

 

I've recounted this story before but it was some time ago so, with apologies, here it is again.

My very first memory is when I was 3 years old sitting at home with sun streaming into our living room. Only my mother and myself were there. I knew that she was very upset, she was twisting something in her hands and suddenly burst into tears. I don’t think that I had ever seen an adult cry and became distressed but didn’t cry myself but repeated over and over, ‘Please don’t cry, please don’t cry…’ (I can see it now in detail and it still makes my eyes fill). But she couldn’t help herself and was in floods of tears.

I had no idea what the problem was and only found out some time later that it was shortly after my father had suffered a serious accident. He had been rushing to catch the last train home after visiting his family in a city about 30 miles away from our home town and, as the train moved away, he ran to try and catch it and fell between the platform and the moving train. He lost his thumb and most of the first two fingers of his right hand and suffered head and various other injuries.

During his family visit, he had been to see his uncle Tommy, his mother’s brother, who was dying. Tommy was known as the peacemaker in my father’s large, fractious Irish family and was well regarded.

As my father came around for the first time after the accident, he realized that his hand was in a very bad state. His job was repairing binoculars, gunsights and other optical equipment which called for a great deal of manual sensitivity. His first thought was that he could never return to the only work he had known since he left school and was in panic and shock at the realization that he would be lucky to be able to use a sweeping brush let alone do anything more demanding. As this thought occurred to him and his distress increased, he saw his uncle Tommy at the end of the bed smiling at him and he said, ‘Billy, you’ll go back to your old job, don’t worry’ and with that he was gone. My father had no idea how this might come about but felt a great relief and went to sleep. The next morning his mother visited him and told him that Tommy had died the night before and my father said, ‘I know, he came to see me’.

This happened in 1950, just after the end of the war and so, luckily for my father, there was still a lot of medical expertise in treating serious war wounds. A specialist doctor slowly built up things that vaguely resembled, and functioned like, a thumb and fingers from metal and flesh taken from elsewhere on his body. It took a long time but he eventually gained enough sensitivity to do his old job and returned to it.

Up to that point both my parents had been nominal, non-practicing, Catholics but this incident shook my father into returning to the faith. My sister was removed from the local school and sent to a Catholic school and, when my brother and I became of school age so were we. Although my parents never became what you would call devout, we did attend Mass and we children all had Catholic educations and we all three still practice into our now old age. All down to uncle Tommy.

 

Previous owner? Is car new to you? Have a priest bless your car ASAP...or a family member who has the spare and wanted to give you the heebie-jeebies?

 

What a beautiful testimony of God’s loving Providence towards your dad and your family!

 

Wonderful story, Steve. I have read many accounts of souls appearing at the end of one's bed, and it never ceases to amaze me.