Christmas Miracles (13 page)

But the always frugal, always practical couple did not go on their honeymoon immediately after their wedding that May. They put it off until September when they knew they could better afford it after the expense of the wedding reception.

“They got married in a civil ceremony to avoid any complications with any religious issues,” Joyce said. “Jason's folks were Methodists, Nan had decided to be confirmed a Roman Catholic in Mom's honor, Dad and our stepmom were Jewish, and I was sort of a New Age blend. The newlyweds hosted a really great reception at one of the local hotels—and they paid every dime of it themselves.”

It was during takeoff of their honeymoon flight that the small commuter plane crashed.

“It was supposed to take them to a larger airport where they would take off for Tahiti,” Joyce said. “Instead, it rose just high enough to slam back down to the ground and take Nan and Jason, seven other passengers, and the three crew members to their deaths.”

Joyce Epstein entered a period of deep depression after the fatal accident.

“For a time, I sincerely did not feel that I could go on living,” she stated frankly. “My sister and Jason had become my world. Shortly after Nan had graduated from high school, Dad and our stepmother had moved to a different city, leaving me, Nan's surrogate mother, to look after her. My own plans for marriage had been dashed when my fiancé was involved in a serious automobile accident and left mentally impaired. I had compensated for the loss of my future by spending even more emotional energy on Nan and Jason. I was thirty-one, and I felt as though my life was over.”

Although she had sought counsel from a rabbi, a priest, her father, and certain of her friends, Joyce could find no respite from her grief. “I barely slept. And when I did, my dreams were haunted by scenes of the crash and my deep sense of loss.”

Joyce is now somewhat ashamed to admit that for a time she had even considered suicide. “I felt that since Nan and Jason had been taken from me, I would join them on the other side. Thank God, I had confessed such a plan to a priest, and he convinced me that such a drastic deed would not produce the results that I desired.”

Three months after the tragic deaths of her sister and brother-in-law and between the Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations, Joyce left her home to seek rest and seclusion in a small ski resort in Colorado.

“There was absolutely no way that I could deal with the holidays in the old familiar places where Nan and I had spent so many wonderful holidays,” she said, “so I found this little out-of-the-way lodge where I could seek solace of spirit.”

One night as she sat reading near the fireplace in her room, Joyce unmistakably felt a physical presence behind her.

“I turned to see the images of Nan and Jason standing behind me in the center of the room,” she recalled. “I saw them as solidly as they had ever appeared in life. They were smiling and holding hands—and for the first time in months, I smiled, too.”

Joyce is certain she actually heard Nan speaking in her familiar, soft, lilting voice, so much like their mother's gentle Irish brogue.

“Please do not continue to grieve so for us,” Nan's spirit told her. “Jason and I are all right. And our love is even stronger here than it was on Earth.”

Joyce tried to fight back the tears and the sudden rush of emotion that caused her to shout: “Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me alone? I can't go on without you!”

Nan's lovely features seemed momentarily to be feeling Joyce's pain, but then she smiled and spoke with authority: “Of course you can, Sis. You know, when I was just a little girl, there were times when you had to leave me alone for a while. I would cry, fearing that if something happened to you, I wouldn't be able to live without you. But you always came back home, and we were together again. One day, my dear sister, you will join us here, and the three of us will be together again with Mom and other dear ones of our family who have already come home. Until that day, my darling, be happy and live a life of joy and fulfillment.”

Before Joyce could speak again, Nan and Jason faded from sight—but the impact of her sister's words have never left her.

“The proof of my sister's immortality freed me from my deep depression,” Joyce said. “And the fact that she appeared so happy permitted me to become positive about life once again.”

Joyce concluded the story of her Christmas miracle by stating that all of her friends were pleased to notice her new positive attitude when she came home after the holidays.

“To all who would listen,” she said, “I told the story of a sister's love that was able to push aside the dark curtain of death long enough to restore the faith of one who had felt left behind to survive only in gloom and despair. To all who would listen, I declared that love is the greatest power in the universe—and maybe that is the true message of Christmas.”

T
here can't be any worse time to be fired than at Christmas. At twenty-six, Earl Burdick felt that he was a complete failure.

Four years before, in 1980, he had taken a job teaching high school English and journalism in a suburb of Chicago—a position that he hoped would serve as a stepping-stone to help him achieve his dream of becoming a full-time freelance writer. After the first semester, he learned that he was not cut out to be a disciplinarian—and facing the classrooms of unruly, disrespectful students until the end of the school year in June became a living hell.

A fellow faculty member who knew Earl was leaving teaching suggested that he sell insurance. “You can write during the day and make evening appointments to call on prospective clients after work,” his friend said, making the schedule seem ideal.

But it took Earl less than a month to discover that he had absolutely no talent for intruding on tired and often irritable people and convincing them that the acquisition of an insurance policy and its subsequent payment obligations would be the answer to all their earthly concerns.

Finally, in the winter of 1981, he secured a job as the manager of a convenience store, and things seemed to be going well—so well that a year later, in the winter of 1982, he married Marjorie, the patient young woman to whom he had been engaged since their senior year in college.

Although he put in long hours at the store, he still managed to find time to write after work and on weekends, and he had received several encouraging rejection slips and had made one small sale to a trade journal. Yes, things were going so well that they decided they could afford to begin a family. Marjorie was expecting in May.

And now, two weeks before Christmas in 1984, the convenience store had been bought out by a national chain of similar marketplaces, and Earl had been summarily fired as its manager. Desperate, he had suggested his moving a couple of rungs down the ladder and working as a salesclerk, a stock boy, a custodian. But the new owners informed him that they would be bringing in their own specially trained crew to staff the store. They no longer required his services in any capacity.

It was two in the afternoon. Somehow Earl had to focus on the hard reality of becoming suddenly unemployed. After three years, he had come to rely mightily on a weekly paycheck. And now with a baby on the way. . . .

Oh, dear God, how was he going to tell Marjorie what had happened? How long could they stretch their meager savings until he found another job?

Although it was not his custom to do so, Earl walked into a bar, ordered a stiff drink, and sat down at a small table near the door. As he took a moment to survey his unfamiliar surroundings, the thought struck him that this was only the second or third time he had ever been in a bar in his life.

Earl knew that he had been walking the streets in a rather disoriented mental state, and he glanced at the address on the napkin under his drink to see where it was that he had randomly stopped his wandering and attempted to regain some perspective. Judging from the address on the soggy napkin, he had walked a lot farther than he had thought.

After Earl had sat in brooding silence for a few minutes, he was startled out of his interior monologue of despair by a well-dressed, pleasantly smiling stranger who asked if he might join him.

Glancing up and noticing that the man already had his hand resting on the back of one of the chairs at the table, Earl shrugged and indicated that he could sit down if it pleased him to do so.

“Thank you, Earl.” The man smiled, sitting down opposite him.

“How do you know my name?” Earl asked.

“Oh, I know a lot about you, Earl,” the stranger said. His eyes seemed sad and his voice concerned when he added, “It's difficult to adjust to cruel circumstances when you are suddenly fired, especially at Christmas, but you must not be discouraged.”

Earl squinted over the edge of his glass and studied the man carefully. Rather tall, well built, salt-and-pepper hair at the temples. A soft voice that communicated quiet strength and confidence. Bright blue eyes that seemed to have the power to peer within one's soul.

“I'm sorry that I don't remember you,” Earl said apologetically, extending his hand. “Where did we meet, Mr. . . .?”

The man shook Earl's hand warmly. “Oh, we've never met in person,” he said, “but I know of your problem, and I want to help you. It's Christmas, your wife Marjorie is expecting your first child, and you're out of work.”

Earl was feeling very uncomfortable. “You know my name, my wife's name,” he began. “You know that Marjorie's pregnant. You know that I just got fired. Man, you are beginning to creep me out. Are you one of the suits from the company that just fired me? If you want to give me another job, that's fine. Maybe you suddenly got a guilty conscience over firing me at Christmas time.”

The stranger smiled and denied working for the company that had acquired the convenience store and terminated Earl's position as manager. And then the man proceeded to tell him just how much he really knew about the most intimate details of Earl Burdick's life.

“I have never been so mesmerized, so enraptured in my life,” Earl told us recently as he recounted the story of his Christmas miracle. “The stranger spoke in this incredibly soothing voice, and he really seemed to know everything about me and my hopes and my dreams. He knew my birth date, Marjorie's birth date, how the two of us had met in college, on and on. I just sat there and listened to him with my mouth hanging open.”

And then, Earl said, came the most amazing thing of all: “He told me that he knew that what I wanted most in life was to be a writer. He told me of a small community newspaper in one of the suburbs that needed a managing editor. He wrote down the address and he told me whom to see. Then he gave me a little pep talk about how newspaper work could help me polish my skills as a writer and teach me the discipline of meeting deadlines under pressure. He told me to keep my chin up and never become discouraged. ‘We never walk alone,' he said. There's always someone to reach out and give us a helping hand.”

Earl was so heartened by the man's inspirational message and the tip on the newspaper job that it took him a moment to realize that the stranger was no longer sitting at the table speaking to him. He looked up to see him walking out the front door.

“I ran after him to thank him,” Earl said, “but he must have blended right in with the people walking on the street, because he was nowhere in sight. I was right behind him, but somehow I lost him.”

Before Earl called Marjorie with the bad news that he had been fired, he dialed the telephone number on the slip of paper that the stranger had given him.

“The man who answered the phone was the publisher of the community newspaper,” Earl said. “He was astonished that I had called that afternoon, because his managing editor had just walked out on the job that noon and left him in a desperate situation. They had to have a special Christmas edition with the last-minute shopping advertisements out in three days. We struck an instant rapport, and I told him of my background as editor of the college newspaper, as an English and journalism teacher, and as a freelance writer. I made an appointment to see him that next morning, and I got the job as managing editor that I held for over ten years.”

Earl said that at first he figured that the stranger in the bar had to be some incredible psychic or a remarkable mentalist like the Amazing Kreskin.

“I went back to the bar a few times over the next several months, thinking maybe the man might frequent the place, but I never saw him again,” he said. “I tried to describe him to the bartenders who work there, but none of them claimed to recognize him at all.”

Later, as Earl replayed the whole strange and wonderful episode in his mind, he came to a very different conclusion.

“No ordinary human—even if he were the world's greatest psychic—could have known all the things about me that he did,” he said. “And what about giving me the name of the publisher who had just lost his editor that very day? That compassionate and remarkable stranger was no psychic—he was my own special Christmas angel!”