Christmas Miracles (20 page)

“The rest of the crew had gone home—and I was all alone. That was a really big negative.

“My nose hurt like blazes and it was bleeding. I figured it was broken. That was a pretty big negative.

“I had no idea how long I could continue to breathe in this air pocket before I would suffocate. Another negative. A really big negative. There really didn't seem to be any positives at all.”

McGuire tried hard not to slip into complete despair, but it seemed that his only chance was that some passersby might have occasion to walk by the trench and notice the cave-in.

But why would they think there was anyone buried in the cave-in? How would they be able to see him?

The terrible realization that there would be no one to come to his rescue began to slice away at the thin mental barrier that had saved him from immediate panic.

“Sure, I knew that my wife Megan would start missing me if I was late for supper,” he reasoned, “but it would be hours before she would want to trouble my boss or Jimmy and ask about me. And by then, I could be long suffocated.”

Then McGuire realized that his right hand was sticking up through the dirt!

“I could feel the cold air against my open palm and fingers,” he said. “Somehow, when the force of the cave-in had struck me, my right shoulder had been pressed against the hot weld and my right arm had been straightened back and above my body, thus allowing my hand to remain above the surface, free to wave like a lonely five-fingered flag. That hand could be my salvation. And the fact that my hand was above the dirt also told me that the cave-in had been very uneven and there wasn't fourteen feet of earth, clay, and stones above me, but only a few feet.”

But those were feet of earth heavy enough to prevent McGuire from rising from his kneeling position against the big pipe.

“I had hoped to be able to push the dirt away from my shoulders and stand up,” he said. “But there were hundreds of pounds of clay and stones on top of me.”

The muscles in his legs were cramping from being forced into a kneeling position, and it was becoming difficult to breathe.

He had been fortunate in having been forced up against the large pipe, thereby creating air pockets near him. But the blood from his broken nose kept dripping into his throat, and he feared that he would soon choke and strangle on it. He was sickened by the thought of drowning in his own blood.

McGuire thought of his wife and his children, and he was startled by the vividness of their images on his mental viewing screen. It truly seemed as if each member of his family had suddenly entered the terrible trench to be with him in his anguish.

“The more I thought about my family, the more I wanted to be with them,” he said. “And when I remembered that it was soon Christmas Eve, I was nearly overcome with despair. What a miserable, hellish Christmas present I would be giving my family if I didn't somehow get out of this damn trench. But how was I going to accomplish that miracle?”

Each breath that Mike McGuire took was beginning to feel like molten lava being forced into his nostrils.

Then, the next thing he knew, he seemed to be floating above the trench.

“I figure now that I must have passed out and left my body, but then I thought for certain that I had died,” he said. “I could see my hand kind of drooping down over a bit of my wrist sticking out above the dirt. I didn't really seem to care about what had happened to me. That's the way it goes. Tough. Too bad.

“But then I thought of my family—and just like that, I was there in the kitchen of my home and feeling terrible sadness and longing,” McGuire continued. “My wife Megan was there peeling potatoes for the evening meal. Katie, my oldest girl, was helping her. I went through the rest of the house and saw each one of the kids. Some were watching television. Others were doing their homework. I wanted to hug them one last time. I wanted them to see me. That's when I felt really sad. I didn't want to leave Megan and the kids. I wanted to live.”

McGuire remembered that he seemed to float into the kitchen and that he got right up next to his wife's shoulder. “I tried to scream in her ear that I needed help, but she couldn't hear me. Next, I reached out to touch her—and whether or not it was coincidence, she jerked around with a surprised look on her face. I tried screaming again, ‘Call the boss. Call Jimmy Wissler!' But I just couldn't get through to her.”

Then McGuire found himself back in his pain-cramped body, gasping for the last breaths of air in the pocket around the pipe. “I knew then that I wasn't dead—yet,” he said. “But there was some inner voice that told me that I really had been floating out of my physical body and having a last look at my wife and kids. And that same inner voice was telling me that I could do it again.”

But this time, McGuire thought he would try to travel to Jimmy and somehow get his best friend to see or hear him. “Old Bachelor Jimmy would be having a cool one at our buddy Squint's bar. He would be sitting there without a care in the world. I just prayed that he wouldn't be shooting pool or something with the boys and hooting and hollering.”

McGuire recalled that he only had to think of his friend and he was there beside him. “I gave thanks to the Almighty that Jimmy was just sitting quietly all alone at a table in the corner. I could see his wristwatch because he had slipped out of his heavy coat and rolled up the sleeves on his sweatshirt. It was 4:35. I had probably been trapped in the cave-in for about forty-five minutes! I could be taking my last breath any minute.”

Mike McGuire said later that as he seemed to float above his friend, he could actually see certain things that he was thinking. “Jimmy's thoughts were kind of all jumbled up, like in a dream. I suppose it was because he was just sitting there relaxing, daydreaming—and maybe that's how I got through to him. It wasn't like Megan, peeling potatoes, concentrating on her cooking . . . listening to Katie tell about her new boyfriend . . . hearing the roar of laughter, shouting, and arguing from the other kids in the other rooms . . . trying to mute out the blare of television commercials and the latest hits on the DJ radio show. When I concentrated on Jimmy and said, ‘Hey, man, it's Mike. I need you, buddy. I'm trapped in a cave-in at the trench,' he set down his beer bottle and his eyes opened wide.”

Jimmy frowned, then said Mike's name aloud. He got up from the table, walked to the bar, and stared hard at himself in the mirror behind the pyramids of bottles and glasses.

Squint asked him what was wrong. “You look like you're looking at a ghost, man.”

“You believe in ESP? Telepathy, that sort of thing?” Jimmy asked the bartender.

“Sure,” Squint laughed. “I'm Irish, ain't I? And speaking of the Irish, where's your buddy, McGuire?”

McGuire remembered that he prayed that Jimmy and Squint wouldn't get into any philosophical discussion.

“Oh, dear God,” Mike thought with all his mind and spirit, “Forgive me my sins. Send your angels to watch over Megan and the kids if I don't make it. But please get Jimmy over here fast. Dear lord, I'm fading away.”

The next thing Mike McGuire knew, strong hands were pulling at him, and as if from very far away, he could hear a lot of excited voices. Above all the noise and confusion, he could hear Jimmy telling everyone to take it easy with him.

“For quite a while there, I was still confused,” McGuire said. “I really didn't know if I was still floating around like some ghost, or if I was really back in my physical body. Right away, I was frightened, because I thought that my mind was just playing tricks on me and that I was really dead. Then a wonderful kind of peace came over me, and when I opened my eyes again, I was in the hospital and Megan and all the kids were crowded around the bed.”

Jimmy Wissler was there, too. And later, when Mike felt better, his friend told him how he had at first heard Mike's voice inside his head, crying out for help.

“I had really been nervous about leaving you there alone, man, you worrying about getting your overtime pay in time for Christmas,” Jimmy said. “And I guess you were really on my mind. For a minute there, I thought it was just my worries playing tricks with me, but then, Mike, I swear I saw a vision of you all covered up with clay and stones in that trench. And then I heard your voice again, asking me to come quick and help you. I'm glad I believe in these kinds of things, because the paramedics and the doctors said that we didn't have a whole lot of time to spare. You were sucking the last drops of air from the pocket around you, buddy.”

Megan was extremely upset when she learned of the risk in which her husband had placed himself in order to gain some extra money for Christmas presents.

“You are more important to us than any gift you might put under the Christmas tree could ever be,” she told him. “You should know by now that Christmas is about far more than presents. The love you give us is what matters to us.”

Mike felt the tears come when all the kids chimed in and thanked God for the Christmas miracle that had saved their father's life.

“And Jimmy was our Christmas angel,” Katie McGuire said, giving her father's friend a warm hug. “We'll never forget what you did for us tonight, Jimmy.”

Jimmy the Bachelor had to excuse himself to get a tissue to remove the “something” that had gotten into his eye and made it tear up all of a sudden.

D
uring the mid- to-late 1960s, through an innovative Graduate School Professor Exchange Program offered by the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Sherry Hansen Steiger considered herself fortunate to have taken courses from Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who was soon to become internationally famous for her pioneering work with dying patients. While attending Dr. Ross's courses, such as “Church History in Psychoanalytic Perspective” and “On Death and Dying,” Sherry quite frequently brought her infant son, Erik, bedding him down on a blanket in the back of the classroom.

Sherry was immediately taken with her professor's research into the death process, for even during her undergraduate work in nursing, she had had the firsthand opportunity to observe that dying patients often experienced an encounter with the supernatural. On those occasions when one of her patients had miraculously “come back to life” after a near-death experience, Sherry had witnessed that their lives seemed transformed by what they had seen on the other side.

During one of her lectures, Dr. Kubler-Ross remarked that in her experiences working with dying children, it seemed as if they always knew in advance when they were going to die. Regretfully, she commented, not many doctors or nurses—or even parents— would pay adequate attention to the messages that dying children gave of their awareness of what was imminent in their lives. Understandably, Dr. Kubler-Ross stated, most of the time everyone involved with the child preferred to think only positively and to focus on the prospect that the child would survive the crisis and live.

Perhaps because in Dr. Kubler-Ross Sherry had an extraordinary teacher—who in later years would become a dear personal friend—she was more attuned to the messages that her son Erik would one day attempt to convey regarding his approaching death. Of course, accepting the reality of existence without her dear son would be an entirely different matter.

The 60s were a time of great personal and social upheaval. A time when religious, moral, political, and individual values and belief systems were torn apart, questioned, and often re-evaluated beyond recognition. We were a nation in crisis and Chicago was at the very heart of the turmoil. The Lutheran School of Theology was a new multimillion-dollar building, located on the south side of Chicago, and on a street declared the “neutral” zone between two very active rival and warring gangs: the Blackstone Rangers and the Devil's Disciples. LSTC was itself in crisis with unrest and dissention from some of the students regarding more relevant curriculum in dealing with the moral issues of the day, of anti-war protesting and security issues in living in such a dangerous area. LSTC was quite literally under attack, and was considered an ostentatious threat and an affront to most of the surrounding ghetto community.

A myriad of experts, special-task forces, various committees, and cadres who had been called in for problem solving and negotiating failed at their attempts to address the various situations threatening the school, staff, and students. Sherry found she could no longer hold back. Presenting what she considered to be very simple, obvious, and apparently overlooked solutions with her own thoughts and ideas to Seminary officials, Sherry was soon asked to repeat her “plan” to the Graduate School's Board of Directors. Following several additional meetings where she was queried regarding the specifics of how she envisioned such a plan implemented, Sherry was offered a position on the staff of LSTC, where she was asked to carry out the job description she had inadvertently created!

Dealing with such intense social issues and “helping others”—whether it is through the ministry or any other service-oriented job—does not provide in exchange immunity to one's own problems, but in fact can often serve to mask them. Perhaps especially during the tumultuous times in the '60s and '70s, many couples who were so immersed in helping others through the times of crisis would find little time to realize they were in crisis themselves, and Sherry and Paul were one such couple. It is never a planned or desired thing when families drift apart, but after considerable effort at attempting to resurrect a failing marriage, Sherry and Paul agreed to divorce in the mid-'70s.