Real Life Encounter of Mercy from the King of Mercy

August of 2021, we entered the RCIA program, and within just a few weeks, I found out my identical twin sister, Patty, had stage 4 cancer.  She surprised the doctors with what they kept saying should have been a slow growing cancer.  As a former EMT over 18 years prior, I was familiar, but not exactly up to date with hospital outcomes, germ worries, and all sorts of procedures, so I refreshed myself on the steps she’d be taking prior to surgeries, which were supposed to be farther down the line.  But everything changed when she went in for simple out-patient procedure that left her with a massive infection that ultimately led to her death.

I got the call that she came home from her procedure, and within hours, her husband was rushing her back to the ER because she was in excruciating pain.  That was the last time she was conscious, and the last time her precious children saw her.  Imagining those moments takes my breath away, wondering how scared her children must have been, and how devastating the next two weeks to come were.  Later in the same night I received a call that things were dire and she was rushed into “lifesaving surgery”.  The doctors open the body and try to flush/scrape/vacuum the infection out.  Worse yet, they leave the body open but packed in case they must go in again.  She was then on mechanical ventilation for over a week, and when they finally pulled it out, it was only a couple days later during a CT scan she aspirated on the table and passed. 

At the time, I was an active-duty military spouse living completely on the opposite coast of my sister.  I remember when she first called in August, I felt I wanted to go see her, I asked, and she reassured me she was going to beat this and there was no need to come out other than a planned visit for Christmas or something.  When she died, I hadn’t seen her in 5 years.  The worst part was this occurred during covid, and very little was done to keep family connected to their loved ones while in critical care.  I didn’t even get to have someone hold up an ipad or phone to her ear to say anything to her.  I know many readers understand this pain well from those years.

Enter Our Lady and Mother, as well as the King of Mercy, who was with me the most during those last two weeks.  By October we were well into RCIA and had learned about the power of the Rosary.  I decided from the moment of that lifesaving surgery; I was going to pray the rosary every day.  Almost all of them, I cried my way through.  See, from my time being an EMT, I just knew that her chances of survival were slim with the sepsis alone, and then having to be opened, they were much lower.  If she did survive, I know it would be a treacherous journey with much suffering trying to beat the cancer and concurrently living with her SLE lupus.  I knew the statistics, and it wasn’t a losing of hope, but more, what can I do for her that is better than praying for something like her surviving when that may not be part of God’s plan.  I realized, I would ask for His mercy.  I asked our Lady with each rosary to intercede with her beloved son, and grant my sister mercy, and that meant whatever type of mercy was His divine providence, including taking her.  And He granted it.  She passed away in the early hours of All Souls Day November 2nd. 

Grieving wasn’t as hard as I was made to feel it might be.  I had much more peace, and even more strangely, a gratitude.  The ripple effect in His divine providence reaches so far, we have no idea the impact that an event has not only on ourselves and our souls, but others.  In this case, I thought, He brought me home into the Church, to not only show me His mercy, but love me and hold me during one of the most difficult losses I have ever faced.  His mercy endures, after a year of my offering every mass up for her soul, I felt His peace, and a sense that she made it, and was past purgatory, if she had been there.  I took great solace in knowing as infants we had been baptized in the One True Church, and though she was unable to practice her Catholic faith, or be confirmed in the church, she lived out her faith, and touched many people, even bringing them closer to Christ.  I know that Our Lady and Mother was integral in her intercession on behalf of myself and Patty, and His mercy is also made manifest through her and devotions like the Rosary.  During this past week of Divine Mercy, I was reminded how His mercy is available all year and in all circumstances.

-Victoria