My sister Stephanie is six years older than me and lives in Britain. We never really got on. I wish it was otherwise, but there we are. We simply never got on. We argued. A lot. Steph also argued with my parents. A lot.
Steph had a daughter, Tessa, but her marriage broke down after a few years and the family tensions grew even worse. After the collapse she had some dreadful rows with me and with our parents. Until after one particularly venomous episode she cut off all contact. Neither she nor her daughter, whom my parents had partly raised, would speak to any of us again.
This was all some years ago and in the meantime I married a Canadian and came here to live. So it wasn't so bad for me, three thousand miles away from the mess. But it was hell for my parents. Steph got married again and had a second child. Now there were two grandchildren living in Britain and mum and dad could see neither of them. One of them they had never seen at all.
As the years went by the tears dried up and a dark resignation replaced the feverish anguish that had been so difficult to tolerate. A scab formed over the wound. I had tried to make contact with Steph but I didn't even know her new married name. Hard to trace someone without their name. We didn't even know in which town she lived.
Five years ago I became a Christian. Which means I pray. Have to, want to. It's a conversation with my maker, a process partly of speaking but mostly of listening. I rarely pray for tangibles, although I am fully aware that all prayers are answered, even if the answer is sometimes in the negative.
But one day for some reason I felt the need to ask God to repair the bloody tear between my parents and my sister. Don't know why, just knew that I had to ask. Only a short plea. Then I almost forgot about it.
A week later the telephone rings. It's mum, in her wonderful cockney accent that makes me feel warm and safe. "Mike" she says. "You're not going to believe this. I've got a letter here from Stephanie." A long pause. "She says she wants to make up, to meet."
I listen, hardly registering what is being said. "I don't know what to do", she continues. "I'm frightened of starting all the pain again."
My sister has not spoken to my parents in fifteen years. Suddenly I pray for a resolution. My mother receives a letter from my sister four days later, meaning that she almost certainly wrote it the same day that I asked for help. This is strange, this is frightening, this is remarkable.
There is a phone number on the letter. I call it. A man answers. "Is Steph there?" I ask. He wants to know who it is. I tell him. I then hear him tell Stephanie and I hear her saying my name over and over again, as though if she stops I will no longer be there. She is crying, almost hysterically.
She comes to the phone and in between gulps for air she asks me why I didn't make contact earlier. I tell her I didn't know how to. Why, I respond, didn't she contact me? Because, she explains, she kept hearing that we all hated her. When I ask her who said this she can't remember, almost as though the thought was implanted.
I then ask why she decided to break the silence. "Because I heard that dad was very ill and I just couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't spoken to him." At this point I choke a little. "But Steph, he's fine. He's not ill at all." Again, a thought implanted. This time from an entirely different source.
We chat, we laugh, we cry. Then I say to her that I must reveal something that is very important, something that has changed my life forever. I tell her that on a specific date some years ago I became a Christian. She doesn't answer at first. Then she asks me to repeat the date. I feel a warmth, a sensation that is real yet beyond detailed description. "Mike", she says, her voice shaking. "So did I. Oh my God, so did I."
Mum, Dad, Steph and her husband John, Tessa and little Katie went on vacation to Spain together last month. They had a wonderful time. And they weren't the only ones smiling. When my dad had a stroke a few months later Steph was there to take care of him. God listens, it is we who are hard of hearing.
Michael Coren
