Healing
Today I read with emphathy Maurice Blumberg’s account of his expereince surrounding his wife’s death and this spurred me to also contriubute my experience with my first wife’s passing ten years ago.
In early 1996 my wife was diagnosed with cancer of the breast and she subsequently underwent surgery to remove the lump in the breast as well as the removal of one underarm lymph node. Later she completed her radiotherapy and chemotherapy by end 1996. Naturally when cancer was diagnosed the relationship between us was tense until the end of chemotherapy and she was pronounced in remission. The joy of being free of cancer is always marred by the apprehension before follow-up checks with the oncologist. Will the cancer recur?
My relationship with my first wife was always on a roller coster for the 9 years we were together, of which 7 years being married. After the cancer there was a reawakening in our relationship and you begin to realize what it means that God is able to create goodness from something evil in our lives. She was in remission for about 7 months before she was diagnosed with the cancer having spread to various other parts of her body.
After the recurrence we did a lot of praying which was never a priority during our 7 years of marriage and our relaionship was healed as well. She was prayed on by two prayer teams, both Catholic and Evangelicals. My wife was born a Hindu and converted to Catholicism before our marriage. She was never religious, either as a Hindu or Catholic. Both these prayer groups assured us that she was healed of her cancer. That gave us a lot of hope and we sincerely believed that the recurrance of the cancer was a sign from God for us to minister to those with cancer when she was cured. These prayer groups also encouraged my wife to begin praying herself.
One day while she was in hospital a month before she passed on, I met a friend whose mother had passed away earlier in the year. She related to me how she had attended a charismatic healing session as a proxy for her mother who was too ill to attend. When my friend asked the prayer minister to pray for God’s healing for her mother, she was instead told that her mother had been healed - spiritually. When I heard this, I instantly knew that my wife would be taken back to our heavenly home healed spiritually although her body would not be healed.
In her final week of her life she was extremely prayerful and was blessed to have made her final confession and received Communion. She even had the chance to make peace with many people she held grudges against, especially her family. My wife was peaceful upon death and this peace she had was given by the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit gave me the peace to accept her death as the permissive will of God and her spiritual healing as His active will.
