Homer and the Holiday Miracle by Gwen Cooper

Author:Gwen Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2018-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

Let me add here that I didn’t think then—and don’t think now—that the doctors were wrong in their diagnosis of Homer. I never believed that they’d overestimated the severity of Homer’s condition in a fit of hubris or blind rush to judgment, that they didn’t have an accurate scientific grasp of what they were looking at, or that they’d carelessly managed to mix up Homer’s lab results with some other poor cat’s.

I did ask to have Homer’s blood retested by a different lab, only because the numbers (liver values fifteen hundred percent higher than normal!) seemed so outrageous that it felt irresponsible not to give them a second look. When I proposed the retest, my vet agreed immediately. I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen anything like this, is what she said at the time. It really shouldn’t be possible.

But even if the numbers hadn’t been confirmed by the second lab (which they were), and even if this hadn’t been the trusted veterinary clinic that had provided informed, compassionate care for all five of my cats over the past ten years (which it was), it still would have been clear that something wasn’t entirely right with Homer. Exhibit A was his yellow—or, at least, yellowing—gums and ears, irrefutable indicators of liver disease. Exhibit B was the thing that had brought us rushing pell-mell to the animal hospital in the first place: the fact that Homer had fainted. He’d actually fainted away, fallen down unconscious, right in front of me. There was simply no way to explain away a thing like that as “normal” or unremarkable. Something had caused it—and if it had brought down a cat of Homer’s stamina (the magnitude of which we were coming to appreciate more each day), that something had to be fairly significant.

Numbers are math, and math is certainty. Homer’s numbers were what they were; there was no getting around it. And yet, wasn’t the world filled with examples of numbers being imprecise, when the very best minds using the most technologically advanced predictive tools still hadn’t managed to foresee the right outcome? How to explain those seven thousand untrained rebels defeating a battle-tested army of fifty thousand? How to explain oil that was enough to burn for only one day but nonetheless burned for eight? How to explain the very idea of Christmas miracles, which had persisted for more than a thousand years? What was a “miracle” anyway, if not an instance in which science and logic said one thing, but life ended up saying something else?

I light the Hanukkah candles every year and recite the ritual blessing over them, but I’ll admit that I’ve never been much for genuine prayer. Nevertheless, that year I sent out a thought each night as Laurence and I lit the menorah—a silent supplication to whoever or whatever might be listening. Let Homer be as the Hanukkah flame and burn eight times longer than he’s supposed to, I pleaded. And if that’s too much to ask, then let him still be here on Christmas.

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