The Miracle of Me: A Memoir

By Alice Snow

The Miracle of Me is funny, romantic, and ultimately heartbreakinga winning offbeat mix of Six Feet Under and Eat Pray Love. While growing up in the eccentric family of undertakers, Alice Snow learned firsthand about death and impact on the living. As a young woman, she traveled the world, boarding with Dutch nuns who were entranced by the novelty of stove-top popcorn and witnessing the crushing poverty of Bolivia firsthand. Through these journeys, she learned that no oppression, grief or suffering could permanently crush the human spirit, or deny human beings of their power of hope. Love swept into her life and changed it forever, when she met Floyd, a handsome pilot who spoke to her soul. Their lifelong romance broke all of the rules and sustained them both through tremendous difficultiesincluding the challenge of facing their own mortality.

Alice Snow has been living with a brain tumor the past fifteen years. Her doctor told her many times, she was at deaths door, but she never believed them. She held fast to the belief that her life was meant to serve a higher purposethe purpose of inspiring others to lead their best lives through service, spirituality, and recognition of lifes precious gifts. This faith has been the key to her miraculous survival, and she is in a unique position to impart this powerful, positive message to her readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450201216

Alice Snow

Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota and a graduate of the University of Minnesota, Alice is a former teacher and a certified music practitioner who played harp for the critically ill. The author’s life has been dedicated to selfless service to humanity, and her humanitarian efforts have impacted lives around the globe. She currently volunteers for the Eugene Symphony and for the United Methodist Women’s Organization. She wishes her story to be a source of hope and inspiration to others. The author resides in Eugene, Oregon.

Book preview

Prologue

It was a Saturday morning, or it could have been a Sunday. I found myself hovering around my beautiful concert harp, which was situated in the middle of the room.

I wanted to play.

But then again, I didn’t feel like it.

I noticed that the clouds lingering above my home were hanging unusually low, and took turns casting shadows against the horizon. As I turned my attention to the gray skies outside my window, I could not help but notice that Mother Nature seemed a bit needy today.

Hanging a bit low, aren’t we? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. And as I stared into the vast space of nothing, time began to dwindle and almost evaporate into an element that could only be observed by those who had more of it than most, time.

It was a precious commodity, indeed, and never before had I seen it as I saw it today. Again I ask, was it Saturday or Sunday? It didn’t matter what day it was, I suppose. In the end, they were one in the same, rolled into each other, separated by a perfect rhythm of twenty four hour beats.

How could life change so drastically in a twenty four hour period that time itself could go from being my greatest ally to my worst enemy with such a precision that the only plausible explanation for this bizarre turn of events could be termed fate.

Yesterday I was fine.

Today, an MRI revealed some type of mass growing in my brain.

We need to determine if it’s malignant… a neurosurgeon said to me after reviewing my X-rays.

What are you saying? I asked for clarification, on the off chance that he was saying one thing and I was hearing another. After all, interpretation was relative, wasn’t it?

You have a growth in the speech motor area of your brain, said the chief neurosurgeon pointing to an MRI scan portraying an image resembling a large golf ball right in the middle of my Saturday afternoon.

Or again, maybe it was Sunday.

Immediately, I turned my head in the opposite direction because surely he was talking to the unfortunate patient standing behind me.

Not me.

But upon a quick turn of my head, I felt a swift kick in the pit of my gut that seemed to suck the oxygen right out of my lungs, when I saw there was no one standing there. And if there was no one in the room but he and I, then he surely must be addressing me. But obviously, there had been some kind gross miscommunication between this doctor and I.

Growth?

I had come to my doctor for a routine test to check out something simple, a little hand numbness and sting of the wrist here and there. After all, I was a harpist. It wasn’t unusual to have a little ache from all the playing, or so I thought. I was expecting an ace bandage, a heating pad and a prescription for aspirin, but not a brain tumor for God’s sakes.

We need to schedule you for surgery, Alice, the neurosurgeon said.

I have a question, I injected, interrupting him mid-sentence.

Yes? he responded, dutifully.

Is it Saturday or Sunday? I asked, almost in a daze.

It’s Friday, Alice, said the chief neurosurgeon.

Thank you, I responded zombie-like, "I just wanted to make sure we were in the same time."

The doctor paused and stared deeply into my blue eyes, which looked right back at him, but then passed him over, leaving the good doctor outside the conversation of my interior thoughts.

Alice, he called to me, reaching for my numb hand, which ironically was no longer numb. In fact, all of the feeling had returned, so much so that his touch could have been mistaken as painful, had I not known better.

I need to schedule you for surgery as soon as possible, he said softly.

So this is my grand aha moment.

It’s Saturday.

Not Sunday.

Because everything I just mentioned happened on Friday, a perfect twenty four hours ago. Back when time was my friend, my ally, an invisible suitor to lay out all of the rest of my life’s plans on a grand stage.

Yes.

Yes, I sang to myself recalling the scattered events of yesterday, which in the wake of a new day, almost seem as though they were a lifetime ago. And as I sit at my beautiful concert harp, an elegant piece of wood meticulously crafted by the hands of genius, I can only be sure of two things in this moment—that I have a growth in my head today and today is, in fact Saturday.

Not Sunday.

That’s a start, I whispered to myself in a low, hushed voice, lest I wake the sleeping clouds hovering all around me. The moment is sacred, silent, and there is an uncertain certainty somewhere in my room.

I hold my harp like a lost lover, beckoning its embrace.

A stellar performance is required as I lay this majestic instrument against my own chest and pour into my flesh the vital tune of life.

By now dear reader you should know, this is no ordinary story. Indeed, I am being called upon to perform one of the most exaggerated demands ever placed upon a musician…

Save your own life, Alice.

Save your own life.

Time is running out…

1

A Tale of Twin Cities

1964

St. Paul, Minnesota

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the season of Light. It was the season of Darkness. It was the winter of hope. It was the winter of despair.

Charles Dickens

The irony of life never ends, and not only does that timeless passage work exceptionally well in the great Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, it works equally well in the life of Alice Snow, A Tale of Twin Cities.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1948 to Edward and Ginger Snow, I was the second of four children. Life up till my sixteenth year of living teetered as close to ordinary that a girl could get. Yet it wasn’t ordinary at all. In fact, it bordered the bizarre, but in a gentle, mild-mannered, Midwestern, middle-America sort of way.

We were common, yet uncommon.

We looked like everybody else, but were unlike anyone you’d ever bump into in the middle of the street.

Or the road.

The grocery store.

Or the dry cleaners.

My dad was a quiet, iron willed, World War II veteran. After the war, his occupation shifted to bill poster, where he traveled the city posting advertisements on the side of the road. He was a no nonsense kind of man who communicated more by the look in his eye than the word on his tongue. He was a minimalist by way of conversation, but always said a lot when nobody was listening.

Dad and I had a special kind of relationship, because I had a gift for translating entire blocks of dialogue between him and everyone in the room. Not even mother could read dad’s nonverbal clues with the degree of accuracy that I had developed over time. It was a sweeping exchange, fascinating in its own right, as I assigned words to father’s subtle head nods, raised brows, twisted lips, focused gaze and blinking eyes.

How was school today? I asked my sister Libby, translating father’s left, raised brow and opposite blinking eye.

Long, she pouted, puffing out her bottom lip in dad’s direction. Libby was eleven years old, five years younger than me, and not a fan of formal education. I could tell she was on the verge of spouting a lengthy dissertation on the grueling hours added to her day, but before she could start down that merry road, I abruptly interrupted her mid-complaint to scold my older brother, Richard.

Elbows off the table!

I can do what I want! he retorted, I’m the oldest.

Coulda fooled me, I scowled, you act like the youngest…

I’m two years older than you, he pouted.

Doesn’t matter, I defended, I didn’t scold you, Richie…dad said it.

Dad didn’t say a word…did you Dad? he’d argue back, cutting eyes to a stiff-faced, motionless life-form sitting at the head of our dinner table. I told you, tuna head… taunted Richard, Dad didn’t say anything.

Where’s mom and Charles? asked Libby, interrupting our squabble. I looked at dad and waited for his response as to the whereabouts of mother and younger brother Charles, who was two years younger than me. And once Dad’s left nostril shifted to the right, and his lower right jaw twisted to the left, I interpreted, Oh, mom’s picking up Charles from football practice.

Thanks dad, said Libby.

Dad rarely spoke, so it was unlikely anyone at the dinner table was going to get an audible response. But just because dad didn’t speak, didn’t mean he wasn’t communicating. The fact of the matter was he was always communicating, but few and far between spoke dad’s language.

I was one of those people.

Dad and I had an understanding.

You’re always making up stuff, Richard accused me when it came to translating dad’s subtle corrections of Richie’s unacceptable social behavior.

Elbows off the table.

Don’t chew with your mouth full.

Don’t interrupt Alice when she’s speaking!

I’m sure it must have been my parents own version of a nightmare living in a home with three hormonal teenagers and one puberty-bound adolescent.

We all loved each other and it wasn’t strange to us kids growing up in the midst of familial chaos, in a household where the patriarch of the family took the literal definition of the strong silent type to another level. We were used to dad’s silence, but its oddity was duly noted as unusual by friends and extended family members.

It was rumored by an uncle or two, that at one time dad frequently engaged in gigantic discussions of intellectual rhetoric and philosophy, but after the war it was almost as if he was stunned into silence and found little use for words upon his return from the military where he spent many years as a brigadier general.

Perhaps I should clarify, dad found little use for words with almost everyone, but when the room was cleared and it was just he and I, he came to life in a way that even my siblings rarely saw.

Dad, I’d always ask. Why don’t you just tell Richard to take his elbows off the table?

Dad smiled, but said nothing.

It makes me look like the bad guy, dad, I pouted.

They know, he said, quietly eating his peas, following a succinct pattern and order in the way he organized them to be eaten. I always watched mesmerized. He would divide them into two rows, a left row and a right one. And then it was like he marched them right down to the edge of his spoon and into his mouth.

They know what, dad? I inquired curiously.

They know, he repeated without expression.

Well, there you have it. Dad had spoken, and two words out of his mouth was the equivalent of endless chatter. Three to four spoken words in a row would have been comparable to something more along the lines of the Presidential Inaugural address.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you just said it yourself? I questioned. He shook his head a quick beat, then turned all of his attention to the carrot slices on his plate and started lining them up.

Wouldn’t it be easier? I repeated the question.

Dad didn’t answer.

Wouldn’t it be easier?

He never did answer.

That was Edward Snow.

He was gentle yet stern in his stance on life. Once he held a position, it may as well have been cemented in concrete. He was unbelievably strong, and I knew he had seen a lot in the war. Most of it would go unannounced, but I always wondered what life looked like behind dad’s eyes.

Did the war really change him that much?

I often asked mother that very question, but I don’t think she knew how to answer it. Mother was about as free as a spirit could be. Known for her passion for wigs and add in hair pieces, her appearance changed dramatically from week to week. She went from being a blonde to a red head, brunette to black hair. She was in style, out of style, ahead of time and then beyond it. And when Monday morning rolled around, we never knew who was going to be driving us to school that day.

Your father will never get bored! she always said with a loud cackle, he’s married to a totally different woman each week.

Wouldn’t that make him a polygamist? I asked.

What’s a polygamist? questioned Libby.

It doesn’t make him a polygamist, dear, said mom, patting the top of my head, "it makes him a very lucky man. Someday you’ll understand."

It’s funny because I always felt like I understood a lot to be sixteen, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility that life was teaching me in short assignments. Wherever you are, you feel like you’re the smartest you’ll ever be, and then when you get just a little bit older you realize how dumb you were back then. Maybe that was the real reason for the invention of the word evolution.

Either way, Libby and I always got a kick out of mom’s easygoing and ever-changing appearance. She seemed much more carefree than most of my friend’s mothers. Ginger Snow was definitely ahead of her time. She was also known for her quick wit and sharp humor. In reality, she was the exact opposite of dad, but they meshed in a weird sort of way, kind of like corned beef and cabbage, like red beets and goat cheese. Whoever would have thought to marry beef and cabbage, red beets and goat cheese? But they did and it works, just like Edward and Ginger. It was unexplainable, but it was close to magical.

Mother spoke dad’s language to some degree, and when neither felt like using words, they seemed to communicate entire passageways of time by offering a single gaze into the other’s eye. I usually observed this humble exchange between my parents when my siblings and I were in the midst of rivalry, playing out our petty squabbles at the dinner table, like we did almost every night.

It was on a typical night like this, that all of our lives would change in a very private and public kind of way. My mother’s oldest brother, Reeve, was joining us for dinner as he customarily did on the first Thursday of each month.

Uncle Reeve was very eccentric. The wealthiest of all my mother’s family, Reeve loved swing and big band music and wore dark sunglasses and checkered blazers to every family gathering. He owned a funeral home, and with people dying every day, he was never in short supply of customers.

Reeve was louder than life. And I’m not just referring to his flashy,