One evening toward the end of summer of 2003, I was working hard late into the evening. I had left the television on in the living room. My mother, La Faye S. Lynch, who everyone called "Mom," was asleep in her bedroom, or so I thought. My brother, Larry, was asleep in his room. Except for the television the only sounds were the AC blowing cool air from the vents and my peck, peck, pecking at the keyboard.
Then my dog, a black German Shepherd named Jade, came into the bedroom where I was pecking at the keyboard. I had been making heart designs and he came over looking up at me. I thought he wanted to go outside so I asked him, "You want to go out?" But he did not respond like usual with a happy wag of the tail. However, I figured that he must want to go out, so I walked with him from the bedroom to the back door, but when I opened it, instead of running outside, he turned and went to my mother's bedroom door and started sniffing and scratching at the door.
"What is it Jade?" I said. When I reached to open the door to my mother's bedroom, it was locked. Usually she kept the door unlocked, so it was unusual that this should be the case. I called, "Mom! Mom!" But there was no answer. As my mother was elderly I thought she just had fallen asleep, but because Jade was acting strange, I opened the door using a little wire key that we kept nearby to push into the door knob and release the lock, should one of the bedroom doors accidently become locked from the inside.
When I opened the door, Jade rushed into my mother's bedroom. But she was not asleep upon her bed. Jade went into the attached bathroom and found my mother sitting upon the toilet. Her eyes were open and I said, "Mom are you okay?" But my mother did not respond. She was sitting there on the toilet fiddling with tissue paper. I inquired further asking if she needed any help, but all she did was fiddle with the tissue papers. Then while sitting on the toilet she passed out and I grabbed her to keep her from falling over and hitting her head.
My only thought was to get her off the toilet so I carefully lifted her and moved her to her bed. I then felt for her vital signs and could feel nothing. I thought she was dead or dying. I felt again for her vital signs and realized she was breathing so I called 911. Then I started praying. I prayed to God she would not die! I asked God for a miracle, recalling stories I had heard all my life about how I had been in a coma as an infant, that everyone thought I would die. But my parents stayed with me and prayed. Also a Catholic nun stayed with me and put a St. Christopher upon me. When my fever suddenly disappeared and I regained consciousness everyone thought it was a miracle. So recalling this I asked God that my mother not die!
Sometimes in life one cannot do anything but pray. Before the paramedics arrived my mother regained consciousness. I don't know how long she had been unconscious but I'm sure had not it been for Jade's alerting me and for the fact that I was there to prevent my mother from falling off the toilet and hitting her head, she would have certainly died that night. But my prayers were answered and she did not die.
When the paramedics arrived my mother said she did not want to go to the hospital. But I insisted that she be taken to the emergency room as something was very wrong. So the paramedics rushed my mother to Jackson Hospital, which was the local Montgomery, Alabama hospital opened that evening to take emergency calls.
I put Jade in his Veri Kennel which was in the living room and checked on Larry who was sounded asleep. Then I looked around and found my mother's medical records from Maxwell Air Force Base. She had picked these up from the base hospital at some earlier point and kept them in her chest of drawers. I gathered them together, got in my car and drove to Jackson Hospital.
When I arrived a Jackson Hospital I first has to check my mother in and sign papers. I also gave the hospital my mother's medical records. Then I went into the emergency room to see my mother. She was laying upon a bed and the nurses were trying to stick her with a needle to get blood. They had already tried several times and failed. There were at least a dozen large green bottle flies buzzing around the emergency room. They were very annoying, these flies, sometimes landing upon my mother. I would wave my hand and make them fly away. I even happened to grab one, squeeze it in my hand until it died, and put it in a some folded paper.
I sat with my mother in the emergency room all night. Finally the inexperienced technicians who had been sticking my mother trying to draw blood got an older black gentleman to do this. He put a rubber tube around my mother's arm, tapped her veins to make them stand out, then inserted a needle. He obviously knew what he was doing and was quite experienced. I shook his hand and thanked him very much for helping my mother.
Those attending my mother asked me how her legs got wrapped with plastic? I did not know this and told them she did it herself. Apparently my mother had wrapped her legs with pieces of white plastic from garbage bags. Her legs were quite swollen. She had been wearing multiple layers of clothing and staying in her bedroom constantly, not wanting to eat, nor letting me know that she had open wounds upon her legs which had become infected. Apparently she did not want me to see how bad here condition was and I was quite shocked when the attendants removed the plastic and found fly maggots upon my mother's open wounds.
I had been sitting with my mother in the emergency room for many hours, watching the flies, swishing them away. Then when the doctor removed the plastic and found fly larvae everyone who witnessed this was as shocked as I was. Did they realize that bottle flies deposit their larvae upon open wounds, that they do not even have to lay eggs? I happened to know this little bit of information as studying entomology was a hobby of mine. I thought certainly that those fly larvae came from the bottle flies infesting the Jackson Hospital emergency room. Why someone had not the presence of mind to spray the area with insect spray was something I could not phantom.
Thinking back upon this matter it occurred to me that it was very improbably that my mother had gotten fly larvae while at home. Our home was quite well sealed up, with screened windows and the AC left on constantly during the summer months. If a fly did happen to get into the house when the door was opened, Jade would chase and catch it. Jade would catch flies, bees, wasp, any flying insect that came within sight or sound of his very keen ears. Jade would snap the flying insects out of the air and if they were a bee or wasp he would spit them out and pounce upon them, killing them with his paws and teeth! This was remarkable to see and I had watched Jade do this many times. Should a fly ever get into the house through the door when it was opened to exit or enter, Jade would alert immediately to buzzing fly, even jumping up to the window to get it before I could run get a fly swatter! There was no way a fly could live in my home long enough to infest my mother with maggots; she got those while laying for hours in the emergency room of Jackson Hospital, waiting to get her blood drawn and tested and for a doctor to then examine her.
After the sun came up and a doctor had seen my mother, I went home to get some sleep. I prayed for my mother; in fact, she was constantly in my prayers. As it turned out my mother recovered and after a three weeks stay at Jackson Hospital was transferred to Crowne nursing home in Montgomery. I had to fight with that institution to get my mother to see a private physician and a neurologist who diagnosed that she had dementia. It seemed like no one wanted me to find out what was wrong with my mother. Then the day after this diagnosis was made, hostile relatives kidnapped her mentally retarded son, Larry, from his home and took him to Colorado. Then my eldest brother filed a fabricated claim to have me committed! This was done to discredit me and enable him to get Larry out of Alabama and get eventual guardianship of Larry, so that he could gain control of over $10,000.00 in money Larry received from the government every year.
The police came to my home in the middle of the night, arrested me, handcuffed me, and took me to Baptist Hospital where I was examined; then held for four days over the weekend evaluation at Meadhaven. Then a hearing was held and it was resolved that the psychiatrist could find nothing wrong with me; that I was perfectly sane. However, this experience was quite humiliating, being chained and shackled and brought into the court like a common criminal, being transported with genuine criminals and treated with all respects like I was a dangerous person. How the laws in Alabama can permit something like this to be done is quite an injustice. Consequently I resolved to leave Alabama as soon as all the necessary arrangements could be made.
I am certain that the efforts my eldest brother, Carl Gregory Lynch and his niece, Sharon L. Crenson went to in kidnapping Larry and trying to have me committed were all done to discredit and defame me, to insure that the court would not appoint me as guardian/conservator for my mother. This is despite the fact that I had always made sound, reasonable and very good decisions with respect to my mother and Larry when it came to medical matters. My mother had appointed me as her attorney in fact in 1995 and I had sat with her through a number of surgeries, always being the only one she trusted with her life in such critical situations. And in fact I was the one who told the doctor at Jackson Hospital to do whatever was necessary, to tube feed my mother, to keep her alive and endeavor to restore her health. But apparently my ability to make sound decisions did not matter to the court, as Judge Reese McKinney, Jr. ruled that perfect strangers should be my mother's guardian/conservator. Certainly since I had only gotten out of Meadhaven a week before, and as my mother hearing had initially been scheduled for the period when I would have been in Meadhaven, all this served to prejudice the court against me.
However, I later learned that this same Montgomery County Probate Court Judge Reese McKinney, Jr. was on the Board of Directors of Jackson Hospital, the very same hospital where my mother was infected with bottle fly larvae in the emergency room! Could it be this judge wanted to get me out of the picture to protect Jackson Hospital from a malpractice claim? I believe this is the case as I know that I could certainly make good decisions with respect to my mother's health and welfare as well as administering her finances.
My mother is now essentially a prisoner at Crowne nursing home and I have been laboring to expose the corruption of the elder care system in Alabama. She was ordered by the court to stay at that institution, a for profit facility which benefits by getting paid for her care. The court appointed lawyers even turned around and sued me to get my home! They sued me in my mother's name, the very person who save her life and prayed to God that she did not die! I see no justice in this action, only the greed of lawyers and a corrupt elderly care system. I have given a more full account of these matters in Honor Thy Parents, which details how the elderly care system is corrupted and serves to destroy families.
It is my position that Crowne nursing home helped in this regard as at my mother's hearing they provided witnesses which conspired to keep my mother at Crowne; obviously they did not want to loss control of all the money they were getting paid from her care, given as the widow of an Army officer, her benefits were quite a gold mine to Crowne. I'd seriously recommend that anyone who is considering what facility to intrust their elderly parents or grandparents to, reconsider and certainly heavely weigh the option of a not-for-profit care facility operated by a church, as such a facility is not so likely to be motivated by greed as it seems for-profit institutions like Crowne may be.
One evening while sitting under a large oak tree in the back yard on the home where I now live, I saw a vision of Pope John Paul II. He had recently died and was very much upon my mind. It was strange that he should appear to me, as I am not Catholic. But I recalled that a Catholic nun had put a St. Christopher medal around my neck when I was in a coma as an infant, that then a miracle had happened and I did not die, despite the fact the doctors could do nothing to save my life. For some reason I lived. And now I saw and heard Pope John Paul II and he spoke a prayer, a blessing about dogs. Always being one to have a pen and paper handy, I jotted down Pope John Paul II's prayer and later made it into the fine art print, illustrated with Jade's paw print shown below:
A Modern Miracle Worthy Of Sainthood!
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I'm not sure why Pope John Paul II would appear to me; certainly this was a miracle! I do not know why this happened to me, only that miracles have touched my life before. I did not die as and infant and my parents always told me this was a miracle. My mother did not die when she had her stroke; Jade alerted me to the fact something was wrong and I prayed and saved my mother's life. Certainly this was a miracle! Perhaps people will just say I imagined all this or dreamed all this up to tell an interesting tale. But I believe there are too many facts to correlate this story to just brush it off as a fabrication.
Remember, that I am someone who has been gone over by psychiatrist and found to be perfectly sane! I am someone who has been arrested, just as was Jesus Christ, and humiliated by the court for having done nothing but try to love my mother, my brother and protect them. And do not forget that my dog, Jade, played a role in saving my mother's life. So perhaps this relates to why I should be to have such a vision.
Such matters must be taken upon faith as they defy logic. Rather that try to analyze and tear apart what happened, I have chose to share the blessing given to me by Pope John Paul II and declare that this is another miracle that has touched my life!
I have illuminated this miracle as a paw print design, using Jade's paw as he saved my mother's life! Certainly the fact that I had such and alert and perceptive canine demonstrates that I am someone who makes responsible and good decisions and that the court was in error not to appoint me as my mother's guardian/conservator. The fact that I should have been arrested, shackled, chained, had my privacy violated, and still the shrinks could find nothing wrong with me, clearly lets everyone know that it is not a mad man who prays to God or sees visions of Pope John Paul II.
Down through the ages great masters have produced inspirational art. Michael Angelo painted the Sistine Chapel. Salvador Dali painted the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I have painted and produced much inspirational art and used religious symbolism in many of my works of art. But I must admit this is the first time I have ever produced a graphic design related to dogs and a vision, a miracle! Perhaps the fact that "dog" spelled backwards is GOD, is a fact more people should pay attention to; a fact which may teach people how to love and help make the world a better place for everyone.
Whether the production of "The Canine Blessing" is a miracle or merely a fanciful, masterful work of art, is really not so important as is the blessing itself. If people form a bond of love with their canine companions, that bond will of love will branch out and embrace their families and their homes. Thus I hope that everyone who reads this and learns about "The Canine Blessing" will make it part of their lives, displaying this religious work of art, this miracle in their homes, offices and even upon their bodies.
We have much to give each other and our lives, however long, are short. Why make them shorter by creating conflict. Let's all love one another, for it is that love which is truly the greatest miracle of all!
If you would like to order a signed copy of "The Canine Blessing: A Miracle Worthy of Sainthood" please click on the link below and make a $20.00 donation. Prints are on 8.5" x 11" stock and will be signed by the artist, Terry Lynch.. Be sure to send an email with your name and mailing address where you would like the prints sent. Thank you!
