Heart Hope by Olga

Valentine"s Day is many things to different people. To those in love, it is a sweet day to be able to express the feeling to that special person in your life. To those who long to be married, but have no prospects, it is a day of loneliness. To young children it may be counting how many friends you have by the number of Valentines you received. To my family it has a special and unique meaning.  We like to express it as Happy Heart Day or Happy Life Day. Both are quite fitting because of what happened four short years ago on Valentine’s Day.  The day started out quite ordinary. I was at work and all was well. My 27 year old daughter, Lynn had just returned from her honeymoon and was planning a romantic dinner for her husband of 11 days.  While a lunch that day with a friend and co-worker my husband rushed into the restaurant where we were eating and told me that Lynn had suffered a seizure at her new job. We hurried to the Vail Medical Center where she had been taken; i...

One was in the dead of winter on Valentines Day; the other a cool crisp day of fall. Memories of the first day infiltrated the second day. One was gray, snowy, cold and windy; the other a warm, beautiful, blue sky day with not a cloud in sight. Both involved the heart of my daughter. One involved a stranger stepping in to perform CPR on a lifeless body; the other the patient drove herself to an Urgent Care facility. One had family members converging at the Vail Hospital; the other had the same family members scattered—one in Summit County, one in Denver and the other in Chicago. Both were covered in prayer by people all over the country. One had an ambulance traveling at record speeds over Vail Pass; the other had an ambulance cruising the same path as if only on an outing to view the beautiful surroundings. One had a life in limbo between here and the after life; the other had a patient looking at the beautiful fall leaves from a different vantage point out the back window ...