Making Miracles: Believe in the Impossible

by Anne M. Berg

Ten years ago today, my mom died. Suddenly. She was nearly 89 years old and had just retired a few months earlier at age 88 from her position as a personal secretary and bookkeeper. She had spent her newly found leisure time in retirement at her lovely home in Golden Valley, Minnesota going through thousands of photographs taken throughout her lifetime. Then one morning just after breakfast, she had a massive cerebral hemorrhage and lived less than a day in the hospital after that final event. About two months later, we had a celebration of life ceremony to honor her. It was there, in October of 2012, just before the service, that my cousin Jill gave me an old silver bracelet from her sister Julie and told me we could talk about it after the celebration. Hours later, my cousins, Jill, Joan and Julie, all gathered around me to share the story. My friends and family now commonly refer to it as The Bracelet Story…

Before we lost my mom, sometime in early August, my mom’s cousin Sandi Prudhome (precisely, my mom’s first cousin Eleanor Prudhome’s daughter, Sandi Prudhome) went shopping with a friend to an antique store in a town called Calumet, Michigan, a short distance from where my mom was born and grew up in Hancock, Michigan. The store was called Queen Vickie’s and it’s now out of business. But at the time, it was thriving under the enthusiastic guidance of a new store owner. Sandi saw a hand painted porcelain box with purple violets and wanted to buy it but didn’t. She thought better of spending the money. So Sandi left the store empty handed.

Over the next week or so, she couldn’t get the beautiful box out of her mind. It was during that time that my mom passed away and of course the news spread quickly to family and friends in the area. We had placed an obituary in the local paper, the Daily Mining Gazette, so the local folks would know of the loss of our incredible Queen. That’s what we called my mom — The Queen. So Sandi returned to the store to see if the exquisite hand painted box with purple violets was still there for her. It was and Sandi was thrilled. After she found the box and had it safely in her possession, she wandered throughout the store and found herself looking at jewelry. Atop a tray of earrings, was a single silver bracelet, well worn with faint engraving. Sandi held the bracelet in her hand and read the engraved name — “Margie Turja.” Her instant reaction was to let out a combination gasp and scream. The store owner rushed over to determine the reason for the audible alarm. Sandi looked at her in absolute amazement and said, “This was my mom’s cousin’s bracelet. And she just died a few days ago!” My mother’s birth place, Hancock, Mich., also was engraved on the inside of the bracelet.

When my cousins shared the story after my mom’s service, I found it to be incredible. I asked my brother, Scott, if he thought the bracelet was actually our mom’s. He calmly said, “Probably.” And likely wondered where my doubt came from.

The paradox of belief and doubt haunted me. I lay in bed that night asking the Universe if it was really my mom’s bracelet. I woke up the next morning realizing I likely had the answer close at hand. I spent the weeks between my mom’s passing and her service sorting through all the photos she had been looking at during those final few months. I had pulled almost 200 of her throughout her life and had them digitized for a slide show for her celebration. I ran to my computer and started looking at every image from before she was married — since Turja was her maiden name and Margie was a childhood nickname — searching for the bracelet. Hardly breathing. Heart racing. Moving from image to image. And then suddenly, there it was, her bracelet. I stopped and zoomed in to verify. Then I kept going. There it was again. Two separate photos taken around the same time when she was likely in her 20s, showed her sporting that very bracelet. One photo was of my mom petting a tame white-tail deer near a cottage. The other shows her standing amidst a pile of logs that seem to be the remnants of an old dock. There’s no doubt it’s the bracelet, because the piece is so uniquely shaped and the images so clear. The photos confirmed what seemed almost unbelievable to me.

I was curious about how the bracelet made its way to the antique store. So I called Sandi and spoke with her. She said the store owner bought a great deal of jewelry at Hancock’s First United Lutheran Church rummage sale earlier in the year. That’s likely the explanation for how Our Queen’s bracelet made its way to Queen Vickie’s.

Yet who knows how my mom and her bracelet were separated. When she decided to marry my dad and leave her hometown and take her new married name, Margaret Egerer, did she give up the bracelet, too? Or did she lose it along the way somewhere? I wore it for a few days, until it popped open and fell off my wrist. Now I carry it with me in my purse in a small velvet jewelry bag. Occasionally, I get asked by friends to repeat this story. Because it’s so remarkable — miraculous, even — and people like hearing about remarkable things. But I’m typically not one to believe in miracles. Perhaps that’s her point.