At the time my mother was in Mexico receiving alternative treatment for cancer. My sister and I were struggling with many things, including trying to support her choice for medical care.

One of those things was mom begging us not to tell her mother about the cancer. Grandma was a fiercely forceful woman who mom knew would have flown in and begun yelling and telling everyone what to do, so we honored the request.

At the time, my grandmother hadn't talked to her other two daughters for more than 10 years. I don't remember what the issue was, but I do know my aunts reached out to Grandma from time to time. When one aunt's husband died, we all went to New Jersey to be with her. I remember watching her telephone my grandmother to tell her of Nick's death, hoping that would melt the wall between them.

Instead, Grandma yelled at my aunt and slammed the phone down.

The rift seemed pretty much set in stone.

My mother was the only one Grandma had a relationship with over those years.

When Mom's condition worsened in Mexico, my sister and I wrestled with when to call Grandma.

One afternoon, when it became clear that Mom was not going to last long, we called her. She got on a plane for San Diego. So did my aunts who'd been helping us during that difficult time.

Mom died before they got there.

None of us knew what would happen when Grandma arrived at the airport and found out about Mom and saw my aunts. My sister and I didn't know how we were going to handle things if they got crazy. We were tense to say the least.

As it turns out, it was one of those miracles, I guess.

What happened was my grandmother's resentment simply dissolved. She embraced her two daughters. We all spent a weekend in a motel while we made arrangements for my mother's body to be taken across the border so we could take her ashes out to sea and scatter them, as she's always said she wanted.

During that time in the motel, we laughed and cried over old family stories. Grandma wrote a touching song about Mom and sang it on the boat as the ashes floated out to sea.

Grandma came to her own conclusion about not being told about the cancer. She said my mother was probably sparing her the heartache. But in her booming voice she said if she'd known, she'd have made us shove Mom in my van and drive her to Canada where there was this woman she knew who had a cure for cancer.

For the rest of her life, my two aunts watched over Grandma and cared for her as she became infirm and disoriented. Feisty to the end, she never let anger get in the way of her relationships with her family again.

What brought this family story to mind is a New York Times article I read recently about Sri Lanka, the tsunami and maybe one miracle in this horrific tragedy. The long battle between the government and the separatists in Sri Lanka has been deadly, with some 64,000 people dying in the civil war. A cease fire of almost three years ago had been slowly disintegrating and people were worried the war would start up again. Sri Lanka is one of the countries hit the hardest by the raging water.

Here's a quote from the article:

"Inside a crumbling, bullet-riddled building in rebel territory in northern Sri Lanka, low-level representatives of the country's government and the Tamil Tiger rebels—mortal enemies in a brutal civil war—are sitting together and planning the distribution of aid to tsunami victims."

The Times article went on to say, "... large numbers of Sri Lankans appear to be spontaneously reaching across the country's festering ethnic divides and delivering donated food and aid to rival ethnic groups."

Maybe it's not a miracle but just a glimpse at what could be.

Sandy Sims is the editor of The Courier. Contact her at 408.200.1055 or ssims@svcn.com.