Choose to be happy — a kitchen sink miracle.

One day, we were at my parent’s home and my mother had wheeled herself up to the kitchen sink. Reaching for the sink, she pulled herself up to a standing position and turned on the water faucet.

Behind her, my young daughter (about eight) stared in amazement, seeing the miracle unfolding before her young eyes, “Grandma, you can walk!” In my daughter’s eyes, she had just observed a heavenly miracle; my mother had stood up and was healed.

Okay, she wasn’t really healed. Her standing was short lived as she turned off the water and sat back down in her wheelchair. Oh the faith of a child.

In that one instance, my mother had gone from years of being bound to her wheelchair to being freed, or so it would seem to my daughter. Though we smile and laugh about it now, it was a great lesson in the faith or a child and the faith in others. Is this s stretch? A little too dramatic? Nah. Especially not if you were to ask my mom about it.

She believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt. When someone was rude to her, it wasn’t uncommon for her to say something like, “Maybe there dog just died today, or something else happened to them.” She wouldn’t take it personally. Actually, she would seem to feel bad for the person that was treating her badly, a sense of compassion that the person must be going through something in their life that was manifesting itself through ill-treatment of others. My mother had the same faith in people that my daughter had seen at the kitchen sink.

This faith in people, which at times was a miracle in and of itself, also manifested itself through her ability to “Choose To Be Happy.” Truthfully, this trait would drive me nuts sometimes. When something would happen and I would get upset — on her behalf because she failed to get upset herself — she would simply choose to be happy. “If you get angry at someone and then stay angry at them, it doesn’t hurt them, it just hurts you.” Fact. This little Mom-ism was true, frustrating, but true.

When my mother passed away, my father asked me to give her eulogy. As the eldest of their seven children, I was both honored and concerned. Honored that I was to sum up my mother’s life, concerned that I would be able to keep it together long enough to share this with the attendees at her funeral.

On the day of her funeral, people began arriving at the chapel where her services were held. Slowly the place filled. And then more people arrived. And more. There were many I recognized, and many more that I didn’t. Hundreds of people came to pay their last respects to this woman that lived by “Choose To Be Happy.” Each person was touched by her, in some way, or at some point in their lives. I would suspect that each had a “Shari” story of their own. I also suspect that there was more than one person that felt as if they were her “best friend.”

And you know what, it was a miracle. That crowd was there to celebrate the miracle that was my mom. She had espoused the “Choose To Be Happy” mantra. She had convinced many of us being happy is a choice. And that bit of faith and miracle has outlasted her physical body that raised out of her wheelchair that day at the kitchen sink, creating a miracle in a child’s eyes.