Siobhan's Miracle

This is the true story of a remarkable life-and a death deferred. At the heart of Siobhan's Miracle is a Belfast girl from a working class family who grew up to become a university professor and world-renowned authority on English and Irish literature. As millions celebrated the millennium, Siobhan Kilfeather was diagnosed with terminal cancer and all but given up for lost. By then she was married with two young children, Constance and Oscar. In February 2000, she embarked on a pilgrimage to Lourdes and in that ancient shrine, through the power of prayer, she made a pact with the Virgin Mary. You are a mother, she said, grant me more time to see my children grow up to an age where they will know and remember me. Three days later she checked into the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for a course of very aggressive radio therapy-with no guarantee it would conquer the cancerous melanoma destroying her body. There she was summoned to a conference in a doctor's office. Fearing the worst, she clutched the hand of her husband Peter. The surgeon wasted no time. "It's gone," he said. "The X-rays show that the cancer is no longer in the lungs. There is no treatment needed." Siobhan's prayer has been answered. Seven years later came the devastating news that the cancer had returned. Siobhan died peacefully in the knowledge that her time had come. Here Derek Jameson, Siobhan's father-in-law, and his wife Ellen unfold the remarkable life of this child of the Troubles and the unwritten pact she reached beside the holy grotto at Lourdes.