“We don’t know if she’ll understand you, but she can hear you even though she’s sedated.” I stood at my mother’s bedside last summer, watching as machines breathed for her. She was small, wasted by an infection that was worse than she had thought until it was almost too late. With my blue-gloved hand – required for the quarantine ward – I held her hand as she lay on the cusp of life and death, and I thought, “If only there were a wonderworker here, some holy person who understood about God and healing. I would ask them to pray, and she would get better.” I could almost see those saints on church walls come to life, waiting just outside the door to Mom’s…