Family is the greatest gift of all during the Christmas season, and a Scottish woman has a story to tell about the best present she’s ever received.
Joyce Curtis, a resident of Glasgow in the UK, has been grieving the loss of her son, Nicholas, whom she believed was dead for the better part of a decade. Joyce spoke to the Herald, a local newspaper, about the joy she has found ever since she was reunited with her son. Fox News shared the interview.
“I can’t believe it. I’d resigned myself to the fact that he had died. I really thought that and I think everybody thought the same. It’s like that film ‘Miracle on 24th Street.’ It’s like a miracle.”
Back in the mid-2000s, Nicholas packed up his belongings and began traveling Europe in hopes of finding work, after quitting his job as a construction worker in the UK. At the time, he told his mother, Joyce, that he was hitchhiking across the continent. The last that Joyce heard, he was hitchhiking through Spain and France. Then, in 2010, Joyce got a terrifying phone call.
The British Consulate in Paris contacted her, informing her that Nicholas was currently in the hospital. Immediately, Joyce and her husband boarded a plane to see their son in France. She says that was the last time she saw her son, for what would end up totaling 12 years. During that time she grieved the loss of Nicholas.
“We were getting him home, but for some reason, I don’t know why, he just disappeared again. They were sending him home and I was told he was getting put on a flight.
“I was expecting him home at Glasgow at a certain time.”
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Unfortunately, that time didn’t come. Nicholas did not board a plane and he didn’t come back home. For twelve years Joyce could not speak to her son, she didn’t even have proof that he was still alive.
“I remember it was pouring of rain that day. I phoned every airport to see if he’d gotten on a flight but nothing.”
That all changed when Joyce got a call, yet again, from the British Consulate. Her son was in a French hospital, a mirror image of the call she received twelve years prior. After being afraid that he had passed away from “COVID and everything that has gone on,” she would finally have another chance to reunite with her son.
“I spoke to him on the phone. He looks healthy,” she said. “I asked him, ‘Are you coming home Nikky?’ And he said, ‘Aye.’”
“I can’t imagine what he’s been through. I just need to get him home.”
Joyce also added that she would be willing to travel to pick Nicholas up this time, to avoid a complete repeat of the events that transpired in 2010. Without knowing what Joyce asked for this Christmas, I’m sure that the gift of reuniting with her long lost son tops anything should could ever buy.