Science is comforting. It answers a lot of the mysteries of life, but let’s face it, it doesn’t answer all of them.

For example, why do I still have a land-line phone when only salespeople call it? Or, how come I have four different remote controls to operate one television? Or, why does my wife sometimes get mad at me for no particular reason at inexplicable times?

Still, I have faith in science and I have faith that someone, somewhere, will come up with a solution to these age-old questions.

Some questions blindside scientists: Why do so many people wear copper bracelets and swear that they alleviate all sorts of pain? We cling to ideas like the “placebo effect” but really, what scientific reasoning explains why there is a placebo effect? Still, my faith in science is not shaken.

Recently I took care of a nice Italian man who was severely disabled and who needed a pacemaker. I called his mother to discuss it with her, because she makes medical decisions for him. We agreed that it was the best thing to do.

His mother was under a lot of stress because her husband had died a month or two earlier and she was obviously shaken.

On the day of the procedure, I went to the patient’s room and his mother was there with some friends and relatives to see her son off to his procedure. My patient, whose disability prevented him from fully understanding what was happening, seemed calm and happy to see all these people whom he loved. His mother, however, was quite upset, crying, but seemed calm rather than sad. Almost at ease.

A relative of theirs whom I knew pulled me aside and explained why the patient’s mother was crying.

Apparently, a month or so ago, the man’s father had died at the hospital, although he had died in a different room. His mother was, obviously, a bit scared and sad because of all the memories and fears this hospital undoubtedly conjured up for her. On the morning I was to put a pacemaker into her son, she was putting some things away in the bedside hospital nightstand in his hospital room. Although this was a completely different room from the room her husband had died in, there, in the very back of the hospital nightstand, his mother found a bracelet that had been his father’s before he died.

My patient was not capable of having put the bracelet there. And the nightstands in the hospital are always cleaned out, especially of things like copper bracelets.

But this clearly had been a copper bracelet that belonged to my patient’s father. Scientists will, no doubt, expound upon all sorts of scientific theories: housekeeping missed it and the bedside stand had changed rooms. But to my patient’s mother, it was clear that this was nothing short of her husband giving a sign that he was looking out for their son. In short, a miracle.

To me, of course, I was in an awkward position. Because, being a protective Italian father myself, I now knew that the pressure was on. If I screwed up the pacemaker, I would have to contend with an angry Italian father who has celestial powers. Thankfully, the pacemaker procedure went well.