For the boy delivering pamphlets in Lavington, it’s a tough way to earn a buck, even in the evening.

A voice shouts out to him from a couple of mailboxes back.

Two people are calling him back. Apprehensively, he heads back to see what they want.

When he gets there, a man puts out his hand, gives the boy $10 and wishes him a Merry Christmas.

That man is Larry Haifa and in less than 12 hours, he would be lying bleeding in the middle of Dean Street, desperately close to death after a vicious brawl.

But right now, with his mum and a boy he’s never met before, he’s high on the spirit of the season.

“He said ‘mum, it’s Christmas can I give that boy $5’,” said Jamile Haifa, recalling a golden moment from what was to become the worst day of her life.

“I said ‘of course you can, you don’t have to ask me’.

“(The boy) came back and Larry gave him $10 and he was so happy that little boy.”

She started to pray.

“I thought for what you did for that little boy, I hope God gives you all the beautiful things in life,” she said.

“And look what happened.”

The devastation of what happened next would have tested the strongest of faiths. But for this devout Catholic family, the magnitude of the miracle that would unfold only reaffirmed their beliefs.

Larry Haifa’s head injuries were so extreme, he was given no chance of survival.

That he’d made it from Dean Street to the ambulance to Albury Base Hospital and then on to the Royal Melbourne Hospital was a surprise.

The surgeons would operate but the family was told in no uncertain terms about Larry’s prospects.

“One of the neurosurgeons there, she kept telling me, even if they do the operation, he’s not going to come out alive,” Jamile said.

“I said ‘don’t say that’. But she said, ‘I have to tell you, he’s going to die’.”

On Christmas Day, doctors cut Larry from ear to ear, peeled the skin of his forehead forward and cut out a large piece of his skull to remove the pressure on his swollen brain. Seven hours later, Larry was in intensive care in an induced coma from which he wasn’t expected to wake.

The tight-knit family rallied around Jamile, her husband Mario and their daughters Lara and Anita.

There were so many visitors on Christmas Day, the hospital had to call in security from other hospitals to control the crowds, with visitors restricted to immediate family.

The support continued as the family maintained its vigil in the ward.

“Sitting there, praying and crying,” Mario said.

“The only thing coming into my head was how the funeral was going to be.”

The surgery left Larry unrecognisable.

His head swelled to the size of a watermelon.

A relative was convinced there had been a mix-up when he was told Larry was in bed six.

Then he saw his tattoo.

“I went in with my son-in-law and I couldn’t believe it was him,” Jamile said.

“I said ‘No, that’s not Larry’ and in the end I fainted the first time I went in.”

Every night, there would be about 10 people — his parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, uncle — sleeping in the waiting room, waiting for a sign or news.

“We had accommodation but we didn’t want to leave, so we stayed in the waiting room,” Jamile said.

Any twitch or tic was seized upon as hope as Larry was eased out of his coma.

Nurses pressed pressure points in his fingers and he started to respond.

But there was still no way of knowing if he would survive. And if he did survive, just how much damage had his brain suffered? Would he walk and talk or drink or eat?

The breakthrough came 3½ weeks after the operation.

“The doctors were asking him questions and said ‘you’ve got two visitors in the room, do you know who they are’,” Mario said.

Through the tube in Larry’s throat, they heard his first words since the incident: “I’ve got my dad and my uncle here.”

Not only could he talk, he recognised his family. Doctors were stunned. The family barely able to contain its joy.

“There was crying and crying,” said Jamile, smiling.

“And laughing and crying.”

As the impossible became reality, Larry moved from the Royal Melbourne to rehabilitation at the Royal Talbot.

He wore a modified footy helmet, with a piece of plastic to cover the part of his skull still missing.

“We were so worried every time he stood up, we didn’t want him to fall because there was no bone there,” said Jamile.

“We died every day,” said Mario. “When he did any movement, we’d die.”

From rehab, Larry returned to hospital to have the missing part of his skull replaced, 8 weeks after it was removed.

Three days after that operation, he resumed rehab but came down with a fever and had to return to the Royal Melbourne.

The cause of the infection was a mystery. Doctors feared it was the bone they had returned and were considering removing it again before the problem was diagnosed as food poisoning, to the relief of all.

By then, Larry had become known to his family, to the doctors and nurses as “the Christmas miracle”.

Last week, the miracle was complete when he returned to the family home at Lavington.

Yesterday, he visited the Woodstock centre in Diggers Road where next week he resumes rehab.

“It feels great to be home,” he said, sitting under the pergola in the backyard of the family home.

“I just couldn’t wait to get out of hospital and get home and relax and start to recover.

“I think I’m 80?per cent recovered. I just need that 20?per cent and that will come through rehab.”

If not for the mighty scar, there were 70 staples in his head, through his thick black hair, it would be impossible to believe what Larry has been through in the past three months.

He looks tired but speaks confidently. He has pins and needles down his left side and has some mild short-term memory problems.

As well as about 18kg, Larry has lost his senses of smell and taste.

“The doctors did say that after time it will come back but who knows what the timeframe is,” he said.

Now, to his mother’s delight, he just eats anything.

It was during the rehab that Larry first became aware of the Facebook page, The Fight for Larry Haifa, which as of yesterday had 3830 members.

“I started reading it and I was completely overwhelmed and shocked with all the support I’d received,” Larry said.

“All the people who stood by me and put comments on there for me. Some of these people I’ve never even met. I want to say a big thank you to all of them.”

The thank yous don’t stop there.

The tight-knit Lebanese family, which moved to Australia in 1977 and then to Albury in 1985, wants to thank the paramedics and the staff at Albury Base Hospital who kept Larry alive that night.

They want to thank the “Angels on Earth”; the doctors, nurses and staff at the Royal Melbourne and Royal Talbot.

They want to thank the police, their friends and their next-door neighbours, George and Maria Georgiou. And they want to thank Albury.

“We came here 25 years ago,” Mario said. “All this time we live in peace. Everybody loves us and we love everybody. I love Albury, I love the people in Albury and I appreciate everything they’ve done and I want to say thank you because they all support us.”

Eventually, Larry hopes to be back at work at Mario’s Takeaway in West Albury, one of four takeaway businesses the family operates in Albury.

For now, Larry’s plan is just to get better.

“The rehab will be five days a week, they’re full days,” he said.

“The first two weeks are going to be pretty full on. It’s going to take a minimum of a month to get myself sorted but after that month, we should see a fair bit of improvement.”

He won’t be returning to Dean Street after dark.

“I probably won’t go out anymore. I’m paranoid about going there (Dean Street). I will go there for shopping and things like that but I wouldn’t go out at all.”

But despite all that has happened, he has no plans to move.

He was born at the Mercy Hospital, attended Holy Spirit Primary School, then Xavier and Murray high schools. He started his working life as a brickie, then a stablehand and a factory worker before entering the family business. He is an Albury boy.

He has no memory of the night and does not want to talk about the men charged with his assault.

“What happened to me is all in the past. I don’t want to remember that period of my life anymore,” he said.

“I was blessed to stay alive.

“I’m rapt that I’m actually sitting here doing this interview.

“I count myself as a miracle.”

A miracle made possible, his family says, by the skill of the doctors and nurses, the love of friends and family, the strength within Larry and their faith in God.

“He didn’t miss a beat,” says Larry of his God.

“He was with me 24/7.”

Larry will turn 24 on August 16 but the family will celebrate his birthday on the day they say he was born again: Christmas Day.

“I believe his birthday is now the 25th of December. I don’t believe it was in ‘86,” Mario said.

“Larry is 12 weeks old.”