Dear Little Daughter (Part 5)

If you missed Part Four, click HERE.

Spending time with Elizabeth’s friends brought me great joy. Besides those I had already met, I also spent time with civil rights activist and educator Nancy Feldman and writer, editor, and Oklahoma poet laureate Francine Ringold.

But neither brought me any closer to finding Patty.

Soon, I was knee-deep in my role as a self-employed marketing and communications contractor. A friend and fellow board member of a local non-profit was the first to hire me to create his company’s marketing brochure and write an advertorial article for a national trade magazine. It seemed he saw something in me I didn’t see in myself.

After I wrote the article, the magazine’s editor asked if I would consider being a freelance writer for them. This led to opportunities with other magazines belonging to the same publishing group. I was stunned and delighted.

The box—and my friend’s belief in me—had led me back to the craft of writing … something I had trained for in college and dreamt about for as long as I could remember.

Unbeknownst to us then, Michael and I would soon discover that flexibility in my schedule and my ability to work from anywhere would be much needed.

By early 1996, his older sister, Nancy, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, needed increasing levels of help with the daily tasks of living. At the same time, my Dad, whose body had already been wrecked by rheumatoid arthritis, shattered his hip and upper thigh bone.

Over the next few years, Michael and I were often apart as we, along with other family and friends, took on caregiving duties for Nancy, who lived in Dallas, and my Dad and Mom, who lived in Arizona.

Then came a tsunami of grief.

In late May 1997, while I was with my parents and Michael was home in Tulsa, we learned our nephew, Eric (the son of Michael’s younger sister, Margie, and her husband, Richard), had died in his sleep. He was just shy of two years old.

Nancy died less than a month later, and eleven months later, my Dad died.

As we navigated overwhelming sorrow and helped settle estates, we increasingly understood what the author of “Einstein’s Dreams” had written.

Time seemed to stand still in some moments, while in others, it raced ahead at warp speed.

Suddenly, it was 2003, but the Reaper wasn’t through with us yet. Michael’s Dad died that Spring, and we lost my Mom in December, just seven days before Christmas.

It was a long season of loss, and the magical moment I had shared with Evelyn, reciting Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” seemed part of the distant past. Yet, while the dream of returning the box to its rightful owners had been put on hold, my hope of someday finding Patty still simmered.

Another 8 years passed.

Then, one day, while distracting myself from my work, I came across a Facebook post about an upcoming reunion for Edison High School graduates, and it gave me an idea. Patty and Jimmy had both graduated from Edison. Maybe I could find information about a reunion for Patty’s class.

My hunch paid off, and before I knew it, I had Patty’s email address.

It was time.

I took a deep breath, wrote my email, and hit SEND.

Read the next and final segment of this story in Part Six.