A surprise email yesterday from Jennifer; my step-daughter from almost twenty years ago found my web site, actually her brother Brian found it I think and contacted me. After her Mom died, the biological father and his mother took them back east right after the wake and did their best to cut the ties between myself and the kids.
   She’s 30 now with three kids and after a bit of a rocky start with a not so nice guy, Jennifer is happily raising a family with a good man and trying not to work too much. A real lot like her Mom, but without the epilepsy to muck things up. Brian did the college thing, was working for a stock broker in Chicago but as he is in the Reserves he’s been called back to active duty. He’s been able to travel all over the world with the Service, but nervous times for him right now.
   Jennifer remembered the Boyce Thompson Arboretum where I had spread Mary’s ashes by Ayer Lake, and had even visited in 1992. Living in Florida she doesn’t get back to Arizona much of course, but it was nice to be able to give her the exact location of her Mom. I think her Dad and Grandmother may have tried to convince the kids that she didn’t want to be cremated and put in a nice place, but Mary’s old friend Loretta was able to help I believe.
   It sure is nice to hear that they are okay, they were not my biological children but when they went back east it was really a difficult time for me, as if I had lost my own. What’s that politically correct term now, closure. But every time a door closes a new one opens eh?