Just about there, I thought as I rounded the last curve.
I’m a hospice nurse and I don’t typically travel far beyond my small hometown of Henning, Minnesota, but today I was driving 50 miles to a nursing home in a neighboring town to check on a patient, filling in for a colleague.
Not that I minded. One joy of the job is meeting new people. Many of them tell me their life stories, which I always find fascinating, sometimes inspiring.
Growing up, I loved hearing my mom tell stories about her childhood in Henning, especially about her oldest brother, Maurice. He’d passed on long before I was born, when Mom was just nine years old, but even now she talked of him as if he’d just died.
“Did I ever tell you about the horse your uncle Maurice had?” Mom asked on a recent visit. “He knew how much I loved horses, but I was too young to have my own. So he taught me to ride his.”
She proudly recalled how Maurice enlisted in the army in the middle of World War II. But just three months before the war would end, he was killed by a Japanese sniper in the Philippine jungle.
“He was so close to coming home,” Mom said. She pulled out a tattered clipping of a poem Maurice had written. “It was for Sally, his fiancée,” she said. “She was a young country schoolteacher. When he returned from the war, they planned to marry.”
Mom read the poem to me:
We know that the world’s in a roar
But with God’s help we’ll win the war.
Then I return, I know not when
I want your love as it has been
And that thy love shall not tarry
From the girl I want to marry.
And this, among other things,
To hear the bells of our wedding ring.
“What happened to Sally?” I asked.
“I never knew. We heard she’d moved out West. But we lost touch. I always wished I could’ve talked with her. I loved her so much. But it’s too late now.”
Uncle Maurice and his long-lost love captured my imagination. Their story seemed like something from a tragic romance novel. I too wished I could talk to Sally, so I could know how the story turned out for the woman who would have been my aunt.
Sadly, Mom was right. Too many years had passed.
I pulled into the nursing home parking lot. I checked in at the front desk then walked into the patient’s room. The woman was very ill, unable to speak. No life stories today. I took her vital signs and updated her medical chart.
“I’m here for you,” I whispered to her.
“She hasn’t been very awake today,” came a voice from the other side of the curtain that divided the room. The patient’s roommate.
“Seems that way,” I said.
“Where are you from?” the roommate asked.
“Henning,” I answered.
“I taught there,” the roommate said, “a long time ago. What’s your name?”
I told her, but she didn’t recognize it.
“What about your maiden name, dear?” She didn’t know it, either.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You say it’s been a long time. Maybe you’ll recognize my mother’s maiden name.” I told it to her.
“What were her parents’ first names?” the woman asked, her voice growing stronger. I told her and she gave a little gasp. She pulled back the curtain. She was sitting in a rocking chair, her eyes wide.
All of a sudden, it clicked. Schoolteacher. Taught decades ago in our town… could it really be…
“My name is Sally,” she said. “I…I was engaged to your uncle Maurice.”
She poured out her story. Maurice’s death had been hard on her. She left her teaching job and moved to Washington.
“I loved your uncle so much. I had looked forward to being part of your family. I didn’t ever feel that chapter of my life closed.”
Sally married and had a son and three daughters. “We had a wonderful life,” Sally said. She had returned to Minnesota several years earlier.
“Would it be okay if my mom came to visit?” I asked. “She has always wondered about you.”
“That would be fine,” she said.
A short time later Mom went to see Sally. “She was as lovely as I remembered,” Mom told me. “We had a wonderful visit.” Sally even had her daughter send a picture of Maurice to Mom.
There was one thing, though. Sally had never read Maurice’s poem. So Mom read it to her. Sally loved it. Her eyes filled with tears.
The poem was the perfect ending to that chapter of her life, and she’d waited a lifetime to hear it. “I’m so happy you found her,” Mom said.
I’d gone to that nursing home 50 miles away to fill in for a colleague. I was there to check on a patient, and ended up meeting her roommate. Did I find Sally? Or was I led to her? I think I know.
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