Saturday on Thanksgiving Weekend last month, my sister Karen spent a whole day with me and Missy. We had a lot of fun that day but one truly miraculous thing happened. In the evening, Karen, her dog Izzy, Missy, and I went to Festival Park to feed the abandoned cat colony and then to walk my usual route around the park and the parking lot of Gordon Wood Stadium. Let me begin with a little background information. My late best friend Colin Eby and I used to have a little daily competition between us. As we went about our daily business, we each kept our eyes open for lost change and bills and whoever found the most money each day before midnight was that days winner. We walked a lot at city parks during the 10 years we knew each other so we both kept our eyes on the ground whenever we walked together, looking for money and trying to win the daily game. Colin became a part of our Longley family over the years and he loved all of us and we all loved him. Anyway, several years ago while walking across the stadium lot, we both spotted a dime on the asphalt pavement. The big problem was that it was embedded in the pavement so neither of us could ever get it unstuck. We often teased each other that one of us was going to come with a screwdriver and a hammer and chisel it loose but we never did. We walked over that stubborn dime dozens of times on our walks together and it was always tightly cemented to the parking lot and wed just laugh about it. After Colin died of ALS in 2011, Ive walked over it many times by myself and always remembered the fun Colin and I used to have with it. I think Karen may have walked with me only one or two times previously and I never told her about the dime. On our Saturday walk with the doggies, I noticed that Karen bent down to pick something up from the pavement, right at the spot where the dime always was. She picked it up and said I found a dime!. I couldnt believe it. It was the stubborn 1997 dime and it had miraculously come loose from the asphalt! I asked her if Id ever told her the story behind it and she said no so I did. We both immediately knew that our angel Colin had loosened it just so Karen, who he loved, could find it. It wasnt the first small miracle that we firmly believe was Colins work but it showed us that he was with us, just as hed been on so many Thanksgiving holidays before. Karen took these photos of me holding the dime while standing on the spot where it had always been. We brought it home with us and placed it beside some of Colins favorite things that I keep in a china cabinet in memory of him.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 04:47:50 +0000
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