Just in Time

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bingo! I’d just hit the jackpot on the easiest part of my search. Now, the hard work would begin.

My ninety-year-old mother had just moved into our home during the pandemic. She would help us by taking care of our brood of rescue animals while doing plenty of cooking, cleaning and gardening around the house. That left my wife and me more time to concentrate on working from home without as many distractions.

The COVID-19 world situation was mind-boggling, quickly changing the way we worked and lived. As the situation became serious, our family members were all having haunting dreams at night. I began dreaming of people whom I hadn’t seen in years. Specifically, a woman who had been like a second mother to me kept consistently showing up in my dreams.

Long ago, while a freshman at university, I worked at a car dealership to make extra cash. Gwendolyn was an office manager there. She immediately took me under her wing and showed me the ropes. Over the years that I spent there, a long-lasting friendship developed between us. She became my mom away from home. As I finished university, Gwen and her husband moved to a new city out west when the company her husband worked for transferred him there. I began working full-time, so our communication with each other became long-distance mail and then slowly petered out.

By now, years had passed, a lifetime really. Yet here was Gwen, suddenly popping up in my dreams. If she were still alive, she would be as old as my mother. Since we were working from home now, I decided to spend some spare time searching for her online.

Feeling like an Internet stalker, I Googled the procedure for locating a person and followed the instructions. Since I remembered her last name and the city she had moved to, I had a head start. It wasn’t long before I found some meager information on Gwen, as well as her husband’s obituary. Though saddened that her husband was no longer with her, I was encouraged by what I found and kept digging, hoping that she was still alive.

Soon afterward, I located her kids on Facebook and decided to take a chance and send them each a brief message, trying not to sound like a dangerous, deranged person. I formulated a note, took a deep breath, and hit the Send button.

Then I waited… And waited.

I cannot claim to be the most patient person in the world, so waiting for a response was difficult. I had plenty of work to keep me busy, but my mind kept wandering to my quest to reconnect with Gwen. My wife tried to talk me into staying calm, but it was to no avail. I was becoming increasingly fixated on my search.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, I got a response to my query. In reality, only a few days had passed, but staying home all the time during the pandemic had put us into a weird time warp. One of Gwen’s daughters responded, confirming that Gwen was still alive and remembered me fondly. Furthermore, her daughter claimed that Gwen had recently been dreaming about me, too. How odd.

Because Gwen was in frail health, she was now living with her daughter. They relayed their phone number, and we set up a time to chat. When I called, her daughter filled me in with some background information about their family and then put Gwen on the phone.

I was immediately beamed back decades in time as I became reacquainted with my old friend and mentor. Through tears of joy, I managed to tell her how much she had meant to me back then, and how I had thought about her often throughout my life. We had a wonderful time catching up as we reminisced about years past before we finally, tearfully, said goodbye.

Days later, I received another call from her daughter saying that Gwen had quietly passed away in her sleep. She kindly said that it almost seemed that Gwen had hung on just to hear from me that last time. It was a beautiful thing for her to say, and it put my dreams about Gwen to rest.

I’m searching for others from my past now, making sure to connect while we still can. Everyone I’ve contacted so far seems pleasantly surprised to hear from me. COVID-19 may be uniting all of us in ways we have yet to understand. It’s a pleasure to be a passenger on this journey through time with everyone.

— Sergio Del Bianco —