Caroline

It’s a stretch to call it a reunion, she having been five months
in her mother’s belly
the last time we saw her.
Still, she had her mother’s smile,
her father’s soul,
the father she never met,
my good friend, our Best Man.
Thanks to a Facebook-driven
connection with her mom’s best friend,
we’d found them all after
more than thirty years, learned
we’d driven right by their home,
once a month for years,
headed to Sedona.
Almost a Doctor Zhivago moment,
but the gods were kind,
her mother Gretchen happy to see us,
“aunt” Carol the messenger of joy,
So, when we met, again,
or for the first time,
as if it mattered,
bittersweet happiness all around,
she eager for my memories of
the dad she never knew,
me thrilled to see what he had given,
before he died too soon.
She lives now in the town we left,
her boss my friend,
her staff colleagues my pals,
working where I would have been,
had we not moved.
Married, she has an unfamiliar name,
so would we have figured it out
if I had stayed?
Hard to say.
It’s a funny old world that way.