So I watched the movie, “The Longest ride” finally. Nicholas Sparks is a true storyteller……and I wish I had more time to read his works. This one though…I will always remember it.

It resonated with me in so many ways. For me her name was Dorthy, she lived in the highrise where I worked as a housekeeper to help put myself through college. She had photos of her family every where…but their visits were few and far between. She was mostly bedridden and so lonely. I would take her lunch each day and spend my lunch hour talking with her. Sometimes I would go by after work…sometimes I say, but to be honest it was more like 4 days a week…sometimes even on the weekend.

Oh the stories she told me. She was a dentist but also had her own lab where she made dentures. She told me of the time a new patient came in who needed a set of dentures but couldn’t find anyone willing to make them…..the look of determination that came on her face even while she told the story showed me she was a force to be reckoned with when she made up her mind to conquer something……so she did it, she made the first set of dentures for a Little Person in the community where she lived. She spoke of finding a life long friend in that patient and their family.

She spoke mostly of how sometimes the family that impacts us the most may not even be blood family…….of how opening your heart to others is a gift……a true gift given to the few brave enough to reach out and take it.

I can’t count the number of times she thanked me…for the time I would spend……..

I wish in my young age I had been able to truly thank her for the gift I knew she was giving me, that would ever go with me. I knew then it was a precious moment in my life, but I didn’t know how to express it to her…but something tells me that she knew.

When I met my husband…she approved of him before anyone else….she saw past the tattoos and outer bad boy image to that loving heart he kept hid inside…….and oh the way this man has loved me. Sixteen years of my life i have known him….sixteen years of my life he has loved me, accepted me, and cherished me more than I could have imagined. Sometimes even I can not fathom how he loves me…..so wholly, so completely, so fully that even when he drives me crazy and I fuss…..I still know…I know I am loved in an amazing way other dream of…..pray for……hope of.

Sometimes when I think about all the days of my life…….the most amazing parts are the people I have met and the pieces of themselves they leave forever in my heart along the way.

So they are all the pieces of me. And it takes all of those pieces to make a whole.