So, I get blindsided when I returned home from my daily shift at the salt mines the other evening.  I just love it when my beautiful bride does this, and I now know why, all those years ago, my mother always said, "Wait until your father reads the mail and uses the bathroom before you speak to him."

Tristan says to me, "I found my Mother, and it only cost $1.95."

You see, for those of you who don't know, Tristan's mom and dad divorced when she was 5.   A bitter custody battle ensued, with Tristan being shuffled back and forth from Alabama to Texas.

The details are really sketchy, (and of course we have only had ONE SIDE of the details for the last 27 years), but Tristan's father and family won custody and she hasn't seen her Mother since.

So, she made the phone call.  Her maternal grandmother answered the phone, and Tristan asked for "Linda."

.....and the conversation went something like this:

"Linda?"

"Yes?"

"This is Tristan."

....brief silence..."

and then a soft voice, "My BABY GIRL?", followed by tears of joy from both ends of the phone receiver.

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OK, this is the point in the story when I usually begin crying like a baby.

For some reason, I can only get this far into the story before I break down.  I've told the story about a dozen times over the last 4 days, somehow expecting to be "tough, manly, and callused," but, nevertheless, the result is always the same.

Mother and daughter were reunited after TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS. 

No letters, no phone calls, no emails, no Christmas Cards, nothing.

You see, Tristan was always unsure of the real story, and lived ONLY with the knowledge that she was given by a well-intentioned family. 

Every story told has 2 sides, and for the last 27 years, she only had one.

Tristan has struggled with the questions over the years:

Do I contact her?  Will she still love me?  Will she remember me? 

Her Mother, on the other hand, had stayed absent out of respect.  A deep Respect for Tristan to live her own life, safe in the knowledge that she was in a loving home with a loving family, and knowing that was truly the best thing for her little girl.  Her deep desire to avoid making Tristan's life a living Hell (that would inevitably ensue with Tristan's family if contact had been attempted) overrode the desire to reach out, as bad as the human soul longed to.

So she lived, day after day in the knowledge that ONE DAY, if Tristan so desired, she could reach out and make contact and initiate the relationship again, but she would leave that up to Tristan.

For Linda, this meant letting go.  Letting go, knowing that it would be the most painful thing she would ever have to do.  But she possessed a love that was so deep that it did so nonetheless, knowing that it was the best thing FOR that person.

I looked into the eyes of my 9 year old daughter today, and I simply could not fathom that amount of pain.  If you don't have children, it may not be easy to understand.  Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, there is no bond like that between a parent and a child, and I truly believe that bond is even stronger between a mother and child.

Linda last saw Tristan on April 10th, 1981. 

27 years and 6 months to the DAY.

That's  10,045 long nights for a mother and daughter to wonder about each other, and to live in pain and anguish.

14,464,800 minutes.

But, through it all, Linda never forgot.  She never quit loving her "baby girl."  Tristan's baby pictures remained on her wall.  Her Christening gown and baby books remained locked in a cedar chest, never abandoned, never forgotten.

Tristan had a few remaining pictures, and a few memories from a 5-year-old's mind.

She doesn't need details.  Why they divorced, why the custody battle was ugly, why one family did this and one family did that.   None of that matters now.  What difference would it make?  Would it really matter?

For me, that's a tough one.  There's a morbid curiosity part of me that always desires to know the details.  Even though this means setting myself up for heartache and pain at times, I still persist.

And yet I love my wife for not wanting to know this.  And her mother for agreeing not to discuss any of it, unless Tristan asks.

What a beautiful example of LOVE.   A love that transcends all the PAST, all the CRAP, and the UGLINESS, and the CLUTTER.   It strips away all the "Stuff" and all that remains is a RAW, yet beautiful emotion, as pure as any freshly fallen snow.

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And then it hit me Sunday during Communion at church, and I looked over at Tristan and saw it as well.

Linda became a Christian about 15 years ago.

In the last 12 years of our marriage, that had been a concern that Tristan had voiced quite often.

"What if I never see her?"

"What if I never KNOW?"

But, mother and daughter now live safe in the knowledge that, regardless of what happens, regardless of the brevity or longevity of the remainder of this lifetime, they WILL be together again in Heaven.  NEVER AGAIN to be separated.

And, there in the stillness and sanctity of a small church sanctuary, our tears mixed with wine and communion crackers. 

And I DID, for the first time in a long time, TRULY "Do this in remembrance of Me."