An Incredible Find

Day 45: As I was searching for something only peripherally related to my quest for a Purple Heart for my dad today, I discovered a large manila envelope I only vaguely remembered having seen before. It had a note on the outside in my mother's handwriting explaining what it contained, and I simply could not believe what I was reading. It held my father's "papers."

A year before my mother passed away, she moved in with me at my insistence. I brought all of her worldly goods here and stored the bulk of them in my garage, which literally packed the building from floor to ceiling with only a two-foot path around the periphery of the pile. When she died, I began disposing of her goods. I sold most of her books and belongings, and threw away great heaps of papers without giving them so much as a glance. However, the words on the outside of one envelope were sufficient to tell me that I probably wanted to keep it, if only as memorabilia. I did not look inside before putting it on a shelf, interleafed among other similar envelopes and soon forgotten.

In looking for other family information today, I pulled out everything, and there among filed manuscripts, tax statements, real estate papers and so on was a stack of original documents...original, I say!...pertaining to my father: his discharge papers, his Marine identification card, a certificate he received when he crossed the Equator, marriage license, a certified copy of his death certificate among the treasures. Most heart-wrenching to me was a photo of him in his hospital bed, taken only a few months before he passed away.

I cannot believe the good fortune which made me preserve that manila envelope and its contents, nor the fortuitous direction my search took me on this day. Treasure! And hidden all this time in plain view.