The Diary of Anne Ku
17 August 2000 Thursday looks like rain
CLOSURES
Sometimes it takes a stranger to tell you what you don't know about yourself. My closest friends know me as well as I do myself. They've been telling me the same things over the years. Just when everything becomes stable and certain, I have a tendency to topple the table over, scattering everything on the floor. They know that I like a good challenge. They probably think that my strange behaviour is due to my wanderlust and my thirst for knowledge. So what could a stranger tell me?
Dragoncita is hardly a stranger even though we've only met a few times. But as soon as we met, we knew we'd get to know each other very well. There was instant chemistry and understanding. Over dinner one evening, I told her the story of my life. She immediately found a pattern that I had not noticed before. She kept saying,"Don't you see it? Don't you get it?"
Today is my friend Patty's birthday. If she were alive, she would be a happy mother of three. Four years ago, I almost called her when I visited her town - seeing another friend. I hadn't seen her since high school, and I doubted that we would have much to say to each other. Would her life have been different if I had called and met up with her? Would I have seen the pattern that she and her close friends and family were blind to? Would it have made a difference? There is no closure to her story for she is not here to tell it. That for me and many others is unacceptable. Will it take a stranger to solve the mystery?
Patty Brightwell Vaughan, Class of 82, Kubasaki High School, Okinawa, Japan.
Patty was known as Patty Brightwell one year, and Patty Wallace the next. After she got married, she took on her husband's last name Vaughan.