When someone who needs to know someone knows, knows who needs someone who knows…

Jean’s daughter spoke in church today. Someone had left a glorious tulip arrangement at her door. Happy Mother’s Day? No note.

Later she saw an elderly neighbor, who said it was from her: she knew it was her first Mother’s Day without her mom and just wanted her to know she was thinking of her.

Somewhere in the conversation she mentioned how good it was to have her husband home.

? Why wouldn’t he be…?

The neighbor’s story spilled out of her.

They had, for all these many years, driven to Yosemite every year to renew their vows, so of course they went this year, too.

Her husband had decided to take a hike (and by the sound of it, it was one he knew well.) He would be back by–

–but he wasn’t.

Hours later, it was dark and there was still no sign of him. She notified the rangers. A search was begun.

He had lost the trail. He had fallen. He had hit his head and found himself in blood and confusion.

Some time in the morning after he went missing, a rescuer found the 88-year-old man, suffering hypothermia, and took off his own warm clothes and wrapped them around him. To guide him back to safety, he had the old man put his hands on the rescuer’s shoulders–and the rescuer then had had to walk backwards.

But they did it. He found him, he got him to safety, then to the nearest emergency room.

The elderly man insisted on renewing his vows with his wife back in Yosemite.

Then she drove him to the hospital here.

And now he is home.

He is still with her.

And she thought of how much Jean’s daughter would be missing her mom, and did something about it, and thereby gave herself permission to tell a kind, caring friend what the two of them had just gone through.

Knowing how much comfort Jean’s daughter would take in her beloved’s safety and recovery.