Years Lost and Years Found

An older woman by the name of Evelyn took care of my mother throughout much of the early 90s before my mother went into hospice. My brother and I called her “Evie” when we were younger––she lived four houses down on our shaded, retired neighborhood road in West Virginia, far from the suburbs and the streetlights. My mother met her after the nearest fire hydrant on the street was struck by a drunk driver and erupted––the evening that I ran through its pouring water alongside the other neighborhood children before the fire department arrived.

This small, personal story takes place throughout a few decades and states. I will share photos that I have taken as I go.

Evelyn was married in early 1927 at the age of eighteen to a man named Ronald. By 1951, Ronald was killed in Korea, and Evelyn did not remarry before her death. This was even before my older brother was born––we had only seen the pictures in her hallway. And I spent my remaining time in West Virginia running cross country over dirt trails, pouring concrete for an uncle’s construction company, falling in love, falling out of love, and helping with bills when I could. My mother and Evelyn stayed on my childhood road, and they stayed friends. Soon, I went off to college, graduated, worked, married, moved, divorced, and moved again. I did not see Evelyn for fourteen years.

Somewhere in late November of 1991, my mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I was in Missouri, my brother Phoenix. By February, my mother’s hair was gone and she––a tall, thin woman since high school––lost an additional fifteen pounds. I arrived by a red-eye flight to a house that had not changed since my adolescence and stayed for five weeks, working remotely when I could. Evelyn, at this time, was in her early eighties with the same haircut that I had always known her to have. She was kind to my mother, and she continued to be. I left West Virginia in March and saved my emotion for Evelyn just before my drive to the airport, crying briefly into her small shoulder. In May, my flight was delayed from weather blowing in over St. Louis, and my mother died beside Evelyn in a hospital just outside of Charleston.

Weeks following the funeral, I received a postcard of one of the Hawaiian Islands. On its front was a painting of a sunset across some shoreline, half white sand, half rock, with an imprint of the islands on its top left. On its back was Evelyn’s name in cursive and her new contact information and address. I wrote her the following week. She wrote back the following month. We soon spoke on the phone––she had moved into a yellow two-bedroom at the southern tip of Kauai, one minute from the beach and eight minutes from the grocery store. She mailed pictures, and we kept up. And my life continued on.

The following year, Evelyn’s left femur fractured after a fall, and I learned of her bone cancer––chondrosarcoma. When the pathologist returned the biopsy results, I met Evelyn in California where she saw a specialist that was a colleague of a friend. Her surgery did not require amputation. I was at her bed when the nurses and anesthesiologist wheeled her deeper through the hallways, and I was at her bed when she came to.

Later in that year, I moved cities once more. When I forwarded Evelyn the new address, I received an envelope with a short letter and two photographs––the first of Evelyn on a beach with two others, and the second of a single baby sea turtle where it labored across sand. In the letter, Evelyn briefly described her recent volunteering with an organization that excavates certain sea turtle nests located in high-risk areas. I later learned that she took up this position shortly after having the cast on her leg removed, and that excavating was only one of many functions that the organization had in regards to helping sea turtles reach the water. During more occasional phone calls throughout the coming years, Evelyn told me that at least four nests were relocated near the beach beside her own house, as both the eastern and western stretches on either side were in the process of being developed.

Chondrosarcoma is a type of cancer that does not necessarily respond to chemotherapy––surgery is one of the few options. The following May, it returned. Evelyn volunteered for this organization until her death.

The term “the lost years” refers to a period of time when adolescent sea turtles spend their time somewhere in the ocean, often making it impossible for researchers to track until they ultimately return to land and reach sexual maturity.

Evelyn’s funeral was small and filled with faces that I did not recognize. Her casket was closed. There, I met four others from the Hawaiian not-for-profit. By September of 2006, I flew into Honolulu on business and extended my stay by four days where I caught a plane to Kauai, rented a Pontiac, and drove to the southern tip. I had the address of the house that Evelyn once owned saved on my phone, although the house had been repainted from that pale yellow to an off-white. I met the owners––an elderly couple, Lawrence and Rose. They allowed me to cut through the property and spend the afternoon on its beach where I found only one sea turtle––the one pictured above. It was a rather curious one that snuck up on me, and one that stayed beside me for a while as I sat on slick rock before the tide and watched the sun lower.

I have no way of knowing whether this was a turtle from one of Evelyn’s nests that she relocated. The lost years is a concept that is plagued by little knowledge of where exactly the turtles go and where they return to, and the turtles themselves suffer from a very small survival rate. But I will look back at the picture from time to time, and, each time, I am reminded of her and her flat plot of wild grasses and shoreline––of her kindness to my mother, to me, and to the rest.