GriefSPEAK: The Ransom Note – Mari Nardolillo Dias

by Mari Nardolillo Dias, EdD, contributing writer, grief and grieving

I heard the news today, oh boy. My decades-long dear friend passed away suddenly. In his sleep. Bobby D. His wake was, for me, a somber occasion, one of melancholy and images of the long ago past that assaulted me with the number of friends and others I had not seen in fifty years. Fifty years! Some were difficult to recognize, as I expected I was to some, but the voices were easily identified. Recognizable.

The tenor of long-ago laughter reverberated in my mind. I ran into an old other who reminded me of a quirky ransom note I had sent to him via his URI first-year dorm. An awkward laugh ensued – until he told me he still had the ransom note in its original envelope. I was shocked. Why? Why would he keep it for half of a century? “It was the most creative thing I had even seen then until now. I couldn’t throw it away,” he replied.  

A divorce, children, a career, several moves and a retirement passed. All while the ransom note accompanied him. I implored him to send me a picture of the note. I was curious to revisit my twenty-year-old mind. Yesterday, a text alert interrupted my final grading – seeing it caused me to simultaneously laugh and cry. There was a picture of the front and back of the original envelope and a copy of the ransom note. Its contents are not important, although the note did implore him that if he ever expected to see me again, to put thirty-five candy bars and eighty-four copies of the song “Rockin’ Robin” under a pebble next to a telephone pole on Tower Hill Road!

Since receiving the photos, I have spent a great deal of time flipping back through the 8-millimeter slide projector of my mind. They are all there. Bobby D, the other, as well as the entire group of us that spent our evenings at Garden City parking lot, road trips to Florida and the pure and unadulterated laughter that only comes with a young, unencumbered mind. And now one of us is gone. I am confident that Bobby D did not plan this reunion of friends, but it occurred none-the-less. And if it were not for him, I would never have seen or known about the existence of the ransom note written so many years ago. 

Bobby D always brought us all together in life, and again, in death.

___

Access all of Dr. Dias’ columns at: GRIEFSPEAK

Dr. Mari Nardolillo Dias is a nationally board-certified counselor, holds a Fellow in Thanatology and is certified in both grief counseling and complicated grief. Dias is a Certified death doula, and has a Certificate in Psychological Autopsy.

Dias is an Adjunct Professor at CCRI, and Professor of Clinical Mental Health, Master of Science program, at Johnson & Wales University. Dias is the director of GracePointe Grief Center, in North Kingstown, RI.  For more information, go to:  http://gracepointegrief.com/